path: root/76372-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76372 ***





THE SILVER DIAL.

BY

MARY C. ROWSELL.

AUTHOR OF “ST. NICOLAS’ EVE,” “LOVE LOYAL,” “TRAITOR OR
PATRIOT,” &c., &c.

       *       *       *       *       *

    “AS MANY LINES CLOSE IN THE DIAL’S CENTRE;
    SO MANY A THOUSAND ACTIONS, ONCE AFOOT,
    END IN ONE PURPOSE.”—_Henry V._

       *       *       *       *       *

VOL III.

[Illustration]

LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LE BAS & LOWREY, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

       *       *       *       *       *

1886.




THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.




CONTENTS.

[Illustration]


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

  XLVIII.—The Horologe                                                 1

    XLIX.—“Les Neiges D’Antan”                                        21

       L.—“So near, and yet so far away”                              32

      LI.—“Shoemaker’s Holiday”                                       45

     LII.—“More Favour and Prejudice”                                 63

    LIII.—“On the Good Faith of Syndic Hackernagel”                   77

     LIV.—Love’s Alchemy                                              96

      LV.—A Visit to Dr. Wolkenberg’s                                113

     LVI.—Playing with Fire                                          131

    LVII.—“Motive Power”                                             142

   LVIII.—Vade Satana                                                155

     LIX.—When Greek meets Greek                                     172

      LX.—“Man proposes”                                             191

     LXI.—St. Stephen’s Tower                                        201

    LXII.—A Dilemma                                                  213

   LXIII.—“The Three Ravens”                                         230

    LXIV.—“In vino veritas”                                          243

     LXV.—A Confession                                               260

    LXVI.—“Sweet is true Love, tho’ given in vain, in vain”          282

   LXVII.—“Lady’s Leap Corner”                                       294

  LXVIII.—A Vigil                                                    306

    LXIX.—Saved!                                                     317

     LXX.—“Finis Coronat”                                            331

    LXXI.—“There could not be greater Love than this”                345

   LXXII.—De Profundis                                               363

  LXXIII.—Syndic Hackernagel retires from Public Life                374

   LXXIV.—“Ich habe Gelebt, and Geliebet”                            385

    LXXV.—“To the End”                                               402




THE SILVER DIAL.

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE HOROLOGE.


Looking just one week later in at the Dial, it would have been hard to
credit that an interdict of weeks had but so recently been lifted from
it. True enough Otto von Steinbach’s disastrous usurpation had left a
fearsome chaos there; but out of it the hand of the master had brought
back nearly all the old order; and not by any means the least diligent
hands put forth to help him, were those which had compassed the
confusion. Under discipline, as Dasipodius had said, Otto von Steinbach
could do good work; and never as now had his heedless nature so
schooled itself to fulfil the wishes of the reinstated master, and to
obey even unmurmuringly the orders of Isaac Habrecht. Doubtless this
was still more cheerfully done out of that sense of regained freedom.
He found it inexpressibly enjoyable; and the lissomeness it lent his
fingers, and perception it gave his brain, made a new creature of him.

That of course had been a terrible moment for him when he delivered up
the studio key to Dasipodius, and all his bungling lay naked under the
keen eye of the elder Habrecht, and the still more critical handling of
Dasipodius; but the chief horologist silenced Isaac’s jeremiads.

“Nay, Isaac,” he said, laying his hand on Habrecht’s arm, “there is no
time to spend in regrets. Here already we have St. Barnabas——”

“The Son of Consolation, as the gospels say,” murmured Kaspar.

“St. Barnabas day, and by the feast of St. Laurence, not quite two
months hence remember, the Horologe has to be ready.”

“But it never can be so now!” exclaimed Isaac aghast. “You don’t dream
of it, master.”

“That’s as it may be,” quietly laughed Dasipodius. “I know only that,
God willing, it is my intention to have it finished.”

“But,” continued Isaac, “they don’t deserve any such thing of you. Not
if we could do it ten times over.”

“If you will stand discussing the question, I tell you it will be hard
enough to get through with it once. Come, are we to work together, or
not?”

With a grunt Habrecht signified his assent; and then the task of the
Horologe’s deliverance from durance proceeded in good earnest. Not so
very long passed before it was restored to the state in which it had
been left by Dasipodius, and the workers started afresh upon their fair
field.

Content with Dasipodius’ promise that they should still have their
Horologe by the date originally agreed upon, the Strassburgers went
their several ways, as ardent now in their admiration as they had been
eager three months since to hound him from their midst, and their faith
in Tobias Hackernagel’s infallibility not a little shaken. The Syndic
however, with lowered crest indeed, but not by any means extinguished,
consoled himself in the reflection that his meddling had not brought on
his devoted head loss of place or of emoluments, as it ran perilously
near doing; and persuaded by some still small voice, that temporary
self-effacement was the wisest course, retired into the bosom of his
family, occasioning much disorganization there. The most eloquent voice
of the municipality was now heard scarcely at all on the forensic
platform, but so very much by the domestic hearth, that the servants
groaned, and were given audibly to asking each other what a bear with
a sore head might be like; and the mistresses languished cruelly under
the paternal ill temper, sighing as never they had sighed before,
for the laggard heroes who should come and carry them off from such
wretched durance.

Naturally the one fortunate Andromeda who had found her Perseus, met
with the worst time of it all; and many a sour taunt she endured for
his sake, from the thwarted Syndic, who found it for certain far-seeing
reasons of his own, more convenient to visit his vexation on the
hopeless Gretchen than on the real delinquent. Hackernagel knew a hawk
from a hernshaw; and perfectly well understood the girl’s power of
dogged endurance.

“She’s the very double of her mother,” the Syndic would say to himself,
calling up visions of the uncomplaining woman whom he had nagged and
fretted ten years earlier into her grave; and he knew very well, that
worry as he might, no word of his vented spleen against Otto would find
its way to the young man’s ears. And so at his own sweet will, Otto
came and went as usual, unconscious, or perhaps choosing to appear so,
of Hackernagel’s smothered wrath against him, serenely self-satisfied
as ever; and if he alluded, as now and again he might, to past
misfortunes, it was only for the sake of illustrating the lamentable
way in which Strassburg was shackled hand and foot by prejudice, or
to indulge in interesting speculations concerning the strikingly
singular variations of human organisms in regard to their powers of
endurance. “Some men have nerves of iron, while I—well you know, it
was the worry of the thing which so preyed upon me,” he would explain
with that exquisitely languorous air, which rendered him ten times more
excruciatingly interesting than ever in his Dulcinea’s eyes. “It just
played the deuce with my brain. I assure you, that had I kept on with
it as—more than one urged me to do, I should have been in a lunatic
asylum by now. I’m persuaded I should. I’m anything but bright still. I
want tone; Wolkenberg was only saying so yesterday.”

“Balance” had been Dr. Bruno’s precise term, but, as Otto himself would
have said, “wherever is the good of hair-splitting over convertible
expressions?”

Amid the general satisfaction at Dasipodius’ return, no one rejoiced
more truly than he who had been the prime agent in bringing it about,
Bishop John; and he soon found his way to the Dial. His delight was
boundless when he learned that the Horologe would still be ready by the
originally promised date.

“You are a magician!” he cried enthusiastically.

“So they say, my lord,” smiled Dasipodius.

“It has been a cruel time for you, my son,” said the Bishop, sobering
down as he scanned, though somewhat furtively, for it seemed to him
incredible that indeed those eyes were not conscious of his gaze, the
face of the mathematician, worn with premature lines of care. “But you
do not suffer now?” he asked.

“Physical pain you mean, my lord? Very little. The world is simply a
blank to me, that is all.”

“May God make it up to your brave heart,” replied the Bishop. “Your
burden is indeed a heavy one.”

“The truest friends a man ever had lighten it for me, my lord.”

“Well, well, and so may He comfort you—always.”

“Amen. Will it please you to come round and see what we have been doing
these last few days? The larger works are all up now.”

“Already!” said the Bishop, following his companion down stairs.

“They were in readiness the very day my régime was stopped, last March.”

“And that—mind the door cornice; these posterns were not made for
giants like you—Otto von Steinbach, he wasn’t able to put them up of
course?”

“Pardon me, my lord; he did put them up, and we have had to take them
all down again. It has been our week’s work, pretty well.”

“Just so. In the meantime—won’t you take my arm?” asked the Bishop,
interrupting himself; for as yet he had not grown accustomed, as others
had, to the blind man’s entire self-reliance. “In the meantime the
outside of the cup and platter is all as it should be?”

“And more, they tell me,” answered Dasipodius. “Mistress Radegund von
Steinbach appears to have surpassed herself.”

Entering by the Cathedral’s western porch, the Bishop and the
mathematician passed up the nave and in behind the canvas covering
stretched across the screen fronting the St. Thomas’ Chapel, and which
concealed the Horologe’s embryo glories from vulgar curiosity.

Externally indeed, little now remained to be done. The dials were, it
is true, as yet mere moon-faced blanks, and the carven niches still
tenantless; but Kaspar Habrecht had been occupied the whole of the
previous day in setting up his masterpiece, the marvellous crowing cock.

“I suppose,” said the Bishop, pointing up at the wooden bird, “that
that fellow hasn’t anything to say for himself yet?”

“The cock? no; his lungs borrow their breath from the main works.”

“And the quartette up in the middle there? the youngster with his
golden apple, and the youth, and the man-at-arms, and the old fellow
with his crook——”

“Are to strike the bells above. They are up, my lord?”

“No,” said the Bishop; “I see no bells.”

“Ah! Otto von Steinbach talked of putting them up yesterday; that means
to-day or to-morrow of course,” said Dasipodius with a slight smile.
“But everything comes, it is said, to those who know how to wait. And
that is what they will do, these four ages of man.”

“That ogee moulding on the apex is lightness and grace itself.”

“It is Kaspar Habrecht’s work. And the cornice details, they are good?”

“A fairy’s chisel might have done it all. It is perfect.”

“So Mistress von Steinbach tells me,” nodded Dasipodius. “It was an
onerous undertaking for such a youth; but he was to be trusted before
men double his age.”

“Young Habrecht?”

“It is all his work. Every stroke.”

“A comely lad, Master Dasipodius; somewhat fragile-looking though.”

“But a stout heart, my lord.”

“Ay,” returned the Bishop, with an assenting wave of the hand, “like
enough. Your delicate blossoms that look as if Zephyr’s gentlest breath
would break them, are sometimes stronger than your forest monarchs. And
now tell me, how about these dial rims?”

“They are to be gilded; Master Niklaus von Steinbach is seeing to that.”

“Good; and these notches in the woodwork of the dial frames?”

“Mark the spaces which are to contain the agates and chalcedonies.”

“Real gems, Master Dasipodius! Costly work, eh?”

“It is for the church, my lord.”

“And they fancy this man heresy bitten!” mentally ejaculated the
Bishop. “Quite so,” he assented. “And Burgomaster von Steinbach, if I
remember rightly, also supplies these jewels?”

“Yes; they are being faceted now; and will be ready to-morrow, with all
the enamels. I am going to-morrow evening to fetch them from his house.”

“Yourself—of course?” said the Bishop.

“Myself of course,” answered Dasipodius, with the faintest access of
colour.

“Ah—h’m—naturally. Exactly so.”

“The world,” continued Dasipodius in slightly hurried tones, “would
have to grow more trustworthy, before I should dare depute that part of
the contract. And why should I?”

“Precisely,” nodded his companion, “why should you, as you say. In such
matters, all—ahem—private feeling ought to give way.”

“My lord?”

“Ought—h’m—as one may say, to go to the wall.”

“I do not understand you,” and the flush deepened on Dasipodius’ brow.

“Ah; I was given to—to—I had an impression, that is, that there was
some slight hitch in your friendship with Burgomaster von Steinbach.”

“I know of no shadow of any such thing, my lord,” returned Dasipodius
stiffly. “May I ask who was your informant?”

“Let me think. Was it Dr. Wolkenberg?”

“Wolkenberg it could not be. He knows differently.”

“No, no,” hurriedly interrupted the Bishop; “no, it was Mistress
Radegund von Steinbach of course. I recollect now. She intimated,
merely intimated, something to that effect.”

A deep shade of displeasure darkened the mathematician’s face. “I do
not know what has come to Mistress von Steinbach,” he said; “she is
curiously changed from the woman she used to be.”

“That’s not much wonder.”

“No?”

“Women are changeable.”

“As the wind,” acquiesced the mathematician.

“And then—yes, certainly. She has changed outwardly too. Do you notice
it?”

“My lord,” answered Dasipodius, moving round to the rear of the
Horologe, “you forget; human faces are sealed books to me.”

The Bishop bit his lip vexedly at his slip.

“But,” continued the mathematician, “speaking of Mistress von
Steinbach, will you lend me your eyes, and tell me what you think of
the cornice paintings, especially the two lower front ones? I want an
impartial opinion.”

“Your friend, Dr. Wolkenberg,” modestly objected the Bishop, “is an
apter critic than I.”

“But in this case,” smiled Dasipodius, “not altogether an unbiassed
one. I would at all events prefer to abide by your verdict.”

“I can but say the artist has been faithful to her reputation; the
paintings are excellent, as far as they are complete.”

“Only the left hand outer panel remains to be done, I think.”

“And that is all sketched in.”

“Now, will you come round and see the works? Stay, I will light this
lamp first.”

“It is marvellous!” said the Bishop, when he had gazed long and
silently, with his light lifted aloft, into the dark mysterious wooden
chamber. “A clock always seems to me a thing of life. One involuntarily
sets to comparing it with the organisms of the human body. Each
minutest part so dependent on the whole, that if one member slips out
of gear, all the others suffer with it.”

“And the whole as likely as not to stop altogether.”

“Ay, but some parts if they get injured, threaten its vitality more
than others?”

“Certainly. There are here, for example, will be, that is, works which,
if tampered with, would—Is that you, Prudentius?”

“Yes, Master Dasipodius,” answered the sacristan, who, hearing
the bishop’s voice, and being in search of him, had, not without
considerable personal inconvenience, succeeded in propelling his
rotund person between the Horologe case and the chapel wall, until he
stood wheezing and puffing by the mathematician’s side. “Yes, it’s me.
Mother Barepenny told me she had seen you—come in here with my lord,
and—and,” gasped Prudentius, whose recent manœuvres had nearly squeezed
the last breath out of him, “and I had a question to ask my lord
about—about the great—iron cope chest, one of its hin—hinges——”

“Presently, my son, I will come with you, and see about it. Meantime
find your breath, and hold this lamp here for me.—You were saying,
Professor Dasipodius, that if some of these chains and springs were
tampered with?”

“They would merely stop the action of one set of dial hands, or the
progression of one group of figures.”

“Much as one nerve or tendon destroyed in the wrist or foot would mar
the body’s uniformity of action?”

“In the same way. Again, on the other hand, there are motors—see, here
is one for instance. Hold the lamp closer, Prudentius—and here is
another, and here another, will be the Horologe’s heart and brain.”

“Lord save us!” ejaculated Prudentius, under his breath, and peering in
with distended awe-stricken eyes under the shelter of Dasipodius’ tall
figure.

“Can you see, my lord? These—hold the light down closer, friend—these
when they are finished, if so much as touched, would superinduce total
inaction.”

“Death.”

“Death, as one may say.”

“Holy Virgin, forgive us!” muttered the appalled sacristan. “If the
thing was a Christian they couldn’t——”

“Hold that light still, Prudentius,” said the Bishop. “How can one
see anything with you bobbing it up and down like that? A fortnight’s
abstinence on bread and water would be the best remedy for stilling
those hands of yours a bit, my son. Hold the lamp steady, can’t you.
Where then is this quickening power, Master Dasipodius?”

“Not here as yet, my lord; we have but the Horologe’s embryo. The
quickening, following the universal law, is reserved until all the
material and coarser organism is thoroughly in readiness to receive
it. The fine springs and hair-like wires are still in my studio drawer.
One chief wire of them will pass from that larger wheel round this
cylinder, and so over to the lesser wheel here. Do you see, my lord?”

“And that—supposing it destroyed, cut?”

“Too cruel a supposition to entertain,” smiled the mathematician. “All
the work would be ruined.”

“The Horologe destroyed, Master Dasipodius?” exclaimed the sacristan,
horror stricken.

“As surely as your body would be, my friend, if I were to thrust your
heart through with this,” said Dasipodius, taking up a small sharp file.

The sacristan shrank shiveringly into the wall’s uttermost recesses.

“And,” demanded the Bishop, still absorbed in the wonders before him,
“do you mean to tell me that these delicate things have all been at
Otto von Steinbach’s tender mercies?”

“With the rest of the machinery, yes. Fortunately, he has not so much
as touched them. You see, my lord, it was just with them his heart
failed him, and he gave in.”

“There is a hideous tale,” said the Bishop dreamily, “of one who
ransacked graves and charnel-houses, and made from the loathsome
fragments he found there, a creature bearing the semblance of a man,
and then endued it with a mockery of life. ’Twas all his power could
reach to; a debased flesh and blood that wretched student did produce
indeed; but soul and spirit were not for him to give. And so, Master
Dasipodius, these most dainty primary motors are to be fixed—when?”

“Within a week only of St. Laurence’s day.”

“Ah! and just as well to every way. I don’t mean regarded only from its
scientific point of view.”

The mathematician looked puzzled.

“You never considered it in that light.”

“Apart from its scientific aspect? No, my lord. What other?”

“Heaven help these clever heads!” shrugged the Bishop to himself. “Men
who had never passed the _pons asinorum_ would have caught my meaning
with half a word! Simply I was thinking,” he added aloud—“Prudentius,
you can go; I will join you in the sacristy in five minutes,” and
Prudentius, needing no second bidding, departed—“thinking that any
possibility of foul play——”

The mystification increased tenfold in Dasipodius’ face.

“Of foul play, you know, will be reduced to a minimum.”

“I must confess to you, my lord, that what you are saying is an utter
riddle to me.”

“Thou dear gracious heaven!” groaned the churchman to himself, “if
only thou had’st been pleased to grant mathematical brains one iota of
imagination! Now, if I say what I think, he’ll be setting me down as
uncharitable, and a suspector of persons! You never,” he said aloud—“it
has never crossed your mind, that your enemies might take it into their
heads to try and tamper with your work here?”

“My lord, I trust I have no enemies,” said Dasipodius, carefully
setting to the door of the case.

“Ah! We won’t be nice about terms,” answered the Bishop a little
petulantly. “People then who—do not wish you well.”

“If there be any such, they can be only personal enemies. The Horologe
runs little risk of suffering. It is to the general interest to
protect that.”

“But individual interest?”

“I think,” laughed Dasipodius, extinguishing the lamp Prudentius had
set down, “we shall be splitting hairs next.”

“No such thing,” persisted his companion. “Say now for the sake of
argument that Otto von Steinbach——”

“My lord, your choice is an unfortunate, an ungenerous one.”

“Well, well, perhaps. Say—Syndic Hackernagel then. Do you suppose now
that he has any interest or affection for this Horologe of yours? Rank
heretic that he is. Why, the very thought suggested by WORKS is gall to
his Anabaptist soul! He would imperil his wretched little body, fond as
he is of it, to trample down——”

“My lord! my lord!” remonstrated Dasipodius, “really you are letting
fancy run away with you.”

“No such thing I tell you.”

“Let Syndic Hackernagel go his ways; are we—am not I well quit of him?
Thank Heaven, Strassburg is not made up of Syndic Hackernagels.”

“But——”

“And you and I, my lord,” laughingly insisted the mathematician, “will
be most assuredly found guilty, and with justice too, of collusion with
the powers of evil, if we conjure up such fears as these; I assure you
they can but be groundless. You must not fret yourself for the Horologe
and me.”

“And—you have no apprehensions?”

“No shadow of any.”

“Then,” said the Bishop, fixing his eyes filled with a half-anxious,
wholly-admiring gaze on Dasipodius, “Heaven protect you.”

And so he left him to go and discuss about the damaged cope chest with
Prudentius. “For it must be seen to at once,” thought he to himself;
“there are opals and pearls of great price in that cloth of gold cope;
and our professor there may say what he likes, there are—protestants
about.”




CHAPTER XLIX.

“LES NEIGES D’ANTAN.”


“That quarter of roedeer Master Kuno the ranger was good enough to send
us in would just be in prime condition for supper to-night, little one,
yes?” asks Burgomaster Niklaus of his daughter.

“Yes, Väterle; but it could be kept still another day or two if you
wish. It is such a fine piece.”

“Good.”

“You may like to wait for it to be dressed, until we have some guest to
supper with us.”

“Quite right,” nods the Burgomaster, kindling a Gargantuan lantern he
has brought in with him, and stealing a glance over the top of it at
Sabina; “and a guest is coming to-night.”

“Very well, Väterle.”

“You don’t ask who it is,” says Niklaus, raising his voice, a shade
irritated as now and then he was, in spite of himself, at his
daughter’s impassivity and lack of interest in the daily trifling
occurrences which make up the staple of existence; and, above all, he
sorely missed the little proverbial feminine failing of which once
Sabina had quite her fair share. “I say you don’t ask me who it is.”

“I—did—not—who is it, Väterle?” she asks.

“Master Dasipodius,” curtly replies Niklaus.

“Master Christian Dasipodius?” she says, flushing a little as the name
passes her lips.

“No,” answers Niklaus, “not Master Christian this time; the
Professor—Conrad Dasipodius.” And again Niklaus’ eyes searchingly fix
themselves on his daughter’s face; but curiously little of it is to
be seen, bending so low over a troublesome tangle in the flax, which
somehow the trembling little fingers aggravate into one fearsome
Gordian knot.

“The Professor Conrad Dasipodius,” reiterates Niklaus; “and seeing
that he has been so long a stranger, we must kill the fatted calf,
hey? and give him a hearty welcome. Yes, little one?” and again the
Burgomaster’s accents touch a high note.

“Yes,” she answers with a slight start, “of course. Oh yes.”

“Good. And now I’m going into the cellar,” continues her father, “to
fetch up a bottle of Burgundy to drink his health, hey?”

“To be sure, Väterle.”

“Ay, to be sure. And let me see, let me see now; sturgeon stuffed with
parsley’s a dish for an emperor. First we’ll have sturgeon stuffed with
parsley, h’m?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, and you’ll stuff it yourself, dear child, eh? Somehow no fingers
ever do that job like these little ones,” coaxes Niklaus, leaving his
lantern, and coming beside her to lift the two hands caressingly in
his. “I recollect how Master Dasipodius, the very last time he ever set
foot in this house—thunder and lightning! what an age ago it is—we had
stuffed sturgeon, and it was you who dressed it; and he said—and he’s
the slowest fellow going to notice what sort of food’s set before him
is the Professor Dasipodius—he said that the gods never tasted anything
half so good. Dost remember his saying it, Sabina?”

“Yes, father.”

“Come now, look up then,” continued Niklaus, putting his forefinger
under her chin, and compelling her eyes to meet his own, “and let
bygones be bygones.”

“They are; they are,” and the miserable Sabina strove to writhe herself
free. “Quite.”

“Good, that is my own brave girl. And listen, you’ll put on the green
kirtle, you know; why, that kirtle becomes you like no other I ever saw
you in, and you’ll put it on?” asked the Burgomaster cheerily.

“Father, it is all one—it is of no consequence to Master Dasipodius
what I wear,” cried the poor child.

“Oh, hang it! neither it is. When will one have the sense to hammer
that into one’s dunderhead?” groaned Niklaus, clutching the frontal
bone of that member.

“Besides,” continued she hesitatingly, “I—of course I will see that all
is ready comfortably for you, and—the Professor Dasipodius; but——”

“Well?”

“I shall not be here, father.”

“Thunderweather! and where, pray, may you be going a gadding, mistress?”

“To Cousin Radegund’s.”

“Why! impossible! she was by—o’Monday morning it was—when Dasipodius
told me he intended looking in to-night about the enamels. When did she
invite you, child?”

“Monday afternoon.”

“That woman’ll be forgetting her own head next, handsome as it is,
one of these fine days! Never mind; I’ll look in on her presently and
explain, and beg off for you.”

“But—I want to go,” pleaded the unhappy girl.

“And I want you to stay here, mistress!” sternly cried Niklaus, with a
stamp of his foot. “Nay,” he went on in gentler tones, and drawing her
into his arms, “I understand all about it. Am I not your old father?
and don’t I know you’re a brave little girl, Sabina? There, there, I
grant you it won’t be pleasant, just for the first minute or two, you
sad, naughty, capricious little woman! She would, and she wouldn’t.
Oh, fie! fie! and why wouldn’t she? Well, she wouldn’t. But Master
Dasipodius is a man, and he’s forgotten all about it long ago, I’ll
warrant you. He bears you no malice; he’s had other fish to fry; and
hasn’t thrown away two thoughts on you, since you gave him the go-by.
And if he doesn’t object to meeting you, you vain, dear, cruel, little
pussy-cat, you, what the deuce should you be minding him for? Come,
you’ll never be letting these odd whimsies of yours shut the door on
the best gentleman in Strassburg.”

“N—no.”

“And your father’s old friend’s son, hey?”

“No, Väterle”; and the mobile lips fixed into resolute, almost stern
lines, and a strange light, like the steady glow in the eyes of some
martyr on the scaffold, shone in the soft eyes,—“no, no.”

“So, that’s my brave girl; that’s her father’s own child. And I shall
look in then, and tell Radegund you’re not coming?”

“Yes, and father——”

“Ay?”

“Tell Cousin Radegund that, if she pleases, I will come to-morrow
instead.”

“H’m—well, if she wants you, you can go of course; yes, I’ll say
so. And now,” and the Burgomaster took up his lantern, “now for the
Burgundy.”

Those were good times when love-lorn maids had little leisure for
sitting down to feed upon melancholy. If iron and steel did their part
then in tuning up shattered nerves, they did not figure as ruinous
items on paterfamilias reckoning day with the doctor; but fulfilled
their healing duties more effectually under the guise of gridiron and
stewpan. Women used to go into their kitchens and stillrooms then;
and over their roasts, and pasties, and electuaries, and the rest of
it, forgot their fancied woes, and soothed down their real ones, as
Sabina did now. Had not that quarter of venison to be taken out of
salt, and dried and floured ready for the spit? and there, on the
table of sacrifice, lay the sturgeon her father had just sent in from
the fishmarket, awaiting the inimitable parsley stuffing; and then
the half-dozen dainty sauces and condiments to be thought out and
concocted, before the contemplated little feast could be such as her
father loved, and—fit for the guest he found his pleasure in honouring.

That liking Niklaus had conceived for Conrad Dasipodius was Sabina’s
one grand consolation for all she had to endure. Time had been that
her father, although indeed he had always respected and liked the son
of his old friend very well, cared for him far less than he did now.
Von Steinbach’s own sturdy sense had come to admire in no small degree
the man who could fight under such fearful odds against fortune; and
whose powerful intellect had won him, besides, tangible reward in good
round florins, and such things are not to be sneezed at mind you,—such
high distinctions. The generous-hearted old Strassburger was able
to estimate at something of its real value the stuff which made up
Dasipodius’ nature.

Sabina did not, however, stay hypercritically to analyse the causes of
her father’s appreciation for the man she loved; it sufficed for her
that he had come to know Dasipodius in some measure as he deserved to
be known; and she was content silently to add, and as cheerfully as her
sad heart might, any grievous misconstruction touching herself, to all
that other burden of griefs which had fallen to her lot.

Her love for Dasipodius had come to be of that self-immolating sort
which gives all, hoping for nothing. It was her secret glory that he
had bestowed on her one fleeting thought of love, or as Radegund had
put it, of admiration; and that, though he should become the husband of
a king’s daughter—though he were in his grave—(alas! that sometimes to
her it seemed as though that would have been best!)—that remembrance
could never be stolen from her, and she would not have bartered it for
another man’s life-long devotion. The little woman, incapable indeed
of entering by so much as half a step into the region of thought which
was the mathematician’s kingdom, had still the gift of appreciation and
sympathy, and though she might not enter, she could kneel afar off and
adore.

              “It were all one,
    That I should love a bright particular star,
    And think to wed it.”

She would have felt those lines met her case excellently well.

Appraising that sixteenth century Horologe by the intensified
scientific light of these days, one might feel tempted perhaps to cavil
at Strassburg’s glorification of Dasipodius, arguing that the thing by
which the chief memory of him remains, is a mere clumsy, not to say
ridiculous, piece of mechanism; but this would be as unfair an estimate
as if one—provided only the old world lasts so long and Nidhögg the
dragon has not gnawed the world’s roots through three hundred years
hence—should sneer at one Benjamin Franklin with his pins and needles
and bits of wire; or at that awkward fellow Stephenson, whose wits
could devise no better arrangement for carrying people about the world,
than a puffing Juggernaut monster.

Moreover, a reputation attached to the mathematician’s name, quite
independent of the Horologe, in his wondrous aptitude for imparting
to others the principles of the science of which he was so perfect a
master; and as mathematical head professor of Strassburg University,
he in his time helped in linking together that girdle of civilisation
which Archimedes, and Galileo, and Newton, and men of their mould, have
helped to put round the earth.

Truly he had his persecutions, and the thousand irritating midge-bites
which ignorance and envy love to inflict; but that is to say no more
than that he shared the common lot of intellects above the ruck.

“And,” solemnly demanded that Quidnunc of the great railway engineer,
after he had enunciated his propositions, and with infinite care and
patience striven to explain his plans to the assembled conclave—“and if
now a cow should happen to get on the line?”

“It would be bad for the coo,” answered the man of science.

And returning to Dasipodius and his own day, he had but borne
opposition and disappointment in the spirit of his mighty Florentine
contemporary who endured imprisonment and countless humiliations, and
met the outcry of bigots with the placid truth which has now become a
truism, “_e pur si muove_”.




CHAPTER L.

“SO NEAR, AND YET SO FAR AWAY.”


Since the stirring times when John of Manderscheid was Prince Bishop of
Strassburg, the old city has seen curious changes; and her cathedral
has shared largely in her vicissitudes. The Reign of Terror turned the
holy place into a “Temple of Reason,” and celebrated its maniacal rites
at the altar, where for centuries the Host had lain enshrined; but ever
and again since Luther’s time, iconoclastic fury has done its worst
there, wrenching down, and with axe and hammer despoiling it of every
vestige of ornament which could be bartered for a doit of lucre, and
even the exterior of the Horologe has suffered, if some tales be true,
and only the paint and lacquer stuff, such as the soul of the reformed
delighteth to set in the temples to Him from whom all beautiful and
perfect things do come, stands in the place of the fair and costly
work which Master Niklaus von Steinbach and his apprentices originally
turned out for it.

“Yes, it looks well. I wish you could see it, Master Dasipodius,”
said the goldsmith, as he conducted his visitor into his workshop. “I
think you’d say ’tis bravely done. Here,” continued Niklaus, opening a
massive iron chest, and taking from it a disk of brass repoussé work,
“is the face of the chronometer dial,” and he handed it to Dasipodius,
“centred with——”

“Enamel cloisonné,” said the mathematician, passing his finger lightly
over the surface, “and of what colour?”

“Crimson and purple translucent, as a stormy sunset. And here in the
outer rim, opaque azure starred with golden.”

“And between?”

“Crystal facets and four rubies to mark the quarters. And here you have
the astrological dial, turquoise blue translucent——”

“And cloisonné also, with serpentine golden?”

“Yes, on a shiny ground, silver touched. Our best piece of all, to my
thinking; turned out by a young fellow, a Frenchman from the studio
of Maître Léonard Limousin. We shall have to make a master of him for
his piece of handiwork. Not the faintest fly-speck of a flaw in it.
Somehow we German double-thumbs can’t hold a candle to these frogs of
Frenchmen, where it’s a matter of grace or ingenuity.”

“But your circle here, you haven’t got it perfect,” said the
mathematician, passing his fingers rapidly round the disk.

“Exactness itself.”

“Nay, by your leave,” and taking from his pocket a small ivory rule,
Dasipodius laying it across and across, proved his case by nearly half
the sixteenth of an inch; “it’s out.”

“Bless my soul!” said Niklaus, examining the measurement, “so it is.”

“That must be seen to,” said Dasipodius, “or it will offend the eye.”

“Naturally,” acquiesced Niklaus, with a secret malediction, “it’s odd
enough how it escaped mine.”

Then, possibly to avoid any more hypercriticism, the goldsmith hurried
the enamels back into their cotton-wool casings.

“The other rims,” he said, “you had best take with you, and turn over
at your leisure. Will you come across now, and eat a morsel of supper
with us?”

“If you will excuse me,” began Dasipodius; “my time just now is hardly
my own.”

“Then steal a bit. Nay, Master Dasipodius, if you refuse, I think my
little girl will be taking it unkindly of you.”

“I would not have her suppose—” began Dasipodius.

“No, no, of course you wouldn’t, I know,” hurriedly assured Niklaus.
“I comprehend perfectly. One doesn’t want to be hard with these queer
creatures; and, _Donnerwetter!_—of all the dear Heaven’s creations,
they are the queerest; oh, I grant you that, are women. But my girl’s a
good girl—in the main, Master Dasipodius, and has a warm heart in spite
of—that stone post! mind it, professor. Phew! what a sultry night.
We’re having a hot time of it this summer, hey? I hope you won’t be
sighing for the green trees you’ve left behind you at Schaffhausen.
Well, one can’t have everything in this world, can one? and if one has
one thing, one must give up t’other, and as fast as one thing goes
right, t’other goes wrong, and one can but make the best of things, eh,
professor? and the hobby-horse never will gee all four legs the same
way.”

This volley of more true than original philosophy, the Burgomaster
fired off as the two crossed the quadrangle, under pressure of the
consciousness, which had suddenly forced itself upon him, that there
undoubtedly was just the least bit of awkwardness in this meeting
which he had insisted on bringing about; and feeling that the sheerest
nonsense which came into his head was just then preferable to silence,
he contrived to string it out, until they were both well into the
dining hall, where Sabina sat working, constant as Penelope, in the
deep bay of the painted glass window.

A fair picture this Lily, with her golden glory of hair, and the
dark-green square-cut bodice, with its soft cambric ruff about her
rounded white neck. Only one spark of animation in her eyes, one touch
of colour in her cheeks, lacked to render the picture faultless. Out of
all nature it seemed that so youthful a face should be as bloodless as
a ghost’s, or to touch realities, as the face of their guest. Had each
found Medusa in the other, that he and she stand like stone statues?
and only when at last she lays her cold hand in the one he holds
stretched towards her, comes a reaction; and simultaneously the hot
blood rushes over cheek and brow of both.

But next instant the crimsons fade, and the flash of life chills
down to deadly commonplace, which Sabina, having rehearsed the whole
livelong day, expresses to perfection.

“We are very glad to see you back in Strassburg—Master Dasipodius.”

“Thanks—Mistress Sabina.”

“Supper is quite ready, father. Shall it be served?”

“Ay, surely. Come, Master Dasipodius, make yourself at home again,”
said the hospitable Niklaus. “Where will you sit? In the old place?”
and he set a chair in Sabina’s neighbourhood.

“Nay, father,” objected she, “the sun glares right into one’s face so
there. Master Dasipodius will find it pleasanter beside you.”

“As Master Dasipodius pleases,” cheerily said Niklaus, fast recovering
his ease, and beginning to dissect the sturgeon in his best style, “so
long as we’re all comfortable.”

“As you please, Mistress Sabina,” bowed Dasipodius, and he went and sat
afar off.

“Mind the bones—Sabina,” cautioned Niklaus, directing apprehensive
glances at the plate of his guest. The difficulties in the way of blind
folks getting comfortably through life, were beginning to occur to
him very forcibly, but the blind man who could discover the hoop that
looked as round as round to be awry, was hardly like to run in much
peril of fish bones; not to speak of the warning being superfluous from
the fact that neither the Burgomaster’s daughter nor the Burgomaster’s
guest had the appetite of a fly.

“You’re eating nothing, Master Dasipodius,” said Niklaus, preparing for
a second onslaught.

“It’s delicious,” said Dasipodius.

“Ay; its her doing,” proudly returned his host, “the stuffing.”

“Mistress Sabina’s housewifery is a proverb,” bowed the mathematician.

“Eh, well, you certainly might have a worse little woman to manage your
domestic arrangements for you, than my——”

“Master Dasipodius has no wine, father,” interrupted the house mistress.

“A thousand pardons! Well, not a bit more fish? Then I hope you’re
saving yourself for this roedeer. Heh! how do you find it? Done to a
turn. Ha! professor, you’re a clever man, but not all your science can
reach to such work as this. It’s the women who rule the roast after
all, ha! ha! ha! But you haven’t set lips yet to my Burgundy, and I
want your opinion on it. Three years’ vintage. Just in its perfection
to my thinking. Hold it to the light. Clear as rubies, eh? and I’ll
warrant you’ll say you never saw——”

“Father!” murmured Sabina in distressful reproach.

“Bless my soul!” mumbled Niklaus, administering castigation to his
own head with the knuckles of his clenched hand. “I say I’ll warrant
you wouldn’t taste finer Burgundy if you were to sup with the Emperor
himself. Come, drink, professor, drink! I don’t hold far with Master
Luther and his fid-fads; but where he hangs on fast by the good old
doctrines, he has a trick of putting them well. Dost remember——

    “‘May you have wine and——’

How does it go, child?”

“I—forget,” fibbed Sabina, blushing rosy red; “and it is a silly rhyme,
and Master Luther was a heretic.”

“Ay, but he could bellow well, could that Wittenberg bull,” persisted
Niklaus, “and—and—what the plague comes next?”

“‘Maiden’s kiss,’” prompted Dasipodius.

“Ay, ay, to be sure.

    “‘May you have wine and maiden’s kiss;
    And your good nag, I wish him this
    Of corn, an endless litter,
    Who loves not women, wine, and song——’”

trolled on the Burgomaster, making up the deficiencies which for the
third or fourth time had occurred in his own glass, and replenishing
his guest’s—

                  “‘——Wine and song;
    That man’s a fool his whole life long,
    Says Doctor Martin Luther.’

Come, Sabina, little one, mind the advice of this doctor for once,
double-dyed king of the pestilent heretics though he was; and if you
won’t eat—is it the heat I wonder has stolen your appetite? For the
life of me, I can’t find it touches mine. I’m as hungry as that good
hunter must have been who brought down this roe deer. Sometimes I do
think, Master Dasipodius, that my girl’s appetite must have been made
over to me to take care of for her. She doesn’t eat enough to keep up
a sparrow’s strength; and something or other’s played the mischief——”

“Father!”

“The very mischief with her pink roses. Doesn’t it strike you——”

“Father!” pleaded the girl in an agonized whisper.

“Since last you saw her——”

“It is my misfortune,” coldly interrupted his guest, “to be unable to
judge of these things.”

“And,” murmured Sabina, “all that can be of no consequence to Master
Dasipodius.”

“I ask your pardon, Mistress von Steinbach; I am very sorry if anything
ails you,” said he.

“Nothing ails me, Master Dasipodius, and my father is mistaken—quite. I
was never better in my life. To-night is—a little—a little oppressive,
that’s all,” and rising abruptly from her seat, she went to the window,
and threw the pane wide open, then half seated, half leaning on its
broad oaken sill, she gazed down with eyes that saw as little as those
of the man near her, into the courtyard.

“Ay, do you mark now, professor?” said Niklaus with a half smile.
“Weather, weather, it’s always the weather with the women. Never was
such a scapegoat as your clerk of the weather. Your east winds and west
winds never come to them right, come how they may; and whether it’s a
woman’s dress don’t sit trim enough to her waist, or the pasty’s turned
out heavy, or her sweetheart’s changed his mind——”

“Father!”

“Or what not, it’s always the same tale. Ha! ha! there, never mind,
little maid, never mind, let your old father have his joke out,” and
seating himself in his arm-chair beside her, Niklaus took the girl’s
little clenched hand and stroked and patted it. “Ah well, well,” he
added, turning with a mock groan on his guest, “the best way’s never to
turn paterfamilias, Master Dasipodius, and then you’ll never——”

“Mistress von Steinbach,” interrupted Dasipodius, “promised to give us
some music.”

“Ay, so she did. Do you hear, Sabina? Sing, dear child, and let it
be that pretty little song I heard you humming to yourself all alone
last night in the twilight; only I chanced to be at the open casement
yonder. Shall it be that one, yes?”

“N—not that one, Väterle,” objected Sabina.

“Why not?” demanded Niklaus. “It was the daintiest ditty I think I
ever heard, though I don’t say I haven’t heard many a merrier one; but
there, sing it, child, I’ve taken a fancy for it. Come.”

She rose, and with tremulous hands took the virginal, a gorgeous
instrument resplendent with gilding and garnets and onyx stones; but
alas! it was shamefully dusty. “Half an inch thick,” as the Burgomaster
said, flecking and polishing it with his soft silk handkerchief.
“Tell’s a tale of not having been played upon, the saints know for how
long! So, that’s right. Now,” and settling himself comfortably, Niklaus
sat proudly watching the little fingers as they touched the low sad
prelude to her song. “How did it begin?”

“It didn’t begin, Väterle; and it didn’t end,” she said, faintly
smiling. “It’s only a scrap.”

“Begin in the middle then,” laughed Niklaus. “Something about a tear, I
recall that.”

    “And yet I know——”

sang she:

    “And yet I know one word of thine;
    One simple heart-warm tear of mine,
    Might bring us both the bliss divine.”

“Ay, ay, that’s it,” said Niklaus softly. “‘Bliss divine.’ Go on.”

    “That simple word can ne’er be said;
    That priceless tear may not be shed.
    Must two hearts die down chill and dead?

    Up through this keen fierce trial fire!
    Thine abnegation bears thee higher,
    Towards the height of thy desire.
    Oh love so lost and so profaned,
    Oh love through mightier love attained
    Pure love, true love, for ever gained!”

“A bit doleful, eh, professor?” said the Burgomaster; “but a brave
ditty too, to my thinking. And—what now, Hans?” he demanded of a
servant who just then entered.

“Two persons desiring to speak a word with you, Burgomaster, I was
bidden to say,” explained Hans.




CHAPTER LI.

“SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY.”


“Some sheep-heads from the Chancellery, I’ll dare swear, whose business
would have been the better for sleeping on,” testily said Niklaus, as
he rose and went out.

Sabina laid aside the virginal and crossed to her old seat in the
window.

“It is very sultry to-night,” she said.

“Very,” assented the mathematician.

“Do you think there is a storm brewing, Master Dasipodius?”

“I think it is possible, Mistress von Steinbach.”

“It quite looks like it.”

“It feels like it.”

“Everything is so still.”

“Death still.”

“Not a leaf stirring.”

“No, apparently.”

“And a good shower would be a great relief.”

“An infinite one.”

“It would——” remarked the hostess after another prolonged pause, “it
would clear the air so.”

“Yes.”

“I fancied I heard thunder just now.”

“I am sure of it.”

How long was the Burgomaster going to be? What a shame of people to
come worrying about stupid business things after sundown—Midsummer
sundown! That suggested another original observation.

“To-morrow will be the longest day,” she said.

“Yes. The twenty-first of June.”

“Yes. They are delightful, these long evenings.”

“Well, yes, in the country perhaps.”

“Ah, of course in the country, that’s what I mean.”

“In town, I fancy, winter is preferable.”

“Oh very, very much better,” acquiesced Sabina, letting her eyes travel
sadly round the room, while memory called back one winter’s night
when its polished wainscoted walls had shone in the ruddy fire glow;
and bitter cold as it had been without, how warm were hearts which
now seemed chill as moss that grows on dead men’s graves. “Very much
better. Summer in cities is so—so melancholy somehow.”

“You find it so?”

“Oh dear no. I thought you—oh no, not in the least.”

“You are too well occupied for that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?” she said vaguely.

“To be dull, or sad.”

“Oh yes.”

When would these Chancellery people take themselves off? She could hear
them chattering across at the open window there, fast as mill-clappers.

“You have your wheel and your tapestry,” continued Dasipodius.

“Oh yes. My wheel and my tapestry.”

“And you find it sufficient. Yes?”

“Oh quite.”

“And then your music?”

“Ah, of course my music,” animatedly assented the proprietress of the
dusty virginal.

“By the way, that song you sang just now, it is very sweet. Who is the
composer?”

“Master Dachstein.”

“Our Cathedral Orpheus. I guessed as much. There is no man living can
touch these wild sad harmonies like he. And the words, Mistress Sabina,
who wrote those?”

“They are Doctor Bruno Wolkenberg’s.”

“Ah, Doctor Wolkenberg’s. And he gave them to you?” enquired Dasipodius
in tones as chilly and as measured as though that little foot measure
he carried in his pocket had ruled them.

“No,” answered Sabina, with the faintest perceptible smile. “He gave
them to my Cousin Radegund, just as he often does; but she, just as she
generally does, crumpled them up in her way—you know her way, Master
Dasipodius, and throwing them aside, said they were rubbish.”

“And you?”

“I—well I—thought they were nice. And I picked them up, and asked if
I might have them. What was left, that is; for they were dreadfully
torn about and crumpled. And Radegund said why of course I might; and—I
can’t read writing much, but when one has taken a liking for anything,
one seems to grow—quite clever, as one may say,” she added with a
little laugh, “and I spelt it out, and learned it by heart. It’s a
great shame though!” she went on, some sudden wave of indignation
sweeping away her constraint.

“What is, Mistress Sabina?”

“That Radegund,” sturdily began she, “should—should,” she added,
faltering a little, “behave so.”

“And why?” as stoutly challenged he.

“Well, because—because it is.”

“Quite so. You mean that you think Wolkenberg loves your cousin?”

“Of course he does. Why, if it were needed, he would die for her.”

“It is well, is it not, to be loved so?”

But there was no answer. Only Mitte’s loud contented purring where she
lay curled up on the red cushion of the Burgomaster’s chair in the last
lingering sunrays, and the old clock’s wait-tic wait-tac broke the
stillness.

“You are silent, mistress?” continued Dasipodius. “You do not agree
that love unto death is a good thing?”

“I think there can be no other,” she murmured.

“No other kind of love?”

“No, if it will not stretch to that——”

“To death.”

“Ay, it is not worth the keeping.”

“Perhaps you are right—child.”

The girl’s heart bounded, and her cheek flushed at the old familiar
endearing term, sweet to her as yonder star just glimmering out among
the fretted gables.

“At least,” added Dasipodius, “you are consistent,” and if now his
tones had grown hard and metallic, still she found her comfort in his
words. She liked, for example, to be called consistent, and by him. It
would be something that, to tell Cousin Radegund, who was eternally
calling her the most ridiculously inconsistent atomy on the face of the
earth, that somebody—somebody who had sense and logic, and logarithms,
and cubes and squares, and all the rest of it at his fingers’ ends, had
judged her differently. The words which in all bitterness had emanated
from her old lover’s heart, carried to her ears no ring of their
sarcasm, bore no deeper significance than in so far as they regarded
Cousin Radegund and her mad folly in trifling away that deep, almost
idolatrous love of Bruno Wolkenberg’s.

“And so you think Mistress Radegund is wrong in despising Bruno’s
devotion,” challenged Dasipodius in tones of one who means to be
answered.

“If she—loves no one better, surely I do,” said the girl in a low
steady voice, and lifting her eyes to the blind attent ones near her.
“Yes, it is a great gift.”

“Dr. Bruno’s love?”

“Nay; I mean any real true love,” blushed she.

“Your theories are excellent, Mistress Sabina,” he said with cold
contempt.

“I am not sure,” contended Sabina, not ill-pleased, “that I quite know
what theories are.”

“Do you ever read the Scriptures?”

“Of course I do,” she answered, bridling a little under the implied
doubt. “Doesn’t everybody?”

“Maybe they do; as parrots talk. There is in the Gospels, do you
remember, the story of a man who bade his son go do a certain thing,
and he said, ‘I go, sir,’ and went not? You remember, mistress?”

“Of course I do,” she answered; “and the other, he didn’t want to go—at
least he said, ‘I go not,’ and still he went, and did what he had been
told.”

“Ay.”

“It is a nice story. Our Lord Christ’s always were, but——”

“Well?”

“I don’t quite see—what—it has to do with Cousin Radegund.”

“Nothing at all. But clearly that man, that first man had his theories.
You see now what they mean?”

“You explain things so beautifully clearly always, Master Dasipodius,”
said she almost happy.

“It is as wide apart from practice——”

“Of course. Oh yes,” acquiesced she, twiddling the tips of Mitte’s
ears. “I know that. Ever so wide.”

“And yet—oh Sabina—child——”

Again! No bitterness now; no echo of sarcasm in that cry; only a world
of longing, a burst of passionate entreaty, from the heart yearning to
gather to itself that lily flower.

And she? Her eyes attently upturned to the deep translucent sky, seemed
to be reflecting all its glad starlit glory; and her mobile lips,
half open, quivering for the sudden joy broken in on all her weary
desolation.

“Sabina! my——!”

“Nay, come in, niece, come in,” and lifting the arras, and stepping
in to one side, Burgomaster Niklaus entered, ushering in Radegund von
Steinbach and Otto. “What, all in the dark, child? Shoemaker’s holiday?
You should have had lights.”

“We,” stammered the young hostess, “we—were admiring the stars, and—and
forgot——”

“Forgot!” hissed Radegund in her ear, as she swept past her to a seat,
and under cover of some voluble observations from Otto. “Forgot of
course how many eyes there might be to see them! Always true to your
nature, selfish, cruel girl!”

“Oh Radegund!” cried Sabina in a voice wrung with the sharpness of some
sudden agony; and indeed Radegund as she spoke, had gripped with savage
force into her arm.

“An enjoyable occupation for your companion, star-gazing!” she added
with a scornful laugh; “and a whole half-hour too,” she continued,
while in the light of the now kindled lamp, her dark eyes scrutinized
the faces of Sabina and Dasipodius, “a whole half-hour of it!”

“Oh no, indeed,” pleaded Sabina, “my father hasn’t been gone ten
minutes.”

“We came in,” returned the relentless Radegund, “as the clocks were
striking eight; and look now what your own says.”

“Twenty minutes to nine,” said Niklaus, glancing proudly at his quaint
timekeeper with its ever-goggling eyes and monotonous tic-tac, “by the
honestest clock in Strassburg; not forgetting your own that is to be,
Master Dasipodius.”

Can it be possible that Sabina, poor child, has all this time been
reckoning by Cupid’s chronometer, whose hours are seconds? “Well, well,
what does it matter o’ summer nights like these? Sit you down, niece,
and rest a bit; and Sabina here will sing us the song she was over when
you came.”

“Did we interrupt your music, child?” asked Radegund; “what was it?”

“Just a little love ditty, niece, nothing more; but as pretty a
trifle——”

“Then begin it again,” said Radegund.

“Yes, do, Cousin Sabina,” yawned Otto; “there’s a dear child.”

“No, I can’t; no, Otto, not to-night,” pleaded the girl in low wearied
tones; and Niklaus, looking at the face grown so pale and lifeless
again, urged her no more.

“Oh but I say, Sabina,” persisted Otto, whom his sister, on the plea
of having business with the goldsmith concerning some elaborate inlaid
framework for her new picture, had dragged out, just as he was going to
bed, “do; we want waking up a bit.”

“No, Otto.”

“Leave her alone,” said Niklaus, “you can’t make little birds sing that
won’t; you ought to know that by this time.”

This _jeu d’esprit_ of the Burgomaster’s seemed, hopelessly to quench
the smouldering conversation; and Radegund rose to go. “Come,” she
said, shaking the semi-somnolent Otto by the arm, “let us go home.”

“We go the same way,” said Dasipodius, who had also risen.

“Nay,” remonstrated Niklaus; “so early yet! The sparrows are hardly
abed.”

“I have to be up as soon as they, Burgomaster,” replied the
mathematician. “The Horologe——”

“Oh, ay, the Horologe, the Horologe, as you please then, Herr
Professor,” laughed Niklaus, giving him a gentle push; “if every swain
was as true to his mistress as you are to the Horologe, the ladies
would have nothing to complain of. The body of you may be here, but
heart and soul of you’s in a certain pitch-dark wooden case we wot of.
Come, dear child, bid the professor good-night, and let him go.”

The girl silently laid her cold hand in the departing guest’s, so chill
it was that it sent a shiver through him for all that summer night
heat. “Farewell, Mistress Sabina,” he said.

“_Auf wiedersehn._ Till we meet again. Good night, niece, sleep well,
nephew”; and patting the blinking, yawning Otto on the back, the
Burgomaster accompanied the trio to the postern; then carefully bolting
it, he proceeded to take his nightly patrol of the premises. That done,
he returned to the dining hall.

Elbows resting on the table, her chin in the palms of her hands, Sabina
sat, gazing into the lamp’s dull flame. One by one the big tears
were coursing unheeded down her cheeks, and fell heavily on the dark
polished oak table. In spite of her bravest efforts, they had welled up
as the comparison forced itself upon her, between that January night,
when the snow had lain half a yard deep outside, and within the fire
had crackled and danced so cheerily there upon the hearth, all dark
and sepulchral-looking now, with its brass dogs idly grinning. Each
incident of that time, and of this just past, her memory recalled.
How different! Such difference they had, as life and death can show.
Then, the transfiguring light of love overspreading that face, which
she never knew whether to call more grand, or beautiful; only this
she remembered of it now, how earnestly, how solicitously it had bent
over her, and ah, sweet angels! the caress of those hands that would
not let hers go! To-night that face, grand and beautiful indeed, nay,
if it could be so, nobler still; but alas, so cold, and chill as hewn
marble itself! like some sculptured monumental crusader away there in
the cathedral shadows; and though once again they had been face to
face, had spoken together, and he? well, kindly and gently enough, what
hollow empty words! More than half of them a mere waste, such as two
people will interchange who have nothing in common.

It was strange too, marvellously strange, how unlike in their
unlikeness were those two evenings of her young life. Each time, for
example, Dasipodius had had his little story to tell her; but that one
he had told to-night, although, heaven forgive her, it was the dear
Christ’s own, was, though she could not tell why, harsh and bitter
sounding; while that story of the little mouse—and the saints only know
where he had got it from!—was a nice odd fairy-tale sort of thing; and
though indeed she had pouted and demurred to its pointless ending,
it had flowed so sweetly and softly from his lips, that she had felt
herself in a veritable dreamland of all that was brightest and gladdest
and best. And—and then she shivered, and her eyes stared fixedly into
the flame of the lamp—then the appearance of Radegund upon the scene!
Well, but what of that? Who more welcome in her uncle’s house, when she
chose to come, than Radegund; but of course Radegund being so clever,
and she herself just the most ordinarily gifted little woman from an
intellectual point of view, there could be no close friendship between
them, still she had always striven to make things pleasant for her
cousin, when she did vouchsafe her presence there. All the same, it
did seem hard, that just to-night of all nights—ah heaven! as she had
stood upon the threshold there, not half-an-hour since, what sweet word
was that which had passed his lips. His! Something in his utterance
of it had brought all the memory of his old infinite tenderness to
her sore heart, and then—Cousin Radegund had looked in! and tenfold
more cruelly than before had fallen the old darkness and desolation,
because she misdoubted her own perceptions; and whether it was not the
fainting fevered longing for one such kind poor echo of all those sweet
endearing epithets he used to lavish upon her, which had not created a
delirium, and deceived her own sense of hearing? Ay, yes, it was all a
dream, a blessed, cruel, sweet, deluding dream, and—

“Come, dear child! cheer thee!” So spoke Niklaus, returning from seeing
his guests depart. “’Tis all over now, and tell me, was it not best
so? Oh, ah, trust old fathers for seeing how best to steer the ship.
Say, need there be any more breaking of my little bird’s heart over
scattered crumbs? Now you’ve seen for yourself that Master Dasipodius
has forgot all about it, hey? and hasn’t half a thought to spare for
you, or any other fair maid, from that wooden sweetheart of his. See
now, see these foolish tears have wept the lamp out; and we should be
all in the dark, if it weren’t for the stars. Are they to be my little
lady’s candles, yes? Good-night then, dear love, good-night. Sweet
dreams!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile the Burgomaster’s trio of guests turned homewards together.
At the corner of the Domplatz, the mathematician, pausing, bade the
other two good-night.

“My blind eyes,” he added, “make me a poor squire, Mistress von
Steinbach; and Otto is with you. Don’t be late in the morning,” he
continued, turning to him. “Those bells are not fixed yet, recollect.”

“I say, Radegund,” said Otto, as they crossed the Platz together alone,
“he’s put out about something. What is it?”

“Am I his conscience keeper?” she asked in chilly tones.

“Now, now, you’re always so confoundedly heavy down upon a fellow
directly he makes a little remark. I’m not his confessor any more than
you are, my dear, but I think I know what vexed him.”

“Well?”

“You.”

“I?”

“Yes,” and Otto nodded sapiently. “I don’t think he wanted you—us round
there; and I don’t think Cousin Sabina did neither, for the matter of
that.”

“Nor Uncle von Steinbach neither, eh?” mimicked Radegund. “Speak for
yourself, dear brother, and remember that ladies are always welcome
everywhere and anywhere.”

“Oh, are they!” grunted the gallant creature. “It’s the fashion to say
so; but nine times out of ten they’re just a nuisance.”

“Supposing now,” continued his sister, “that it was your company, my
dear, which could have been spared?”

“Well,” sparred he, “whose fault was it, I’d like to know, that I went?”

“The Horologe must be attended to.”

“Oh, hang it!” groaned Otto. “As if I didn’t know that! But to go
bothering about it just as one’s had one’s supper. If you want to bring
on indigestion, that’s the way to do it; and you know what Wolkenberg
said about me. Oh you may laugh, but if I’d been Dasipodius——”

“Was it my fault, pray, that he was there?”

“No,” said Otto. “I didn’t say it was, Radegund, and——”

“Well?”

“I don’t think it was.”

“Wasn’t it the Burgomaster I went to see?” she challenged, stamping her
foot with impatience. “Speak.”

“Oh, ah, well you know,” yawned he.

“Then don’t talk nonsense; and go to bed, for pity’s sake. Perhaps
you’ll find your wits there. When you’re sleepy, an idiot’s nothing to
you!”




CHAPTER LII.

“MORE FAVOUR AND PREJUDICE.”


Words lightly spoken, the old aphorism has it, sometimes touch earnest;
and the saying was justified very fairly of itself to Otto von
Steinbach. Nothing, as far as he could see, was more likely than for
that fetish of a Horologe to be driving him mad before it was fairly
fixed in its place.

Persistently as some monstrous shadow the thing haunted his life. No
sooner had he shifted the burden of it from his own shoulders, than it
took up another mode of aggression, and one wholly unexpected, although
not novel, in so far as Syndic Tobias Hackernagel was concerned in it.

Recent events might have led the superficial observer to infer
that perhaps the Syndic had also had enough and to spare of the
Horologe; but that was not to know the real Tobias Hackernagel—the
Irrepressible. Easier to stamp out the life of a poisonous worm than
to efface his individuality. Of buoyant elastic temperament, as his
sincerest admirers in whose foremost ranks stood Syndic Hackernagel,
called him, imperviously vain and impudent, as another and increasing
section of the community held him to be, still he would not hide
from himself that that day’s work at the Chancellery had perilously
threatened his social extinguishing. His attempts, failing either to
ruin or everlastingly to vilify Dasipodius, had recoiled on himself,
and stultified him in the sight of the whole city. If he still
outwardly retained his old status, he was secretly conscious that he
owed that to the generosity of Dasipodius, who had pleaded with the
powers that were on his behalf; and he knew that to him also he was
indebted for the hushing up of proceedings against him.

Coals of fire all these, which, gladly as he accepted them, seared
his little soul to the quick; and only served to remind him of what
was irretrievably lost. Only the scantiest shadow now of all those
greetings in the market-place, and bowings down, which the crowd so
dearly loves to lavish on a man who can talk by the yard, and talk
well, as words go. There are limits even to this sort of homage. While
he had observed the golden rule with some show at least of decency,
his neighbours, in consideration of his tongue’s attributes, were
willing to fool him to the top of his bent, and amiably fell in with
his idea of being of a clay superior to their’s; but the cord can be
stretched too far, and the people, not a hoodwinked, lynch-law loving
proletariat, but a peaceable orderly community, with some reverence for
fair dealing, and a conviction, somewhat tardily arrived at perhaps,
that this man had been leading them by the nose, turned the tide of his
popularity to the lowest ebb, and the salvos and Io pæans were his no
more, and great had been the fall of Tobias Hackernagel.

He had only to put his head outside his own door to come in contact
with the unpalatable truth. Differ and harry and snarl even to
blood-shedding as they might, over Justification, and Predestination,
and Election, and Grace, and Original Sin, as these Catholic and
Calvinist, and Lutheran, and Servetian, and Zwinglian Strassburgers
might, at least pretty nearly all had come to be of one mind concerning
Tobias Hackernagel’s moral wrong against themselves and Dasipodius.
Only the handful best able to pronounce his own particular Anabaptist
Shibboleth, still held to his immaculacy; just as their creed
sanctioned any other extravagance and outrage against laws divine and
human. But Anabaptism was not just then in the ascendant in Strassburg;
it had been eating its own head off, its popularity was on the wane,
and many of the saints had fallen away. Even Hackernagel, staff and
anchor of the sect, had come under suspicion of unsoundness; just as,
generations later, the very chiefs of the Reign of Terror came to be
held suspects; and in his hour of greatest need his supporters had
dwindled to an insignificant minority, chiefly by reason of doubt
touching his absolute faith in that doctrine which enunciates that
a community of goods is indispensable to a soul’s salvation. Some,
chiefly the leaner and hungrier of the elect, went so far as to wait
upon him, and to represent to him this blessed truth in all its
undisguised purity; and to admonish him that his failing to recognise
its exceeding loveliness had brought this judgment upon him; and when
he kicked them out of his luxurious house for their pious pains, they,
fired with zeal for returning evil with good, fell upon their knees
in the street before his door, and in a loud voice besought that the
scales might be torn from his eyes, and that he should be brought to a
practical recognition of the wondrous doctrine.

In fairness, however, it must be acknowledged that Tobias had never
heartily subscribed it. If his co-religionists chose to run naked
about the woods like forked radishes, and grub for roots like pigs to
feed themselves, that was not his own especial taste; he preferred
scarlet and fine linen, and a carnivorous diet, and had spoken on his
abhorrence of fanaticism on such points as savouring of accidental
force of circumstance outside and beneath the consideration of the
true spiritual believer. And so while outwardly conforming, the thing
Tobias Hackernagel called his heart had grown somewhat estranged from
his sect, which, as he said, pushed matters to lamentably unwarrantable
length; and that there were delicate distinctions to be drawn between
what you preach and what you practise.

“Yes, I see,” one day said Otto, to whom he would frequently enlarge on
the subtle question. “You mean that what is sauce for the gander, is
not always necessarily sauce for the goose.”

“I lent myself to no such vulgar comparison,” indignantly returned
Tobias. “Sometimes, do you know, Otto von Steinbach, I look at you——”

Otto nodded animatedly, he had noticed the fact, until its recurrence
had grown almost unpleasant; and he was glad to contemplate some
possibility of its explanation. “And I confess,” went on his future
father-in-law, “that I frequently find myself transfixed with
amazement, not to say consternation and perplexity, at the strange
vagaries of nature which has implanted in the bosom of a scion of such
an illustrious house as the von Steinbachs unquestionably is——”

“Oh yes,” said Otto, elevating his head, “it’s all that. No mistake
about it.”

“You interrupt me,” said the Syndic, waving him to silence. “I was
observing that nature which has implanted in the bosom of a scion of
the illustrious race of von Steinbach, such an inordinate inclination
to indulge in inelegant, inept, and indecorous inanities. I am
not making these observations in a fault-finding spirit,” went on
Hackernagel in honey-sweet accents; “we are none of us perfect, and I
am not, you understand——”

“Oh no——”

“You interrupt; I repeat that I am in no way desirous of exposing your
weaknesses, I would simply exhort you to evince more saliently the
features of the race from which you are sprung, show some marks of the
high breeding for which it is renowned. I would have him who is to be
so intimately connected with me——”

“Did you get me here to tell me all this?” asked the young man, who
had foregone a pleasant evening game at quoits in a meadow out beyond
the ramparts, in compliance with the expressed wish of Hackernagel to
have a few moments’ conversation with him that evening; and now the
conversation threatened that didactic turn which he hated from the
bottom of his soul. “Is this what you wanted to chat about you said,
you know?”

“Not precisely,” said Tobias, “the opportunity simply suggested a word
in season.”

“H’m,” said Otto, drumming his well-shaped fingers on the window-panes,
while he gazed regretfully at a passing group on their way to the
quoit ground, “but about what you wanted to say to me? Perhaps you are
waiting though for Gretchen. Where is she?”

“Curb your ardour, my young friend,” adjured the fond father with an
indulgent smile.

“Ardour! Here I’ve been kicking my heels more than half-an-hour,
and I’ve only just asked where she may be. There never was such a
fish-blooded girl as she is. Doesn’t hurry herself a scrap to come
downstairs, though she must know I’m here,” he grumbled on, heartily
wishing himself somewhere else, “as well as I do.”

“No,” said Tobias, “I did not tell her. She did not know you were
coming.”

“Then,” returned Otto, brightening a little, “I’ll go and find her.”

“Stay,” said the Syndic, laying his hand on his arm as he moved towards
the door. “Gently, my good fellow, you cannot see Gretchen to-night.
She is—indisposed.”

“Why, her face was red enough this morning,” said Otto in some
surprise, “when I met her near the market. What’s the matter with her?”

“A—nothing whatever to be alarmed about,” said Tobias soothingly. “A
sudden—headache, a cold, a fit of—well, can I tell?”

“A hole in her temper?” grunted Otto, soured by the prospect of a
_tête-à-tête_ with Tobias.

“Nay, fie for shame,” returned Hackernagel, playfully shaking his
forefinger. “She appeared to be—not quite herself, and I recommended a
night’s rest. She’s in bed and asleep by this time, I make no doubt,
and will be perfectly recovered to-morrow.”

“Ah,” said Otto, taking his cap from the table, and with a glance at
the door, “then I’ll go, and come again to-morrow, shall I?”

“Go,” sighed Hackernagel, “go to your amusements. Sometimes in the
solitude of the night hours I ask myself whether I do well to entrust
child of mine to one of an idolatrous and unregenerate race. I ask
myself I say, can the heart of one who loves such vain pastimes, such
time-triflers as quoits or——”

“It’s a thundering good game,” said Otto, “if you’ve got anything of an
arm.”

“Cannot youth spend its days more profitably?”

“Oh well, you know, we’ve talked that over before.”

“We have,” assented Hackernagel.

“And if that’s all—if you’ve nothing else, I mean if you’ve nothing so
very particular”—and Otto cast another longing look at the door.

“On the contrary,” said Tobias, smiling meekly; “it is simply that I
am waiting my turn to speak; my chance of rendering myself audible.
But it is as well perhaps as it is; you have afforded me the more
opportunity for reflection, and perhaps what I would have said had best
be left unsaid”; and with another deep sigh Tobias sank into a chair.

“Is it amusing?” asked Otto, laying down his cap again, and seating
himself on the edge of the table close beside the Syndic, who made no
answer, but sat rubbing his stubbly little chin.

“It is merely one of my ideas,” he replied at last. Otto’s face fell.
“One of my ideas,” reiterated Tobias; “how shall I preface it?”

“Don’t; come to the point at once.”

“The point? Ah, well, it’s a many-sided one, so to speak,” said Tobias
reflectively; “you, as a mathematician——”

“Never mind about that,” interrupted Otto.

“As a mathematician may feel disposed——”

“If you’re going to begin to talk about whether a point’s got any
sides,” said Otto with a ghastly smile, “Dasipodius is your man.”

The Syndic’s brow darkened, and his lean hand shook uncontrollably
as he lifted it almost threateningly. “He and I differ,” he said,
feigning a carelessness, “too fundamentally in our systems of
philosophical enquiry for me to care to enter upon any disquisition
with him, of whatsoever nature. And I should have imagined, Otto von
Steinbach, that instinctive delicacy on the part of one who is soon to
find himself allied so nearly with myself, would have for ever banished
from that individual’s lips all reference to a name which cannot but
sound offensive in the ears of both myself and you.”

“If you find it so, Master Hackernagel,” rejoined Otto, reddening a
little, “why then—you do, you know; but just you be content to speak
only for yourself. For my part I’ve no fault to find with Dasipodius;
and if I choose to say his name, why, I might say a worse, there!” And
thrusting his hands into his pockets, Otto sat staring fixedly before
him, with an unwonted determination written deep into every feature of
his face.

“You are always so impetuous, my young friend, so excitable; that is
your besetting—ahem—defect, and——”

“You were going to tell me something amusing.”

“Your last observation inclines me to a doubt whether you will reap
the amusement I anticipated,” said the Syndic, setting hard his two
rows of long yellow teeth like some snarling wolf, “if you have grown
so fond of Dasipodius all of a sudden——”

“Did I say that?”

“If you like seeing him ride the high horse over you, if you enjoy
being trampled on and made a laughing-stock of, if your ears delight in
such music as I heard howled after you as you turned the corner of this
very street, half an hour ago: ‘There goes our fine Horologier! ya—ah!’”

The young man winced and reddened painfully. Such sounds had indeed
grown cruelly familiar to him.

“‘Ya—ah! cock-a-doodle doo! a heller for stick-in-the-mud Steinbach!
ya—a—ah!’”

“For Heaven’s sake!” writhed Otto.

“‘A fine sort of fellow he is,’” mocked on the merciless Hackernagel,
“‘eh, neighbour Hans? Don’t know how many twice twelve make yet,
ya—ah!’” and the Syndic snapped his fingers in Otto’s face.

“That,” said the young fellow, paling and quivering, but with a
certain cool sturdy endurance Tobias was hardly prepared for, “is not
Dasipodius’ fault. If anybody’s to blame, it’s——”

He stopped abruptly; to utter the word on his tongue’s tip would have
set irrevocable enmity between them.

“Not his fault?” furiously hissed Hackernagel; “not his?”

“No; he has never uttered a word of—well, what he might have said,
don’t you know.”

“Oh! he’s a saint of saints, isn’t he?” savagely sneered the Syndic.
“Not the idolatrous bread on your mass-tables is more bowed down
to now than this Dasipodius. He can do no wrong, this infallible
figure-machine, can he? The men, one and all of them, shout his praises
through the very streets; the women love the ground his proud feet
tread!”

“Some may,” said Otto qualifyingly.

“Ho!” sneered Tobias, “well, only look at home. There’s Mistress
Radegund, the most talented woman in Strassburg, and——”

“And my sister,” said Otto; “and we’ll leave her name alone if it’s all
the same to you.”

“Oh, as you please,” jauntily replied the Syndic. “I alluded to it
simply as an instance of the court which he gets paid him.”

“Gets paid him, yes,” echoed Otto; “he doesn’t seek it anyhow. It
comes; I don’t know how he manages it,” he continued with a rueful
sigh, “but it comes.”

“Of course it does. Your idols, your saints never do speak, do they?
They leave that to their high priests; and he’s got his. That fellow
Habrecht.”




CHAPTER LIII.

“ON THE GOOD FAITH OF SYNDIC HACKERNAGEL.”


“But,” continued Hackernagel, watching with eager scrutiny the cloud
gathering deeper and deeper on Otto’s face, “I must be careful what I
say of course. You and Master Habrecht are doubtless as friendly as a
pair of love-birds in one cage.”

“No,” broke forth Otto, “that we are not. He was always an awful
nuisance, Habrecht, and always will be. Obstinate as a pig, you know,
when he’s got a fancy into his head of how a thing’s to be done; just
square and square that way it must be, and no other.”

“Just so,” said Tobias sympathetically; “and—tells you you’re a fool if
you don’t obey orders to a hair’s breadth, yes?”

“Well, he doesn’t stop to pick his words,” acknowledged Otto.

“No,” said Tobias, “I know Isaac Habrecht, and I owe him—that is, but
for my, humanly speaking, strangely weak proneness to forgive injuries,
I should owe him a grudge or two. But good for evil, my dear Otto,
always good for evil.”

“Yes,” sighed Otto, “and after all Habrecht’s bark is worse than his
bite. I do think that.”

“You defend his tyranny then?” challenged Tobias.

“No I don’t.”

“You do, my good fellow; you have your points, but you’ve no more
spirit than a sheep. I suppose,” he added with a cynical sneer, “it was
all given to that sister of yours.”

“No such thing!” flashed Otto; “I’ve—I’ve a tremendous spirit. Why, I’d
knock you down as soon as look at you; that is, you know, if I wanted.”

“And yet,” contended Hackernagel, in compassionately emotional tones,
“you sit calmly down and accept any abuse this fellow chooses to throw
at you, and look as if you liked it. Perhaps you do.”

“No I don’t,” fervently protested Otto.

“Then let him know that. It’s only your duty; a duty you owe, if not to
yourself, to the whole studio he despotises over.”

“Think so?” ruminatingly said Otto.

“They’d thank you for it, I’m convinced.”

“But how? How’s it to be done? that’s the point. You don’t know what a
tough-hide he is; words don’t make as much impression on him as a knife
does on a tortoise’s back. You may spend all the sharpest wits you’ve
got and——”

“Yes,” nodded Tobias, “that is perfectly true, I’m sure. It happened to
come under my own observation not long since, this odd insensibility
of his to even the most brilliant kind of wit. He got himself invited
to a public supper at our Hall, Fishmonger’s Hall; and I, being senior
warden, was called upon to make a speech, and I made it; one of the
most brilliant emanations, I distinctly remember it was, that perhaps
ever left my lips. An absolute incrustation of my keenest, neatest,
most incisive style. And he never so much as smiled once, I give you my
honour, not once.”

“Ah,” said Otto, “I’m not surprised.”

“Never moved so much as a muscle; and he ought to smart for it. I mean
for that tyranny he exercises over you.”

“Oh! ah! but how? If one could just give him a touch up or two
without—without——”

“Well?” eagerly demanded Tobias.

“Well, you know, without doing him any real harm, why—I’m your man.”

“You’d enjoy it?—ho! ho! ho!—you’d enjoy it?”

“See if I wouldn’t, hare’s heart though I am, hey—ha! ha! ha!”

“I’ll—ha! ha! ha! Shall I,” said Tobias, when his hilarity subsided
sufficiently for him to speak, “give you an idea or two? You haven’t
any of your own?”

“Not the ghost of one,” grinned Otto, tickled by the Anabaptist’s
outburst of laughter; a thing so rare that he had never been the
fortunate witness of it.

“Listen then,” went on Tobias. “Habrecht, you say, is thick-skinned.”

“As a rhinoceros.”

“But he’s got his vulnerable point, ha! ha! every bit as much as ever
that Nibelung fellow, what was his name?”

“I forget, never mind,” hurriedly said Otto; “it doesn’t matter. And
this—tender point?”

“Vulnerable was my term,” corrected Hackernagel with dignity.

“Vulnerable point then?”

“Is Kaspar Habrecht, his young brother.”

“The devil!”

“Hush! my good dear young friend,” besought the scandalised Tobias. “Oh
hush, hush.”

“Thunderweather! you’ve hit it,” ecstatically shouted Otto.

“Hey!” and Tobias’ green eyes glittered with yellow light, as he twined
his snaky fingers gleefully about. “Yes, I flatter myself. Now this
young—prodigy and you are not exactly bosom friends?”

“No,” replied Otto. “There’s no particular harm in the fellow, except
that he’s a genius. At least Dasipodius says he is; and I——”

“You’ve nothing in common with him?”

“Yes, that’s it. How can I have? He’s the dreamiest, moonstruckest,
fancifullest creature anybody ever saw, and he’s always pottering after
Dasipodius. Oh it’s—it’s—I don’t know what it is. Favour and prejudice
all round, that’s what it is.”

“And lamentably ill directed. To encourage this sort of nack of
cutting and chopping things out of wood, that the boy has. What is it,
logically regarded, but the most barefaced encouragement of idolatry.”

“Oh, I don’t see that,” interrupted the unreformed Otto. “No, I can’t
see that. I only should like to—to——”

“Which,” went on Tobias unheeding, and meekly folding his palms, “it is
our mission, at any cost—at any cost, I say, to stamp out; and my daily
supplication is that a day will dawn for you when you will be able to——”

“Kick him,” said Otto, starting from the reverie into which he had
fallen. “I should dearly like to get a chance of it.”

“Just so,” acquiesced Tobias, “I thought as much. But gently, these
desires of the flesh must be curbed. The chastening which it comes to
be ours to inflict, must be done in a spirit of christian love. If we
desire to see pride humbled, still we wish our enemy well.”

“He’s not exactly my enemy, he’s only——”

“Not your friend, you say. I repeat then, if you wish him well——”

“But I don’t,” interrupted Otto with sulky energy.

“Didn’t you say just now you wished to kick him?” asked the Syndic,
making one more desperate effort to fire this very damp touchwood into
a blaze.

“Oh yes, I shouldn’t mind,” lazily laughed Otto.

“Figuratively, of course?”

“Eh?”

“A figurative kick.”

“No,” said Otto, lifting one of his handsome feet and contemplating its
tip.

“My friend, you’re wrong,” said Tobias, following the direction of his
eyes. “You’d miss the express aim you had in view.”

“Should I,” laughed Otto out of his conscious supremacy in athletics.
“We’d see about that.”

“Yes. Listen to me; there are those, and if I mistake not, this young
Habrecht is one, on whom spiritual castigation would approve itself far
more salutarily than the severest corporal chastising. Not on the vile
body, believe me, of this young upstart should your experiment be made,
but on the subjective and tangible results and creations of his mental
and intellectual conception. You follow me?”

Otto intimated that he was doing his best.

“From the personal observation which I have been at some pains to make,
I am disposed to argue that this could not be more thoroughly and
satisfactorily effected than by—in brief—by reducing to silence that
graven image, that absurd wooden fowl on the summit of the right-hand
tower of the new Horologe.”

“Smash the cock!” gasped Otto, when at last articulation came, his
curly locks stiffening and bristling as though stirred by an electric
current, his eyes extended to their utmost capacity.

“I said damage, not——”

“Smash the cock! Who is to flap his two wings, and open his beak and
screech cock-a-doodle! Smash——”

“Damage,” reiterated Tobias, “is not——”

“Smash!” and then breathless, his eyes still transfixing the Syndic
with a stare of horror, Otto rose, and sank again into the nearest
chair.

“Fool!” hissed Hackernagel. “Was ever such an idiot as you are? Listen
now, I mean no more than to silence the abominable thing’s profane
screechings—ha! ha! ha!—a little, just a little sooner than—look,”
and touching Otto on the shoulder, Hackernagel pointed up to the
Cathedral’s fair fretted spire, crimson glowing in the rays of the
setting sun. “When yonder harlot of Babylon shall be cleansed from her
impurities, when her rottenness and corruption shall be washed away,
and she stands forth in her nakedness, shorn of all the pomps and
vanities which superstition, and what her papist lovers in their blind
worship of her call the beauty of holiness, and the hour is at hand
when she shall be delivered unto us——”

“You!” gasped Otto.

“Ay, us. Us, the Lord’s Elect; the company of His chosen Saints, drawn
from Gehenna fires, where in His own blessed time all but we shall lie
howling. Do you think then, I say, that we are likely to be tolerating
a crowing cock within that sanctuary’s walls?”

“Oh, come now.”

“When the foul idols of the groves of Antichrist shall be cast
headlong—when the high places shall be cut off—when Bell boweth down,
and Nebo stoopeth—when the priests of Baal shall no more lift up
their hands in the tabernacle of the Lord, then surely as darkness
follows—that is, I mean as light follows darkness, shall the voice of
this profane bird be no more heard crying aloud——”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo! cock-a-doodle-doo!” shrieked Otto, startled by the
mental picture Hackernagel’s words had conjured to him of the poor
bird protesting for dear existence under such iconoclastic conditions;
and then he broke into an hysterical screech of laughter, so wild and
weird, that the startled Tobias paused and stared at him in speechless
amazement.

“I fail to see,” he said when he could make his voice heard, “how any
remark I may have made, can be provocative of such—ahem—unseemly mirth.”

“Why,” and Otto broke forth afresh, “it’s the best joke I’ve heard for
ever so long.”

“I’m not accustomed, I believe,” said Tobias, paling with rage, “to
indulge in empty and foolish jestings.”

“Not a joke?” said Otto subsiding. “What is it then?”

“And I was never farther from one in my life, than I am at this
moment,” sulkily continued Tobias. “Listen to me you—do pay attention,
my good Otto, do be serious. Your sister Radegund has a key to the
little door of the Thomas’ Chapel, has she not?”

“Of the Saint Thomas’ Chapel. Well, and what if she has?”

“My good fellow, listen. You as her brother—nothing now would be
easier than for you, I make no doubt, to—to get possession of that key
for an hour or two; say only one little half-hour even.”

“What to do, Master Hackernagel?”

“Say no more than ten minutes, if there’s much difficulty about it.”

“What to do?” reiterated Otto.

“Do?” shiftily laughed Tobias. “Haven’t I said it half-a-dozen times.
Wrench that bird’s head off.”

“And the cock,” said Otto, with a speculation in his eyes fixed on
Hackernagel’s retreating skull, curiously suggestive of getting his
hand in, “the cock is part of the Horologe.”

“Exactly,” cheerfully assented Tobias.

“If I thought you were serious, Tobias Hackernagel.”

“Why, such an act would exalt you into the ranks of the saints elect.”

“Then hang me if I——”

“You will! you will!” cried the Syndic, craning forth his lean neck.

“Will I? What do you think I’m made of? Look you here now, if I thought
you so much as dreamed of laying a finger—you mark?”

Hackernagel’s smile dwindled to an uneasy twitching of his thin lips.

“A finger on Master Dasipodius’ Horologe—”

“May it be accursed, I say,” hissed Hackernagel through his clenched
teeth; “and may he be double d——”

Beneath the grip of Otto von Steinbach’s iron-strong fingers, the evil
word lies strangled at its birth-throes in Hackernagel’s throat. The
shrivelled little abortion, the mockery of God’s own image, is a mere
scarecrow stick in the hands of the young athlete, and with eyeballs
starting from their sockets, and Otto’s knee pinning him to the ground,
Hackernagel lies prone, vainly gasping to articulate one word for mercy.

“Now!” shouted Otto, “what do you say?”

“Otto! for dear heaven’s pity—Otto!” and a woman’s hand, small,
perfectly shaped, white as snow-drift, its owner’s one indisputable
beauty, grapples with the purple red of Otto’s straining fingers.
Feeble as is the actual physical strength of those two hands by
comparison with his, the suddenness of the action, or possibly
something of that mysterious sense of compassion it is the prerogative
of a true woman’s touch to exercise, loosens Otto’s clutch; “Otto,
leave hold! would you murder him?”

“I might do worse,” muttered the young man through his set white teeth,
glaring down on his prostrate victim. “Well, take your life then,
coward! miserable, sordid Anabaptist reptile that you are!”

“Lift—your knee,” gurgled the Syndic, “dear Otto—oh!”

“All in good time. Certainly, dear Master Tobias,” mocked his
vanquisher; “when first you have made me one promise. Do you hear? do
you hear?” for the exhausted Tobias has closed his eyes.

“Anything, anything,” he gasps, “if only, Gr—Gr—Gretchen, darling, if
he—would just move the l—least—oh——”

And Gretchen turns her appealing eyes on Otto; but the young man feigns
not to see.

“If I could, ugh—ugh—” groans the unhappy wretch, “co—could speak!”

“You must contrive to do that as you are,” growls Otto. “Or if you
like it better,” and dragging Hackernagel by the combined leverage of
a wrench and a kick to his knees, and holding him gripped fast in that
position by the nape of his neck with one hand, he drags with the
other at a slender silver chain hanging round his own neck, and draws
forth from the breast of his doublet a small exquisitely chased silver
gilt crucifix: “Now!” he cries, thrusting it within a couple of inches
of Hackernagel’s face, “swear!”

A loathing horror overspreads the Syndic’s livid terror-stricken
features, and his head sways heavily from side to side; while his
dulled eyes, almost hidden beneath their swollen lids, blink hither and
thither, as though to elude the sight of the sacred token which von
Steinbach holds persistently before him. “Swear,” continues he, “swear
that, by word nor deed, by your own hand, nor by any other means, you
will not harm Master Dasipodius’ Horologe, now or ever. Swear!”

Hackernagel maintains a sullen silence.

“Swear!” shouts Otto, shaking him like a sack of chaff. “By this Rood,
as you hope for mercy at the Great Judgment. Swear—by this Rood. Dost
hear?”

One instant more of dead silence, during which the slightly relaxed
grip upon his throat grows tenser, and then the bluish-white eyelids
slowly open, and like a lurid lightning flash across a leaden sky a
gleam of cunning intelligence lights up the Syndic’s ghastly face and
dull green eyes, as for one instant, one brief instant he turns them on
the figure of the Crucified Christ. “By this—Rood then,” and a hideous
mockery of a smile contorts his livid and swollen lips, “I swear.”

“Good,” said Otto, with a look at his victim dashed with a touch of
curiosity which, however, was lost in a smile of scornful triumph, and
releasing him with a jerk which sent him sprawling helplessly across a
huge oaken chest. Then snatching up his hat and striding to the door,
he clutched its handle; but before he could turn it Gretchen was beside
him. “Otto!”

“Oh!” he cried, veering sharply round upon her. “Yes—you, I had
forgotten you, quite. By the Mass though,” he hurried on with a fierce
hysterical laugh, “it’s as well, I suppose, that you came in when
you did”; and he turned and gazed with satisfaction at the Syndic,
stretched, still apparently past all speech, where he had flung him,
“else your precious parent might have been even in a worse case than he
is.”

Then he turned his back upon her, and began a desperate struggle with
the door handle, which refused to yield. Suddenly it flashed upon
him that the Syndic, when he had first come in, had drawn the bolt;
alleging as an excuse for doing so, that the catch of the ordinary
handle had got a trick of slipping; but the circumstance recurred
to him now with its own significance. “Where the deuce,” he cried,
fiercely fumbling at the bolt, and then turning again on the trembling
Gretchen, “did you get in?”

“Yonder,” she said unhesitatingly, pointing towards a recess in the
wall, revealed by a panel slidden back into the rich ebony wainscoting.

“Oh,” said Otto, crossing the floor and peering into the dark ambush.
“I see,” he added, with curling lip, “you shut yourself in here to play
eavesdropper—yes? A nice pretty game. One that you often play at, eh?”

“Nay, Otto,” shivered the girl. “I—I—” and she turned her eyes
fearfully towards the semi-unconscious Hackernagel. “It was
for—you—your sake; I was afraid—for you——”

“And why?”

“I do not know; but I was. He”—and again looking shrinkingly at her
father, she added in tones only audible to Otto: “When I said you
would be coming this evening to—see me—that was what you did say, dear
Otto?”

The lover stamped his foot wrathfully and gnawed his comely moustache.
“Well?”

“And he,” she hurried on, “was angry with me, and ordered me to my
room, and said I was to be ill.”

“And why, pray?”

“Because—he wanted to have a little private chat with you, on a
particular and—important matter.”

“Ah! And you, Madame Curious, had a fancy for knowing all about it too?”

The girl hung her head in silence. Otto took it for assent.

“Well, and it was a pretty comedy, wasn’t it?” he asked, keenly
scrutinizing her face. “But you had an inkling of the plot beforehand
maybe?”

“I could not tell,” stammered Gretchen. “I did not know.”

“That the villain would get the worst of it,” he sneered. “No, that
was not set down; but does it please you, this ending? Is it to your
liking? Speak!” he yelled out. “Is it to your liking, I say?”

“Otto! spare me,” sobbed the miserable girl. “He is my father.”

“Ay, he is that. The crocodile had spawn; four daughters passing
hateful; and one—she was of them all most like him—took woman’s
likeness, and would have mated with an honest man.”

“Otto!” shiveringly implored the girl, sinking on her knees beside him,
and convulsively seizing the hem of his short Spanish cloak.

“But he—he,” whirled on Otto, striving to tear it from her, “found out
the foul nature of her in time and——”

“Otto!”

“Loathed her. Ay, do you hear me, Gretchen Hackernagel? loathed her!”
and then he tore his hand, wet with her tears, from her clutching
agonized grasp. “I took you,” he hurried on, savagely wiping them away,
“I took you for an honest woman. I was a fool.”

“Yes—no,” wailed she, swaying under his rough thrust.

“I’ve been one always somehow. And he,” muttered the young man through
his set teeth, glaring at the prostrate Tobias, “and he wanted to make
me a thrice-dyed one, and he did it, did it! But look you here, my
girl, his knave I will not be!”

Then dragging his hat down over his eyes, he strode to the open door,
but Gretchen hung upon him like a dead weight, sobbing his name again
and again.

“Why do you hold me?” he cried, tearing the delicate lace ruff of his
sleeve into shreds, in his endeavours to free himself. “I wash my hands
of you and yours for ever. I will never see you, nor speak to you more.
I would sooner touch hell’s burning pitch than such as you. Thumbscrews
and iron boots, and—and all the rest of it, should not make me. And,”
he cried, facing round on Hackernagel, now painfully bringing himself
to a sitting posture on the edge of the chest, “may that curse which
you, Tobias Hackernagel, would have cursed Conrad Dasipodius with,
light on me, if ever again I set foot in this house while you live in
it!”

Then with a creaking wrench and a burst, the door flew open, and he was
gone.




CHAPTER LIV.

LOVE’S ALCHEMY.


Radegund von Steinbach stands before her easel, palette and brush in
hand. Throughout the long mid July day she has been working at the
Queen Eleanor, which has stood at such a long standstill in favour of
the more pressing claims of the Horologe pictures; but they are all
complete now.

Glad of it, and yet sorry, the artist was; with their last touches she
felt that something had faded out of her life. While the work had been
in progress, it had linked her existence with Dasipodius; necessarily
placing her in almost daily communication with him, and still even,
while he was in his banishment, it had seemed to her that the spiritual
presence of him hovered about the Cathedral, and brought her a strange
content. Then too there had been her unceasing toil to disentangle
the meshes which had been woven around him, and the glory of her
share in helping him back to his own; a glory cruelly dashed with its
humiliations. Those were no light pangs which wrung her proud soul,
when brother of hers, by reason of his incapacity, was set aside. But
now all these things belonged to the past; and the general content she
had aided so materially in bringing about, was to her a living death.
Restless by temperament, an idiosyncrasy aggravated by circumstance,
Radegund recoiled from prosperity’s dull dead level. She loathed the
sunny calm of orthodox well-to-do existence, which made the _Ultima
Thule_ of the ordinary women of her social rank in the old city; just
as unshadowed yellow noon sunshine glittering on a waveless sea was
charmless and wearisome to her. Stormful billows tossing beneath a
moon half-veiled in the wind-driven rack, the creaking of the black
pine boughs on the rugged mountain-side of her own native Elsass, were
dearer to her than the softest of its meadowed uplands. A Dorothea’s
saintly patience, if it did not irritate her, assuredly never inspired
her brush; and yet—once she had limned a saint passing well; but then
in that San Lorenzo, it was not the passive resignation of mediæval
art she had helped to perpetuate, but the grand dauntless endurance
of a living sentient man. The spirit of the _Renaissance_, in all its
comminglings of strength and of weakness, of evil and of good, was
dominant in the genius of Radegund. In the delineation of the power of
human passion she was unsurpassed, and never, save perhaps in that one
notable exception, had her brush obeyed the conception of her brain, as
in this Queen Eleanor.

It is bespoken, as Radegund’s pictures invariably are, and by no less
a personage than her dowager Majesty of France, Catherine de Medicis.
The subject the queen had pronounced a most interesting one, and her
pleasure in the contemplated possession of it is infinitely enhanced by
the consideration that she had carried it off in triumph from his Grace
the Duke of Alva, who had also bidden high for it; higher indeed than
the state of his coffers altogether warranted. He had however stretched
a point, on account of being specially desirous of presenting it to
his master King Philip, whose sweet countenance he had some particular
object in propitiating just then, and in whose sight the _chef d’œuvre_
could not but find favour; but the artist had roundly refused to enter
into any bargaining of whatsoever kind with the “gentle viceroy,” and
with a scornful laugh signed the contract which made it over to the
queen, saying that between two ills, one might choose the lesser, and
at all events, she had rather think of her “poor picture in the Louvre
than in the Escorial”.

To watch Radegund at her work now, one would infer that her tether of
time for completing it was at its end, or well-nigh so; but that is not
the case. With the one exception of the Horologe pictures, Radegund had
never been brought to fetter herself to dates; and clients had always
to bide her good pleasure for their pictures, and neither could she
be brought to make any promises about the Queen Eleanor by the envoy
of royalty, who had found himself compelled to return to his gracious
mistress and explain that it would be ready when it was ready, in such
courtly euphemisms as his wits might help him to devise.

And now to-day, after long surcease, Radegund has toiled at it since
dawn, which in July smiles mockingly on midnight. The light shadows on
the Cathedral dial are telling three o’clock of a sweltering midsummer
afternoon, whose burden and heat one would fancy oppressive enough to
subdue the veriest enthusiast to a siesta; and indeed Strassburg, for
all the animation its streets present, might be a city of the dead. But
the beautiful hands of the artist—beautiful, yet somewhat wasted and
transparent, work on in that still chamber with fevered haste, only
pausing now and again hurriedly to brush back the dark rings of hair
falling dankly over her knitted brows, or to wipe away their gathering
moisture.

“Why the mischief do you work so hard, Radegund?” Otto had daundered
out eight hours earlier in the day, as he had betaken himself lazily to
his own concerns. “I don’t believe Dasipodius himself will do a stroke
of anything to-day.”

“I wouldn’t stay away from the Dial, if I were you,” laughed she, “on
the strength of that supposition.”

“I didn’t say I meant to, did I? But it’s enough to kill one to put
one leg before the other, that’s all I know. And as to one’s hands,
its just all their work to keep mopping one’s face,” said the martyr
to meteorological circumstance, as he suited the action to his words,
with a delicate wisp of cambric, and stretched his elegant length on
a couch beside the open window, shaded by the broad green leaves of a
luxuriant vine. “And fancy anybody doing anything when anybody’s not
obliged. That picture now——”

“It must be finished. If I don’t make haste——”

“Make haste. _Du lieber Himmel!_” ejaculated Otto, closing his eyes, as
if the mere words exhausted him.

“It will never be done.”

“Oh come! Never’s a long day. Just as if there weren’t months and
months coming for you to be doing it in.”

“Nay,” she answered, contemplating it with a strange loving
wistfulness. “How do I know that? and I would not like to die leaving
it undone.”

“Die!” echoed Otto, opening his closed eyes to their broadest and
fixing them on Radegund. “Why should you talk of such—such—Radegund?”
and rousing back to a half-sitting posture, he repeated her name in
tones of piteous enquiry. “Why should you talk of—of dying?”

“Why should I not? As well as another.”

“Oh, ah!” replied he, sinking back again with a relieved sigh into the
cool shadows. “That way of course. But it isn’t cheerful such sort of
talk. And I don’t like to hear it.”

“And if I were to die?”

“Don’t,” whimpered Otto.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “Would you fret for me a week, I wonder?
Sisters are of small enough account, dear, to married brothers.”

“I shall never marry, if you’re talking at me,” he said gloomily,
rising and lounging towards the picture, where he stood with his eyes
fixed on it, but somehow able to see only a confusing mist of colour.

“Oh, indeed!” laughed Radegund. “I should like Gretchen to be behind
you now.”

“Gretchen be——”

“What!” interrupted Radegund, turning, brush in hand, upon him, and
transfixing him with her astonished gaze. “You two have quarrelled?”

“Never you mind, Radegund,” he said, flushing uneasily.

“You have.”

“Never you mind, I say.”

“Otto! Gretchen has never jilted you?”

“Oh! ho! ho! Jilted ME! Come, that is a good notion! Jilted ME. No, my
dear; not exactly.”

“You’re a wondrous bargain,” she said with a careless smile, turning
again to her easel. “But——”

“Now look here, Radegund. If you’re going to preach—look here,
Radegund, I’m not a baby, and I’m not going to stand here for you to be
telling me I’m dishonourable.”

“My dear boy.”

“And this and that,” and he shifted uneasily from one leg to the
other, “this and that, don’t you know; because there isn’t an inch of
dishonour in it. That is, there is a great deal, but it’s all on the
other—now see here, Radegund, I’m not going to tell you a word about
it, nor anybody else neither; so it’s no use asking.”

“My dear child, do I want to know; was I so much in love with this
brilliant alliance, and your beautiful Gretchen?”

“Oh come! there are plainer women than Gretchen, now then!”

“Her sisters, yes,” said the merciless Radegund. “No, my dear, I cannot
offer you my condolence. The connection was no such desirable one.”

“Oh,” interrupted Otto, “we needn’t rake up all that, because it’s done
with; the whole thing’s at an end,” and a heavy sigh broke from him,
which was, however, less for the discarded Gretchen than for Radegund’s
provokingly cool indifference at his startling disclosure. Secretly,
so secretly that he was himself unconscious of it, Otto had trusted
to finding sympathy from Radegund. The faintest spark of it would
have drawn from him the whole truth of his rupture with Hackernagel;
and his shallower nature thirsted now for some counsel from her. He
had half dreaded, half yearned for that anticipated “lecture” from
Radegund. Time had been that she would have taken up the cudgels
for poor Gretchen, and rated Otto soundly, not assuredly out of any
personal affection for the girl, of whom she knew comparatively little
beyond the fact that she seemed better than her kin and surroundings,
and so much she had made it her business to ascertain; but because her
instinctive sense told her that it was ignoble to break the troth he
had plighted; but now—now—“When did this happen?” was all she said.

“Last Wednesday.”

“To-morrow—a whole week!” she replied, lifting her brows in feigned
surprise. “So long! why, you’ll be casting about for a new sweetheart
by Sunday!”

“Well,” dolefully acknowledged Otto, “it is dull without one, awfully.”

“Poor dear boy.”

“Oh, it’s nothing to laugh at, Radegund,” he said, aggrieved by the
smile he fancied he detected lurking about her lips as she bent over
her canvas.

“Laugh, child, why should I do that? I was only thinking that if you’re
really off—and you are?”

“Oh, it’s as real as mud,” said Otto; “I wouldn’t touch him——”

“Him?”

“Her, of course, I mean; how dull you are, Radegund—with a pitchfork.”

“And since, then, you’re so thoroughly off as all that with the new
love, how would it be to return to the old? Cousin Sabina,” she said,
calmly working in her flesh-tints on the murderous queen’s jewelled
fingers.

“Sometimes,” said Otto, after a brief silence, “sometimes I do think
you’re a little mad, Radegund.”

“Is there such insanity in supposing that when a pretty little Jill
like Cousin Sabina is Jackless——”

“That’s no fault of hers—at least, I mean, it is—that is, I mean——”

“Jackless,” insisted Radegund, “that a handsome young fellow like you
are, should not go in and win.”

“Ah!” sighed Otto groaningly, surveying by a severe contortion of
his spine the middle seam down the back of his doublet, in the
tortoiseshell and silver mirror behind him, “it is curious of course.”

“Silly boy,” she interrupted, “what hare hearts you men have! Does it
follow because Sabina happened to refuse you once, once when her little
brain was turned, that she’d do so now?”

“No,” said Otto, calling up remembrances of certain renewed overtures
of his, which he had kept secret in his own heart, as Eleusinian
mysteries; “no, of course it doesn’t follow.”

“And things are changed since last you went a wooing in the
Munster-gasse.”

“Think so?” said Otto ruminatively. “I don’t know so much about that; I
take it there’s been more—well—muddle, you know, than change.”

“Ho!” contemptuously laughed Radegund. “No change?—no change? Next
you’ll be saying that these two still—Heaven help us!—still love each
other!”

“Dasipodius and Cousin Sabina? Ay, yes,” nodded Otto, “I dare swear
they do.”

“Fool! what sort of eyes have you that you could not see the coolness
between them when we called in the other evening at the Munster-gasse?
and how glad Conrad Dasipodius seemed of an excuse to get away?
Couldn’t your stupid head comprehend as much as that?” she demanded,
stamping her foot.

“Yes,” admitted Otto, “oh yes.”

“And how anxious he was to be coming with us. You saw how he wanted to
come with us?”

But Otto was absorbed in critical scrutiny of the canvas before him.
“Radegund, I say, what a she-dragon you are making of this woman!” he
said at last.

“Unchanged!” muttered the artist, staring gloomily before her. “How can
you say so?” she added in a louder tone. “Tell me now, Otto, have you
forgotten already that letter she—asked me to write for her? Speak,
have you forgotten it?”

“Am I likely to?” replied Otto with unwonted animation; “for my part,
I know I wish we, you and I, Radegund, had had nothing to do with the
thing. I had better have burnt my fingers off in the fire like—what was
the fellow’s name, the Roman fellow? Mu—Mu—never mind; but if I could
have guessed what a devil of a business it was going to bring about——”

“Hush!”

“I’d have—I’d have—”

“If you don’t make haste you’ll be late,” said Radegund coldly,
resuming her work; “good-bye, brother mine, till this evening; and—take
my advice, don’t go putting yourself out again to-day about nothing.”

“Nothing!” fumed he, turning to go.

“No, it’s too hot. And Otto,” he looked back, “think over what I’ve
been saying about that first little love of yours.”

With a grunt Otto departed, and through the long sultry morning
Radegund had toiled on without intermission. It seemed as if those
hands must be fraught with superhuman strength; slender always, they
looked cruelly fragile now, and, unless the dark purples in the upper
lights of the mullioned windows were casting strange shadows, had a
wasted sunken appearance, which allowed the veins to show, visibly
threading each other through the transparent skin. Yet hour succeeded
hour, and still with fevered hurrying unrest they toiled on, and the
picture gathered a terrible vividness.

Once she paused to drag off and fling aside the black velvet hood-like
cap she wore; and again and again she wiped away the gathering moisture
on her face, colourless as alabaster, save for two burning spots on
either cheek. The day was indeed a sweltering one. Could it be the
heat, she at last vexedly asked herself, which was marring all her
work, by affecting the colours on her palette? so that, labour as she
might, they refused to stay on her brush, but ran down, and clotted,
and did everything but what was required of them so persistently, that
at last she threw down her maulstick in desperation. “It’s all Bruno’s
fault!” she muttered to herself, angrily considering the delicate white
folds of the hapless Rosamund’s pearl-broidered gown; “he told me
to mix in more white lead, and see what’s come of his cleverness! He
must have meant more of the sulphate powder; I knew he was thinking of
something else when he said it. Well, he told Otto he should be here
to-night—to-night? that is to waste hours. No,” and laying aside her
tools, she picked up the discarded hood, and gathered her dishevelled
hair under it; then throwing a light camlet wrap about her shoulders,
she hurried out in the direction of the surgeon’s house.

“She’ll get sunstroke,” cried more than one, coming to their wide flung
open doors to look after her as she passed swiftly onwards. “In these
dog-days. Think only! thou dear Heaven! To come abroad at this hour!”

“She’s mad!”

“Artist folks always are!”

“Do you mark how pale and thin the painting woman has grown?” demanded
Ezekiel Grumbach the Calvinist, of Isaiah his Anabaptist neighbour.

“Ay,” nodded heaven’s predestined. “Maybe, brother Ezekiel, her papist
sins are finding her out at last, and beginning to gnaw her vitals.”

“Let us hope so, neighbour.”

“She looks pale indeed, poor thing, doesn’t she?” said a buxom little
house-mother, catching up her chubby moon-faced firstborn from his
cradle, and coming to join the group of gazers, “fearfully pale!”

“As the pestilence that walketh at noonday.”

“Nay, brother, thou art wresting the Scriptures. ’Tis the sickness, not
the pestilence that walketh at noonday,” mildly rebuked the other.

“The Bible was made for man,” retorted Isaiah, turning his back on his
neighbour, and retiring under the sanctity of his own roof again. “Thy
quibbling savoureth of the schoolmen; and stinketh in my nostrils.”

“She’s fit to be the Emperor’s wife,” said little Crispin Krebs, the
hump-backed cobbler, looking up after her from the tall buff boots
he was patching. “See only how she walks. Her feet never wore tight
brodequins, if I know leather from prunella.”

“God bless thee, lady!” murmured the blind beggar by the fountain. “I
knew ’twas you, by Strow’s tail.”

“Strow’s tail?” said Radegund, stooping to drop a coin into the dog’s
tin cup, and gently stroking his shaggy head.

“Ay. Let him catch but the sight of you ever so far off, and I feel
it begin to go wag-wag here against my legs so fast that if ’twere
’prentice made, and not the dear God’s own work, ’twould come off, I do
think.”




CHAPTER LV.

A VISIT TO DR. WOLKENBERG’S.


Doctor Wolkenberg was not in when Radegund reached his house. All the
forenoon he had not stirred out, as Trudel explained; been as lone in
fact as the church weathercock, but about an hour since, he had been
sent for; young Hans Vogelweid had fallen out of the apple tree—a pox
on his thieving tricks—green sour apples too!—and broke his leg, and
the ne’er-do-well’s mother had come shrieking her heart out for the
master, who had gone off with his splints and bandages to set young
hopeful’s wicked leg. “Just as so ’tis ever,” grumbled on the old
housekeeper, who had not been part and parcel of Bruno’s establishment
ever since he possessed one, without knowing how the heart’s beat
of him jumped; and with a glance of thinly veiled significance at
Radegund. “Just so ’tis ever in this weary world. The bad ones make
the mischief, and the good ones have to bear the brunt of it.”

Would Mistress von Steinbach walk in, and be pleased to wait till the
master came back. There was her own little room—but Trudel offered
this special hospitality a trifle frigidly; for besides that she
held certain grudges against Radegund on another person’s account,
the artist, from a general point of view, was no favourite with her.
Mistress von Steinbach, she would confide in a tone of compassionate
contempt to her circle of intimates, couldn’t hold a nice little gossip
with you to save her life, poor thing! Trudel’s mind therefore felt as
if quite a weight had been lifted from it when Radegund declined the
proffered civility, and passed on into the doctor’s own room, where the
old woman, shutting the door upon her, left her to herself.

Wearied with her long day’s labour, and her walk through the heat, the
artist threw herself into the doctor’s chair, a comfortable shabby
thing, whose once gilded leather was blackened now, and slippery with
age and use. The place is very silent; only the fidgeting up and
down of Tobit, the blackbird, in his great wicker cage beside the
open window looking into the sombre high-walled garden, breaks the
stillness. Never as now has Radegund so entirely realised the utter
loneliness of this life of Bruno Wolkenberg’s. Only poor old Tobit, and
Balder, of course—Balder the beautiful, shortest and bandiest-legged,
longest carcased, most eccentrically eared and tailed, loving-hearted
dog in all Strassburg, to wait on the goings in and comings out of
this man whose life is more than half spent amid scenes of suffering
and sadness, and making the existence of others endurable to them. And
where, she asked of herself—asked because the question forced itself
upon her, and would not be stifled down—where was the human consolation
of this consoler’s life? All that sweetness of companionship, which is
the priceless heritage of rich and poor alike.

“It is not good for man to be alone.” And if in the Scripture there
were things Radegund dared to question, that at least was not among
them. The absolute isolation of her own being, with all its passionate
longings, taught her only too well what the solitude of this man must
be. And why was it so with him? This foolish golden-haired blue-eyed
Bruno, secretly worshipped by a score of fair maidens; and with a
smile which, if it has in it something of exultation, is infinitely
fuller of sadness, Radegund leaves thinking, and lets her eyes travel
in vague drowsy curiosity round the vaulted chamber’s smoke-embrowned
stone walls, hung with stuffed scaly reptile creatures, whose scared
eyes seemed to be transfixing with a dull watchfulness the surgeon’s
truckle bed yonder in the furthermost corner.

Truly a strange grim place to live in, and grow gray in, and so one
day to die in! And then those desolate rooms above—she thought of them
with their rich furniture rotting and mouldering away like dead things
in their shrouds; and how with her lay the power to give life to this
joyless silent place; and then with that strange sad smile upon her
face, and her tired aching hands clasped upon her bosom, as though,
waking or sleeping, she guarded there something which never rack nor
sword might tear from her, the weary eyelids closed and she fell
asleep. A sleep it was heavy and dreamless as of one physically and
mentally tired out; and when at last she stirred, the shadows had begun
to gather, and Bruno Wolkenberg stood beside her in a halo of evening
sunlight, whose moted haze, streaming in through the tawny glass of
the lattice, threw so glamorous a brilliancy round his tall figure,
that to the artist’s only half-awakened senses, he seemed for the
moment like one of those old romance heroes he could tell of so well.

“Radegund,” he softly murmured.

The sound recalled her to herself; and pushing back the dark rings of
hair from her forehead, dyed momentarily with a flush of confusion, she
sat up.

“Caught napping!” she cried with a petulant smile. “Well—I suppose I
was tired out with waiting for you, Dr. Wolkenberg. I thought you’d
never come. Where have you been such an age?”

“I am sorry,” began Bruno, who did not think it necessary to explain
that he had been back an hour at least, and creeping about like a thief
on his own premises for fear of wakening her. “I am very sorry I was
not in when you did me so great an honour.”

“Ay,” interrupted she, glancing through the window at the flowers
gratefully stirring in the light evening breeze, and then up at Tobit,
composing himself for the night. “It was provoking of you, Dr.
Wolkenberg. Very vexatious; and now, nothing more can possibly be done
to-day. It’s hopeless to think of it.”

“Is anything amiss?” asked Bruno, looking for the hundredth time within
the last hour at the thin nervously restless hands and wan face of the
woman he so passionately loved.

“Very much amiss; my picture——”

“Ah, the picture,” said the doctor more cheerily.

“And it is your fault; all your fault.”

“Give me the symptoms,” he said, his face clearing, “and perhaps I
shall hit upon the remedy.”

“It’s past retrieving—almost,” she returned crossly. “Your grand new
medium’s a failure. The colours run all one into the other, till my
best touches come like hideous daubs.”

“The chromes or the crimsons?”

“Both—all, they muddle, I tell you, into each other—ah sickeningly; but
the white’s the worst. Streaky whitewash; and though I’ve been hard at
work hours upon hours——”

“How many?” challenged Bruno.

“Since dawn. And the longer I worked, the worse it has come.”

“Ah!” said Bruno, nodding his profoundest Æsculapian nod, “exactly so.”

“And what,” demanded she, “is the reason of it?”

“The heat,” he answered, his eyes still searchingly studying her face.
“Only the heat I hope.”

“Ah,” she said, leaning forward and scanning the doctor’s pharmacopeia
arranged on the stone-slabbed bench before her, “that is what I
guessed. It wants some more of that deadly poison stuff you said it
was, to stay it. Make haste, Dr. Bruno, and give it me, I must be going
again.”

“So soon?” asked he, stifling a sigh, and his blue eyes still
thoughtfully considering her. “Nay, have patience just a little while.”
Then he dragged a low stool beside her, and seating himself he took
the fevered hand hanging over the chair’s arm, and counted as well as
he might for its wayward restlessness, its throbbing beats. “A little
patience. _Qui va sano_—remember the wise saying of your Italian
friends—_va lontano_—and do not fret and worry yourself so over this
picture. Believe me, I do not think the pigments are all to blame.”

“Is it this hand then?” she cried, fiercely wrenching it from him,
“which has lost its skill. That is what you mean, Bruno Wolkenberg!”

“Heaven forbid!” he said, looking at her in perplexed amazement,
“why should I say anything so far from my thoughts? No, no. What
did I mean more than that you have been toiling too closely at the
Horologe pictures; and now this one, and the weather so scorching hot,
and—and—take a doctor’s advice,” he pleaded with an effort at a smile,
“and rest a little. You need it.”

“Rest,” she murmured, her gaze wandering once again to the chemical
array before her. “Rest is only for the dead; you know that, Bruno, as
well as I do. Here there is neither rest nor peace. They talk of hell,
these priests and pietists, but that is here—in this world. Beyond is
nothing; you know it is so, Bruno Wolkenberg,” challenged she, gripping
the arm of her chair, and turning her hollow eager eyes on his face.
“Nothing!”

“Radegund,” he said gently, “what are you saying? You are ill, you are
not yourself.”

“Ho!” she cried with a discordant laugh. “Am I not? Well, well, I
have heard them call you Saint Bruno, and—yes, it is very well for
people like you to please yourselves with such pretty fancies; but for
me—Bruno, tell me,” and she swept her hand lightly over the glass
phials and boxes on the table before her. “That stuff, that vehicle you
mixed for my colours, it is poison, you say?”

“Deadly.”

“And to think now,” she said in dreamy tones, “that such deadliness
should have power to give life to such beauty.”

“It is but the natural law,” said the surgeon, with a sudden light in
his face, momentarily chasing all the shadows. “Good even out of evil
itself. God’s own world, Radegund. ‘And when He made it, He saw that it
was good.’”

“What an old-fashioned creature you are!” she said with a petulant
smile. “And when it’s the thing too to believe everything and everybody
is going to the bad.”

“That comes of heretical teaching,” shrugged Bruno. “We owe our
new-fledged pessimism to the learned Doctor Calvin.”

“Ay, but some,” she said mockingly, “some, he says, are to be saved.”

“I’d rather be in limbo,” said the daring Bruno, “than with those same
good folks. Heaven forgive me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that a
more worthless——”

“For shame, Dr. Wolkenberg!” laughed she, “and be careful, do.
Remember the fate of one Servetus.”

“A more worthless idle set than these Elect ones does not cumber the
earth,” persisted Bruno.

“You believe in the efficacy of works—good works?”

“Ay, that do I,” said the doctor fervently.

“Then prove your argument,” she said, rising abruptly, “and give me
this stuff I want, and let me go back—to my work.”

“Nay,” he contended, smiling. “I am too faithful to my proposition for
that. Everything in its own good time and place. I cannot give you this
you ask me for.”

“Cannot!” and angry sparks kindled in the artist’s eyes. “Is it then so
costly?” she said, laying her hand on the embroidered velvet aumonière
at her side. “I have money, Dr. Wolkenberg.”

“Radegund,” he said, paling, “I should have said I will not.”

“I see—I know,” she rejoined quickly. “You are afraid to trust me with
poison. Why?”

“You accredit my words to-night with strange meaning,” he said,
colouring a little. “Why indeed?” he added, with grave dignity. “It
is not natures made of such stuff as yours which would stoop, even in
their worst need, to such baseness as that.”

“You rate me too highly, Bruno,” she said.

“And with all the world,” he went on, as though he had not heard her
interruption, “all the world at your feet. Poison? nay, no. Why speak
of it?” he said shudderingly. “What did I mean more than that I would
not give you this stuff because I want you to lay aside this painting
work for a while; only a little while,” he said beseechingly. “You need
rest I tell you, Radegund; you are ill.”

“And you—are a croaker, Dr. Bruno. No, listen now,” she said, softening
at the utter misery in his face. “I tell you, you do not understand.
Rest would kill me.”

“Only a week,” pleaded Bruno.

“Every hour of delay frets me,” she rejoined, waving her hands to and
fro. “When the night comes, and I can work no more, then I cannot sleep
for the haunting of it.”

“Exactly so,” nodded the doctor. “And what is that but the evidence of
an overtaxed brain?”

“It may be as you say,” acknowledged she. “It may be only that. Still
your remedy is worse than my disease. Come, Bruno,” and she laid her
hand caressingly on his sleeve, “give me the stuff and let me go.”

“I cannot conceive,” said Bruno, thrilling with the witchery of the
sweet contact, and blundering out the words that came uppermost, for
the sake of keeping the glory of her presence yet a little longer in
his gloomy sanctum, “I cannot conceive why this picture is so dear to
you, Radegund. It is masterfully thought out I grant, and its execution
is faultless, but the subject!—such a gruesome one! How on earth came
you to think of it?”

“Can we account for our—inspirations?” asked she, evading his eyes.

“It is very terrible.”

“It is true.”

“The more hateful then.”

“You are hard on my poor queen.”

“Poor!” echoed Bruno, his eyes growing round. “It is her victim, I
would take leave to say, one is more inclined to pity.”

“Not so,” murmured Radegund. “She was happy. Happy, though a thousand
daggers and poison cups tortured her. She was beloved.”

Bruno sighed. Who was he that he could gainsay her?

“Tell me, Bruno,” she said, after a silence long enough for the last
fleck of red sunlight to fade from the darkening room, “had you lived
then, and chanced to love that woman——”

“That murderess!” he cried, with a loathing shiver.

“Ay, yes, her. Would you—how about your love for her then, Bruno?” she
said, tightening her grasp upon his arm, and gazing hungrily into his
face. “How about it?”

“Love? with blood upon her hands?”

“No; I do not mean that—no. How literal you are!”

“God in Heaven! what do you mean?” he cried, in his vexed bewilderment.

“You foolish Bruno,” she said, lifting her hand from his arm, and
sending him from her with a light push; then breaking into a hollow
mirthless laugh, she sank down again into the chair from which she had
risen. “May not I weave my little romances as well as you?”

“Romances!” echoed the perturbed Bruno, brushing his hand perplexedly
before his eyes. “Nightmares, Radegund”; and coming beside her, he
knelt, and tenderly strove to possess himself of her two hands.
“Love!——”

“No; hush! hush!” she cried, with tearless sobs, “hush!”

“I will not!” broke forth the despairing man. “Radegund, if I do not
speak, my heart will break. Is yours so stone-hard—dead to love? Why do
you look at me like that? Radegund, have you no pity?”

“Pity?” she echoed coldly. “Pity for whom?”

“For yourself; for me. Something troubles you. Ah, if you look at me
so, I shall go mad, I shall go mad, Radegund—love, dear love—Radegund,
not all hell’s worst torments could make my soul suffer the misery it
feels, to see the shadow of suffering come near you!”

All the deep chivalry of his nature was stirring in him to feed the
intense patient love he bore for this woman, whom, in that mind of his,
which revelled in type and symbol and imagery, he had always compared
with some stately plant; and now after long secret agonized watching,
he had come to understand how, beyond all hope of doubt, some canker,
mental or physical (or might it be both?), threatened the life of it;
and his unselfish devotion yearned with a longing, not all her cold
indifference could quench, to take her to himself, and soothe back
her pain. To him this moment seemed supreme. Could he have lain down
his life for her now, and bought with it for her the old brilliant
vitality, could his eyes have caught one ray of the haughty triumphant
smile of past days, it seemed to him that to have died here at her feet
would have been a joy indeed. But the living death his existence passed
in, had grown an unendurable torture, and his clutch now upon her arm
was like the convulsive grip of a drowning man; yet she, shaking him
off, rose, and with haughty but somewhat swaying gait, swept past him
towards the door.

“I do not understand you, Dr. Wolkenberg,” she said, pausing there for
an instant, and a smile colder than a marble Pallas Athené’s curved
her pale lips. “I think you must have caught the sick fancies of your
patients that you see anything amiss in me. When I want your advice, I
will ask it of you.”

“Radegund, if there is any pity——”

“Bruno Wolkenberg,” and she fixed her proud sad eyes on him, “I did not
dream of this from you. Had I thought you were made of no better stuff
than the herd of fools who come plaguing me with their pretty nothings,
do you suppose I should have trusted myself here to-day—to-night? under
your roof, in your house? Hark!” and as she spoke the Cathedral clock
struck seven. “When I go now, think you there will be no curious eyes,
no gossip-mongering tongues to mark how Radegund von Steinbach visited
the surgeon, Bruno Wolkenberg, yesterday, and did not quit his house
till nightfall?”

“If,” began he, with flushing cheek and brows, “if they dare——”

“Oh!” she laughed scornfully. “They would dare much more than that,
these worthy gossips. They would call in question the most flawless
jewel of Christ’s own crown. And for me—well, is this the place, the
time——” she hesitated, her face crimsoned, and her eyes fell beneath
his gaze.

“You are false,” he said, “to yourself, Radegund. You are saying what
your heart does not feel. God knows,” he went on, earnestly watching
the attent half-lifted eyelids, “as I do, God knows how pure, how
noble your heart is.”

“Bruno,” she wailed, “no, no, you do not, you cannot——”

“And how it is proof against the paltry malice of a thousand slanderous
tongues, Radegund. No, do not let that wretched phantom of what the
world calls ‘propriety’ come between our——”

“Friendship!” she said, returning a step or two, and stretching out
her hands to him, with a smile so sweetly, radiantly defiant, that for
the moment she looked again like the Radegund of old days. “No, by the
mass! that it shall not. You are a magician, Dr. Bruno! I think indeed
I was only trying what it might feel like, to play the dainty damozel,
and be coy and maidenly, like my little Mistress Cousin Sabina, and
the thousand and one of her stamp. Come, forgive me, Bruno, comrade,
brother—how shall I best call you? Nay, now, but I know, it shall be
friend again—yes? Now and always friend; the best, truest name of all.
Bruno, dear Bruno, if you look at me with those Rhadamanthus eyes an
instant longer, they will annihilate me. Don’t be cruel any more, but
give me,” and grasping his trembling hands, she dragged him back to
the table—“which is it? The stuff—give it me, and let me go, dear, dear
Bruno.”

And the surgeon did even as he was commanded.




CHAPTER LVI.

PLAYING WITH FIRE.


The domestic storm which had for so long been brewing in Syndic
Hackernagel’s house, burst with such disastrous force after Otto von
Steinbach’s recorded visit there, that it resulted in an exodus among
his servants, who declared that the master’s tempers made the place
unendurable; and it was only the unhappy accident of their blood
connection with the head of the establishment, which militated against
the young ladies emulating the wise example.

Which was the lesser evil of the two which had now to be endured, it
was hard to say. Hackernagel _rampant_—from cellar to roof, prying into
everybody and everything he could lay his lean suspicious fingers on;
kicking the dog, shunting the cat from corners which by time-honoured
appropriation were her own; banging the doors, leaving them open when
the draught was enough to cut your head off, insisting on their being
hermetically closed when everybody was gasping for air, and generally
superinducing misery for all who enjoyed the privilege of making part
and parcel of himself in the remotest degree.

This of course was abominable enough; but there were those who
preferred it to Hackernagel _couchant_, and among these was Gretchen.
She shrank in common with all the rest, when he vented his spleen on
everything which came within bowshot of him, but she trembled with a
vague awesome fear, when his mood changed to a sullen extreme, and he
would sit for hours gazing before him, speaking no audible word, yet
muttering to himself, with an ugly twitching of his bluish lips, and a
dull baleful glitter in his pale eyes. Sulky Tobias Hackernagel was by
nature, but such an abyss of gloom, for such a prolonged spell of time,
he had never yet lurked in. That look in his eyes, like some savage
animal’s lying in wait for its prey, haunted the girl. She knew her
father not as he was known by the world, with his oily tongue, and his
pinchbeck periods, but as dwellers under the same roof know each other,
and the experience told her to fear the outcome of that moody silence.
To her sisters, their father was “in a temper,” certainly an abnormally
hideous one; something had gone wrong with him in the fishmarket, where
he still retained his little vested interests; or likelier still,
somebody’s words had dinned down his own in some stand-up polemical
tussle, and with their normal capacity of endurance stretched to the
utmost, the young ladies were waiting for him to emerge from his slough
of spleen. But then they were ignorant of so much as a hint of all
that Gretchen knew. The poor girl, dreading their triumphant mockery
of sympathy which would be her lot directly the jealous trio should
come to scent her lover’s defection, strove to guard her unhappy secret
intact as long as she might, instinctively conscious that her father
was not likely to blazon it abroad.

If Gretchen’s nature had inherited many of her dead mother’s virtues,
it was also touched with something of her sire’s keenness and caution;
and that it had been, which had prompted her to act as she had done, on
the occasion of Otto’s last visit. Its stormy ending did but confirm
certain surmises she had formed for some time past, and prompted
her to keep a close watch over her father’s actions; a supervision
which grew the more intense when he sat absorbed in those long sullen
silences.

Like a nightmare that ugly speculative gaze oppressed her. What it
boded she spent hours in attempting to divine. That it meant mischief
was as certain as that a cobra stings; but mischief against whom? Otto
of course, argued the girl, out of those thoughts which went flying
fast to that which was dearest to her. First and foremost, beyond all
question against Otto; for was not vindictiveness a primal attribute
of Tobias Hackernagel’s? and if ever man bore grudge against another,
must not he be bearing it against Otto now? and besides Otto—besides
Otto—and then Gretchen Hackernagel would shudderingly live over and
over again through that scene, until one day, about as many as ten
afterwards, there came sore perplexity to couple with her wretchedness.

It chanced that Time’s wheel had brought round her allotted fortnight
for taking the head of domestic affairs; and in her morning pilgrimages
to and from market, which took her across one angle of the Cathedral
Platz, she had more than once caught a glimpse of Tobias slowly
parading before the façade of the Cathedral, and not content with
this, exchanging (if eyes were to be trusted, and she was beyond
earshot) a passing word with Prudentius the sacristan! Now, that he
had been led thither by some sudden affection for Prudentius, Gretchen
found inconceivable; Prudentius, of whom times out of number, she had
heard her father express wholesale abhorrence, as one of Strassburg’s
fellest, most practical agents in maintaining the ancient order of
ecclesiastical rule; and all the more carefully to be kept at arm’s
length, by reason of his subordinate position, which, as Tobias held,
rendered his corrupt workings doubly insidious. A foe to be stamped out
by hook or by crook, by fair means or foul, if only one could compass
them. An obstinate, irreclaimable monk and door-keeper of the mighty
temple of darkness in their midst!

A strange portent indeed. The cadaverous skin and bone of Tobias and
the abundant rosy flesh of Prudentius did not differentiate more
thoroughly than the inward men of these two Strassburgers. It would
have been easier, one would have thought, to assimilate oil and water,
than to bring this fanatical Anabaptist and smug Catholic to so much of
speaking terms as compassed a civil good-day; and yet here was Tobias
to be seen airily perigrinating to and fro in the very shadow of the
Cathedral walls, and always in the neighbourhood of the sacristan’s own
snug quarters adjoining the St. Laurence chapel! It is true that the
Syndic took as much precaution as possible not to be seen of the men
and women of his persuasion; and if any such chanced upon him there,
would explain, with all the elaboration of diction for which he was so
renowned, that just that corner was the most delightfully cool spot in
the whole city.

“And I suppose I may walk where I please,” as he blandly observed one
morning to Prudentius, who was busy with his broom about the steps.

“Certainly, Master Hackernagel, certainly,” acquiesced the sacristan,
with careless good humour. “It’s God’s air.”

“Oh—yes,” assented Tobias, sniffing, however, a little dubiously at the
atmosphere touched with the breath of incense wafted through the open
door.

“And it’s a free city,” continued Prudentius, always ready to vary
his life’s monotony with the interchange of a friendly word or two;
“there’s no law against your walking your legs off hereabouts, if you
please.”

“Oh, no. As you observe, my friend, quite correct, quite so. All
things, as you say, are lawful——”

“And,” unctiously commented Prudentius, casting hungry glances in the
direction of his private apartments, whence issued a savoury odour of
something like nothing so much as fried ham, “what a blessed consoling
doctrine it is, Master Hackernagel!”

“Lawful, as you remark; but all things are not expedient, friend
Prudentius, hey?”

“There may be something in that,” coincided Prudentius, “something in
that, I daresay.”

“It involves a hecatomb of doctrine, my good friend; simply a hecatomb.”

“Ah!” said the sacristan, suppressing a yawn, “does it now?”

“You ask me how,” continued the Syndic, lifting his hand and waving it
in the direction of the Cathedral. “Take an example, a case in point;
an instance that at once suggests itself to the most superficially
reflective mind.”

“Just so,” said Prudentius, scenting the morning air, each instant
growing heavier with luscious fragrance.

“An instance that at once presents itself for the sake of argument,
simply for the sake of argument, you follow me? good. Now,
abstractedly—abstractedly, mind you—it would afford me no small
gratification to step inside this little door here, and take a stroll
round your Cathedral.”

“By all means,” interrupted the sacristan, with a brightening face,
“pray do if you want, Master Hackernagel, step in and stay as long as
you like, while I——”

“Softly friend, softly. And yet, I say, and yet, I refrain from so
doing.”

“But why?” urged Prudentius, turning to the door and pushing it wide
open; “go in if you want; isn’t the place as free to you as it is to
the best of us?”

“Get thee behind me, Satan!” cried Hackernagel, retreating in pious
horror; “shall it be carried down to posterity that Tobias Hackernagel
afforded such countenance to papistry’s expiring flame.”

“Nobody would ever know,” said Prudentius grumblingly. “And if they
did——”

“Shall it, I say——”

“There! there!” interrupted the sacristan, “don’t waste breath on it.
In with you if you want; who’s to see you?”

“Principle, my good creature, you overlook the principle involved;
principle is everything. But,” continued Hackernagel, heaving a
profound sigh, “you speak according to your lights. Individually, are
you to blame? I trow not. Lights did I say? darknesses I should have
said; for what are you but a practical illustration of the erroneous
doctrine of your teachers? What do you prove but that, with those who
are given to much serving, conscience is a very secondary consideration
indeed.”

“Ay, by the Mass, you may say that, Master Tobias,” returned
Prudentius, sighing in his turn, and folding his arms on the top of
his broom. “There’s none of us is everything we ought to be, eh? and
what with all my hands and legs find to do, I don’t say but that my
conscience has got to look a good bit after itself. Scrub, sweep,
dust—dust, sweep, scrub, year’s end to year’s end; and now, as if there
hadn’t been enough, there’s the Horologe.”

“Ah! just so.”

“And the dust and grease they do make over it——”

“A fine piece of mechanism,” interjected Tobias.

“Eh?”

“I say the Horologe is a fine piece of mechanism; the happy result
of—ahem—of a combination of talent.”

“Well, I don’t know,” slowly said Prudentius; “some do say that too
many cooks nearly spoilt its broth; and if it hadn’t been that the
Professor Dasipodius took it in hand again when he did, just in the
nick of time, we shouldn’t have had it by Saint Laurence’s day.”

“The fourth of August you mean, friend.”

“I mean Saint Laurence’s day as ’tis writ down in the contract, it was
to be ready by. But we’re safe to have it now, without fail.”

“Do you really think so?” smiled the Syndic.

“Think! I’m sure. The Professor Dasipodius has said it, hasn’t he?”

“I cannot conceive the possibility of its being ready,” said Tobias.

“Seeing’s believing,” grunted Prudentius.

“There’s an element of truth in your remark,” blandly returned
Hackernagel. “I imagine now that if—if I did just take a stroll round,
I might obtain a glimpse of it—yes?”

“No, by the Rood, that you wouldn’t,” briskly returned Prudentius;
“it’s as completely hidden from vulgar observation as a twelve hour
old baby in its swaddling clothes, or a bride before breakfast on her
wedding morning.”

“By whose orders?” angrily demanded Tobias.

“By my lord Bishop’s; and nobody can see an inch of it, unless——”

“Unless?” asked the Syndic, carelessly jingling some loose cash in his
pockets.

“Unless I or my lord please.”

“And you?” said Tobias, drawing forth a florin and displaying it in his
open palm.

“It’s quite against the rules, I tell you,” said Prudentius,
affectionately eyeing the piece of silver. “Though I don’t say I see
there’s any harm in it myself.”

“Harm! my good friend!” protested the Syndic in wounded tones. “And
every rule has its exception,” he added, as he slipped the coin into
Prudentius’ hands.




CHAPTER LVII.

“MOTIVE POWER.”


The sacristan’s fat fingers closed upon the bribe; and without more
ado, he conducted the Anabaptist into the nave of the Cathedral,
preceding him in the direction of the Chapel of St. Thomas.

Within a few yards of it, Prudentius, turning to address his companion,
observed that his hat still decorated his head. Irritated out of his
ordinary serenity by the irreverence, the sacristan assisted in its
removal by a light but vigorous upward tip. “You’ve forgot your hat,
friend,” he said, and the thing fell, and rolled forward some distance.

Nettled by the practical reproof, Tobias stooped to recover his
property; but blinded by angry haste, his foot came in contact with
the broad low step of an old monumental tomb, and tripping up, he fell
sprawling his length against its painted alabaster cornice work, whose
once glowing gold and crimson colour was dulled now by age. Some jagged
marks and indentations in the tomb’s surface indicated that it had at
some time borne an effigy of its dead resting below; but at the present
moment only a sculptured cushion lay at its upper end.

“The foul fiend seize you!” snarled Tobias, glaring at the tomb, and
rubbing his bruised shins, “for the popish whited sepulchre you are!
Breaking honest folks bones like that!”

“Hush! sh—sh!” whispered Prudentius in awe-stricken tones. “For blessed
Mary’s sake, mind what you’re saying—hereabouts! ’Tis the tomb of
Mistress Sabina von Steinbach that—the saints help us! what are you
staring at?—her I mean that was old Erwin the architect’s daughter; not
our little Lily, God bless her, and long days to her.”

“Ah, the dead Mistress Sabina von Steinbach.”

“Ay, if so be that she is honestly dead. But I don’t know, I don’t
know. She walks, Master Syndic, she _walks_!” and though it was broad
July daylight, the sacristan glanced cautiously over his shoulder.

“Walks!” echoed Tobias.

“Yes, yes; gets up when the clock strikes midnight, and goes rambling
all over the place. You don’t know where you mayn’t come upon her.
There’s not a hole nor a corner you’re safe from her in, after dark.
It’s awful. ’Tis said she does no more than just sit up a bit and turn
this stone pillow here,” and Prudentius laid his hand gingerly on the
cushion with its delicately sculptured broidered passementerie, “and go
to sleep again; but those who say that haven’t got to be all alone in
this great place at all hours; and I should hope I may be allowed to
know best.”

“My good friend, this is sheer superstition on your part, believe me,”
said Tobias, shifting his ground a pace or two further from the tomb.
“Lamentable superstition.”

“Is it?” said Prudentius. “Is it? I’d just like you to be in my frock.
Ay, you may well shudder and turn up your eyes—in my frock, one of
these fine nights; a moonlight one’s the time for it—and you’d soon
see.”

The Syndic smiled an indulgent smile.

“Oh, grin, grin, as much as you please,” said Prudentius, wagging his
head indignantly. “Any ape can do that. But it’s as true as the Holy
Gospels; and it’s been worse, mind you, ever since the Horologe has
been adoing; and we’ve had Mistress Radegund von Steinbach about the
place.”

“And how,” said Hackernagel, not without interest, “do you account for
that?”

“Eh? easy enough. She’s of the same sort, don’t you see,” explained
Prudentius in confidential _sotto voce_; “and when she dies, it’s my
belief there’ll be two of ’em. Oh—hu! I wouldn’t be sacristan here
if anything was to happen to Mistress Radegund von Steinbach, for my
weight in gold. It’s too awful to think of even,” and there were tears
in the sacristan’s voice. “I’ve begged my lord times out of number to
lay the poor thing——”

“Mistress Radegund?”

“No, her—her that _was_ Mistress Sabina, with bell, book and candle;
and what does he do but pats me on the back, and say it’s all nonsense?
But you see, my lord isn’t in here shutting up after dark like me.”

“But where,” asked the Syndic, eyeing the tomb’s surface with
increasing curiosity, “may she be now? Not walking at this time of
day?”

“Don’t jest, Master Tobias,” shudderingly pleaded Prudentius. “No,
heaven forbid! they’re mending her, that’s all. Her nose was completely
worn out, and both her two poor arms were broken, and you couldn’t
see her neck for cracks; and they were going to patch her up here on
the spot, but my lord said she’d best be taken away bodily, and made
a good job of first as last, and so there she is in Master Rudel the
sculptor’s studio; and to-morrow the painted and gold work here’s to be
touched up; and it’s all to be spick and span by Saint Laurence’s if
possible; but Master Rudel won’t promise; she wants such a deal doing
to.”

“And does Mistress Sabina ‘walk’ now her graven image is not here?”
enquired the Syndic with pardonable curiosity.

“Not to my knowledge. No, I fancy not. Ever since they’ve had her at
the studio, there’s been more peace and quietness here than I’ve known
for many a day; but then Mistress Radegund von Steinbach took herself
off a week or two back. She finished her painting work then; and rare
and beautiful it is,” continued Prudentius, passing under the screening
canvas and setting his companion at a standpoint for viewing the whole
thing to the best advantage. “Oh, I’d give the archfiend his due; rare
and beautiful it is. Say if it isn’t.”

To the sacristan’s sore disappointment and indignation, Hackernagel
hardly vouchsafed even a superficial glance at the Clock’s external
glories, excepting indeed to glower at the cock atop of the pinnacle;
and looking towards the rear of the case, carelessly observed that it
was all a piece of vanity, whose worth had better have been given to
the poor.

“Maybe it finds more favour in the Lord’s eyes than in yours, Master
Tobias,” returned the offended Prudentius, “like a certain box of
spikenard we know of, did. If you don’t like it, why——”

“My friend,” interrupted Tobias, hastening to repair the breach, “you
misapprehend me.”

“Ah well,” magnanimously replied Prudentius, “that’s an old bone to
pick over; but while the good God’s made the sort of creatures of us we
are, it’s one, I take it, we Catholics have got the fleshy end of.”

“I beg your pardon, spiritual——”

“Ah, leave it alone, man, leave it alone,” hurriedly cried the
sacristan, not ambitious of being discovered by any stray member of
the Cathedral Chapter engaged in polemical disputation, or indeed in
any _tête-à-tête_ whatsoever with the Anabaptist; and he hastened to
conduct Hackernagel round to the back of the huge case. “Maybe you’re
like my lord, and have a turn for insides. Mind! mind! mind!” he added
in sudden affright, for scarcely had he opened the small door shutting
in the dark chamber, with all its vast network of chains and wheels and
pulleys, than half the Syndic’s body was thrust inside. “Oh, thou dear
Heaven!” he groaned, tugging vigorously at the tail of Hackernagel’s
gown; “and his nose such a long one too!”

“My good friend,” reassuringly smiled Tobias, forced for his raiment’s
sake to yield, “I can take care of myself. I should have come to no
harm.”

“Ay, ay, but the Horologe might,” said Prudentius with a sigh of
relief; “and then what would become of me?”

“What do you mean—to insinuate?” demanded the Syndic, paling to
greenish white.

“Oh, no offence, Master Hackernagel, none in the world; but for my
part, I hardly dare so much as look at it; it does put me in such a
twitter always for fear the whole thing should go off in a whirr—r—r—.
Mind, now do, Master Tobias,” implored Prudentius, for once more the
Syndic’s head was inside the case.

“I presume,” he said with a leisurely air, “that all this marvellously
interesting mechanism is mere chaos to you?”

“Oh dear yes,” replied Prudentius, who interpreted this term with
which he now for the first time made acquaintance, into a convertible
expression for child’s play; “I’ve got it all at my fingers’ ends as
one may say.”

“Indeed?” said Tobias. “Really so?”

“Dear me, yes,” and the sacristan’s air was a faultless reproduction of
Tobias’ own. “I could tell you the primary wheels, and the secondary
wheels; I can indicate to you the links connecting the inferior with
the superior mechanism; I can explain the superficies——”

“Can you now?”

“Yes,” chatted on the sacristan; “but it’s nothing, Master Syndic,
nothing but what a man enjoying the opportunities I have, ought to
be able to do. I have, I hope, picked up my poor crumb or two of
scientific knowledge. Only last week, for example, I had the privilege
of shedding light on the Professor Dasipodius’ explanations of all
these different interior pieces to my Lord Bishop.”

“Shedding light?”

“Yes, I held the candle, while Master Dasipodius pointed them out to my
lord.”

“Ah! that was excessively interesting. Now this great chain for
example, that passes down from the top there, and coils round this
windlass I have my hand on——”

“And if you’ll be so good as take it off I should be glad,” said the
sacristan. “If you’ll only keep your distance, I’ll explain what you
please.”

With smiling alacrity the Syndic obeyed.

“You see,” went on Prudentius, “that’s not what you fancy, Master
Hackernagel.”

“Not what I fancy?” loftily demanded Tobias.

“No, you flatter yourself you’ve hit the mark there. You think you’ve
got the right pig by the ear, because it’s the biggest thing you can
see. That’s a general error with the vulgar.”

“What!” fumed Tobias.

“I say that’s a sort of notion of the uninitiated,” said Prudentius,
gliding as well as his pursy little physique permitted, into the calm
deliberate manner of Dasipodius; “but this windlass here has next to no
connection with the main artery—as one may term it—of the Horologe.
If, let us say, for sake of argument, you were to be having a fancy for
cutting this chain——”

“Heaven forbid!” shudderingly ejaculated Tobias; “but as you say,
friend, for the sake of argument?”

“Why then, as sure as you stand there, the whole concern would come
down with a rattling clatter, and dash your brains out; but it wouldn’t
do any mischief worth speaking of. No, no, Master Hackernagel,
here’d be your spot for that. See;” and with intense circumspection,
Prudentius pointed towards a disk of burnished metal, pierced in its
centre by a grooved cylinder, round which was coiled a chain of such
fine delicately-fashioned links, that in the semi-darkness of the case,
it was only visible on near examination.

“I see something,” began Hackernagel, peering close.

“Mind how you look,” cautioned the sacristan. “Well, Syndic
Hackernagel, that something as you express it is called by
a—ahem—a—technical expression, which you would not understand if I were
to say it,” hurried on Prudentius, whose memory ran short of the big
word characterising it. “No matter, you see the chain?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Now, carry your eye upward, good. You follow it?”

“Not far,” said Tobias, straining his pale little eyes to agonized
intentness.

“That doesn’t matter, it’s there all the same; and it goes up and up,
and in and out, that fine dear little chain, through all these great
lumbering cogs and weights and levers and things, till at last it comes
to the wheel that is fixed just behind the crown wheel, at the back
of the hour dial; and there you observe a tiny metal cylinder catches
it, and assists it to pass on to—h’m—h’m—the Saints know where, and
you’d never follow me, if I were to explain all night—touching in its
progress a certain vertical axis, which in its turn meets a second
upright spindle.”

“How excessively interesting!”

“Yes, oh I could tell you a great deal; if I had leisure.”

“I’m sure you could; but as you were observing, if——”

“Ah yes, if you wanted to be playing the devil with it all——”

“My friend! my friend!” remonstrated the Syndic, “you employ such
strong terms!”

“Science does,” said Prudentius, elbowing the Syndic aside, and
banging to the door of the case. “She calls a spade a spade; and if my
technical mode of expression is over your head, why, I can’t help that,
Syndic. I suppose nobody will pick a crow with you, because you don’t
know everything.”

“Oh but I do, I did—I followed every syllable of your explanation. It
was most lucid; and as to that exquisite little chain, you mean to
say——”

“I mean to say, Master Hackernagel,” said Prudentius in mollified, but
solemn accents, “cut that little chain, and good-bye to the Horologe.”

“You don’t say so,” gasped Tobias. “It is past my comprehension!”

“Ay, like enough; but it’s as true as it is that the breath would be
out of your body if the hangman were to wring your neck. Didn’t I hear
the Professor Dasipodius making it all clear as ink the other day to
my lord? ‘The whole organism, my lord,’ says he, ‘would be totally
destroyed.’ ’Twouldn’t run far short of murder itself so to speak,
would it, Syndic?”

“Murder!” said the Syndic, “murder! the silencing of a stock and stone
like that?”

“’Twould go near to being the death of the Professor Dasipodius, I
take it; and, let alone any damage to this,” went on the sacristan,
striking his fist affectionately on the clock’s panels, “he’d be a bold
coward who’d show himself in Strassburg streets after he’d offered a
hair’s-breadth of vexation to our professor—now.”

“You’d better put him in a glass case at once,” sneered the Syndic.




CHAPTER LVIII.

VADE SATANA.


“And now, Master Hackernagel, if you don’t mind, we’ll go,” said
Prudentius, ignoring Hackernagel’s last remark. “You won’t see any
more if you stand staring at it till midnight,” said the sacristan,
lifting as he spoke the great bunch of keys hanging at his girdle,
and selecting one smaller and more richly wrought than the rest, he
inserted it in the lock of the chapel postern and threw the door open,
motioning the Syndic to precede him.

Safe outside, he turned and carefully locked the door behind him,
letting the keys fall with a clatter at his side again.

“You hold the power of the keys, friend,” said Hackernagel, lifting
them into his hands, and looking at them with an air of languid
interest.

“Ay. As I have done any time these twenty years past, Syndic
Hackernagel,” said the sacristan proudly.

“An onerous trust.”

“Very much so,” acquiesced Prudentius.

“Sole and absolute power, if I mistake not?”

“You do not, Master Syndic. That is,” amended Prudentius, “with the
exception of this one.”

“Which you have just used?”

“Which I have just used,” and he fingered it tenderly. “It is the key
of the Saint Thomas Chapel as you saw. My lord likes to enter the
cathedral this way; and had a duplicate made for his own private use;
but this is the original.”

“And a charming specimen of metallic work it appears to be,” said
Hackernagel, examining it, as if he cared for such vanities.

“You’re right there, Syndic. You wouldn’t find a handsomer if you were
to hunt the empire through. It’s Master Wenzel Jamitzer of Nuremberg’s
own designing and casting. See, here’s his token, W. J., graven in the
midst of a shield, with the scutcheon of the Coppersmith’s guild above.
Plain enough, eh?”

“Oh, perfectly so,” said Tobias, bringing it well up to the tip of his
nose, and scrutinizing it through his squeezed-up eyelids, “perfectly
so; I should know it—it would, as you observe, be recognizable at half
a glance among all the others.”

“Seventeen in all,” said Prudentius, lifting the whole cluster and
looking at them with proud affection, as he let them slip one by one
through his fingers. “And a precious weight they are to be having
dangling about you day and night.”

“Day and night? Dear me! dear me! How excessively interesting. Then you
sleep with them about you?”

“I should rather think I did! ‘Safe bind, safe find,’ you know, Syndic;
that’s my motto.”

“And a most wise one,” conceded Hackernagel. “The Bishop chose well
when he elected you for a janitor.”

“I flatter myself he did, Syndic Hackernagel.”

“But I can well imagine your post is no sinecure. Your time,”
elucidated Hackernagel, “is well occupied.”

“Occupied’s no word for it. As I told you before, Syndic, it’s just
scrub, sweep, dust, from morning till night. Lock, unlock, take out,
put away, cover up, uncover. And then the candles and lamps. There—I
don’t complain, Master Hackernagel, but the mess and grease after
there’s been a grand function on, is enough to send you into your
grave. Takes it out of a man, till he’s as dry as any rotten stick. I
don’t know that ever a cup of good wine comes amiss to an honest man,
Master Tobias, but the morning after a red-letter day——”

“You drink wine?” queried Tobias, attentively considering the flesh
tints of the sacristan’s nose.

“Give me my chance,” laughed Prudentius, “and I’ll soon answer you that
question.”

“You’re a merry fellow,” smiled Hackernagel responsively. “And differ
as we may,” he continued with an air of tolerance, which fitted him
about as well as a lion’s skin would fit a hyena, “differ doctrinally
as we may, far be it from me to assert that Scripture forbids
imbibation of the juice of the grape.”

“Forbids!” cried Prudentius, holding up his two hands. “Odds, my life,
man! It commands it! ‘Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.’ Ho!
ha! Twist, and turn it how you may, you can’t make any other rhyme or
reason out of that.”

“My friend,” returned the Syndic mildly, “do I wish to try? It is the
abuse of such lawful pleasures I condemn; not their use.”

“And I have heard say,” returned Prudentius, “that there are some folks
of your way of thinking, who carry that pretty far.”

“A mere invention of the enemy,” answered Tobias, waving away the
imputation.

“I’m not so sure,” answered Prudentius, blinking meditatively through
his half-closed eyelids; “I’ve got a cousin now, who has been for years
in the service of Sauersuss and Sons, the famous vine-growers out by
Treves, there, and they do business with that fellow Ezra Schlau, the
landlord of the ‘Three Ravens,’ down by the Fisherman’s Gate, and times
out of counting, I’ve heard Cousin Wendel say he’s their best customer;
for all he’s such a close-fisted dog. Their best customer both for
quantity and quality. None of your wish-wash for him. And Ezra’s a
heretic of just your very cut and colour, Master Hackernagel, if I’m
not out.”

“The Three Ravens is certainly a reformed house,” concluded the Syndic.

“Ah!” grinned Prudentius, “time it was, if some tales are true.”

“A most excellently conducted establishment,” hurried on Hackernagel;
“I speak from personal knowledge.”

“Of its liquor?” said Prudentius.

“Of its landlord,” returned Tobias; “and I can only say that I have
ever found him a shining example; a most precious saint among saints,
seeking unwearingly for whatsoever things are best.”

“Just that,” said Prudentius. “Just what Cousin Wendel says; and if it
wasn’t as much as my place is worth, to be seen within half-a-mile of
his reformed ramshackle rat-hole, I don’t say but what I shouldn’t have
more than half a mind to be finding my way down there, and letting him
have my opinion of his wares one of these fine days.”

“Or nights,” said the Syndic.

“Eh?” said Prudentius, jerking his shaven head attently on one side,
like a listening bird.

“I say, my good fellow, that if the narrowness of your creed shackles
your liberty by daylight, you’re not such an idiot, I suppose, as to
allow it to fetter you down after dark.”

“Oh well, you know,” returned Prudentius, “we’re under rule here.”

“Psha! you individually are not; your official duties exempt you from
the mill-wheel ways of the rest.”

“That’s true. Yes. My lord, in consideration of the weakness of the
flesh, has given me a dispensation from attending Compline after a hard
day of it.”

“Exactly.”

“But we are all of us locked up as tight as maggots in a cheese,
including my lord himself, by nine of the clock; and in half-an-hour
after, every man-jack of us is snug and snoring till Lauds.”

“Nearly five hours.”

“And bolted and barred——”

“And Brother Prudentius has the keys. Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the Syndic.

“Ha! ha! ha!” chimed in Prudentius. “By the mass,” he went on,
cogitatively smoothing his chin, “it wouldn’t be a mortal sin, I
suppose.”

“Sin, my good friend! Heaven forbid that I should lay a stumbling block
in your path. You have your dispensation. Can it concern my lord how
you choose to turn it to account? In swinish sleep, or in contemplating
calm moonlit nature?”

“That’s all fine enough talking,” said the sacristan, “but you don’t
know our chapter. If so much as a mouse hereabouts should come to know
that I’d been within a mile of that place, it would be better I hanged
myself at once.”

“Who is to know?”

“Conscience, Master Tobias. Conscience must, anyhow.”

“Pooh! give it liberty—for once,” sneered Hackernagel.

“Oh! that’s well enough for the like of you; but we’ve got to keep ours
straight and clear. We’ve got to make a clean breast of everything,
don’t you see.”

Tobias grew pale. “You’d never confess——”

“Needs must,” shrugged Prudentius, “when the devil drives.”

“But confess that, man! Like one of your sins?”

“Eh!” returned Prudentius, opening his round eyes to their widest, “and
Father Ottfried wouldn’t reckon my making a night of it down at your
Three Ravens, one of the smallest of the lot, I fancy.”

“Then,” said Tobias cheerfully, “don’t tell him about it. That’s all
you’ve got to do.”

“Is it?” said Prudentius, “and tumble out of the frying-pan into the
fire! No thanks, Syndic Hackernagel. Drink of that sort’s good stuff,
I grant you; but I don’t exactly feel inclined to lay perjury on my
conscience for the sake of it.”

“You’d find it worth the risk,” said Tobias in tones of mocking
contempt. “Ezra Schlau’s Niersteiner doesn’t find its match in all
Elsass. But what is it to me? do as you like.”

The sacristan’s full rosy lips fell moistly apart, but he continued to
shake his head resolutely.

“But tell me—seriously, my good friend. Let us put it, for the sake of
argument, that you were to confide this little frolic to your priestly
confessor, what do you imagine——”

“There’s no imagination about it,” ruefully interposed Prudentius,
“it’s as certain as that nose is on your face, that he’d set me down to
dry barley bread and cold water for the next six months.”

“Psha! That’s not what I mean. Would he dare to reveal your confession?”

“Ho! don’t you know better than that?” said Prudentius, compassionately
measuring the Anabaptist’s length and breadth. “No, not exactly; if he
cared to keep his skin whole on his body.”

“Bless me,” gaily cried the Syndic, “I’d no conception now, that
flaying alive was the penalty for betraying the secrets of the
confessional. Are you quite certain of this?”

“Well,” said the sacristan, “it’s something of the kind, more or less.”

“But nothing so very far short?” briskly pursued Tobias.

“Oh! it’s sharp enough anyhow. You’ll find it all set down in the canon
law, if you want to know. It may be hanging, drawing, and quartering
for all I can say. And he’d have his spiritual flaying alive in any
case.”

“Spiritual?”

“Ay, yes; he’d be unfrocked.”

“Bless me; how curious now.”

“It would be curious if he wasn’t,” irefully cried Prudentius. “Would
he be worthy of his cloth, after he’d broke his oath?”

“Not if he believed in—in the terms he swore by,” said Tobias, evading
his gossip’s eyes and glancing round the Platz.

“No honest man would swear by them, if he didn’t believe in them,” said
Prudentius, turning away in the direction of the neglected, but far
from forgotten broil.

“One instant, friend,” said Hackernagel, laying his hand on the
sacristan’s ample sleeve. “Do I understand you that the ecclesiastical
law is so startlingly severe?”

“Not severer I fancy than your civil law is on a man who is false
to his oath, eh! Syndic?” somewhat hotly rejoined Prudentius. “What
may be the punishment now over yonder,” and he pointed towards the
chancellery, “for perjury?”

“For per—per—” stammered the Syndic.

“Ay, for perjury. What may it be? You’ve got that at your finger ends,
I make no doubt.”

“I—upon my honour—I—you are—common law is not my province; and,” added
Hackernagel, breaking into a forced uneasy laugh, “what in the world
all this has to do with Ezra Schlau, I—I fail to see.”

“I haven’t the least doubt you know what’s what, Syndic,” said
Prudentius, shaking his head, “as well as the best of us; but it won’t
do. You see I’m a——”

“Fool! craven! chicken-livered papist!”

“No such thing,” said Prudentius, squaring sharply round. “Say that
again if you dare.”

“I do! I do!” hissed Tobias, jerking out his peaked little chin at
him. “Are these swaddling clothes,” and he contemptuously tweaked the
sacristan’s skirts, “that you may never drink a cup of wine without
asking your priests’ permission.”

“No such thing——”

“Do you call yourself a man——”

“No such thing.”

“Then prove it,” snarled back Tobias.

“I will,” hysterically said Prudentius.

“And when?”

“To-morrow—to-night. Just whenever you please. Just whenever you
please.”

“Softly! softly! my friend,” smiled Tobias. “Are you forgetting that
I’m to stand treat? and I—my engagements, you understand, do not leave
me free this next day or two. What do you say, for the sake of being
definite, to this day week?”

“Won’t do at all,” said Prudentius, shaking his head; “it’s the eve of
Saint Laurence.”

“And what then? If you wait till its neither fast nor feast with you,”
growled Tobias, “you may wait till doomsday.”

“But the eve of Saint Laurence, surely you forget, Master Tobias, and
next day the Horologe day.”

“And what that has to do with preventing you from drinking a cup of
wine is past my comprehension. Certainly, I know as well as you do that
Tuesday is what Saint worshippers are pleased to call Saint Laurence’s
day; when this clock, which it appears to me is turning the heads of
everybody——”

“Well,” interrupted the sacristan, “and think of all the preparations.
Think of the chairs, and flowers, and trumpets, and flags, and candles,
and crowds and crowds there’s room to be made for. Why, already I’m off
my head nearly.”

“If not quite,” soothed Tobias, patting the little man’s shoulder, “if
not quite. It really is painful,” he added sighingly, “to see such zeal
and talented energy as yours thrown away on the serving of idols and
gew-gaw trumperies. But, my worthy friend, I know as well as you do,
that every detail is to be complete by the stroke of midday on Monday,
by order of the Municipal Council. Did not I myself, in my official
capacity, sign the order?”

“They may order as much as they please,” grumbled Prudentius, “we shall
never be ready.”

“And what,” continued Tobias, “can be more refreshing after such hard
physical toil, than a cup of good wine?”

“And ready or not ready,” went on Prudentius, “every door of the place
is to be closed by dusk on Monday evening.”

“Precisely.”

“And not a soul, not my lord himself, is to be let come inside after.
Unless, of course, Master Dasipodius may please to ‘look in,’ as he
always calls it, poor gentleman!”

“When?—at what hour?” sharply demanded Tobias.

“Oh! betimes in the morning, before the doors are open. Just to make
sure the last pin’s stuck in straight.”

“The last pin?”

“Why, that it’s all ready, don’t I mean.”

“He would do it before about eight of course.”

“I wouldn’t swear to that. Our Professor is in general as regular about
his comings and goings as his own foot-rule; but o’Monday night, I
shouldn’t feel myself safe from him, so to speak, after daylight; and
I was thinking of asking my lord’s permission to stay all night in the
Cathedral, in case of accidents.”

“Accidents?”

“Ah! I mean, just for the sake of being ready.”

“Oh! just so,” said Tobias.

“It isn’t everybody of course would care to offer such a thing in the
dead hours, when you can’t hear so much as a mouse stirring outside.
It’s trying to the nerves; most trying.”

“And what braces them better than the juice of the grape? So come,
friend sacristan,” and Tobias slapped the custodian’s broad back with
engaging familiarity. “I’m none so unreasonable after all. Eh?—ha, ha,
ha!”

“Ha, ha, ha! you’re a sly one, you are,” laughed Prudentius, bestowing
an appreciative dig into the Anabaptist’s lean ribs; “and hang me if I
don’t take a look in at your Three Ravens o’Monday night as you say——”

“Hush! Hold your peace!” snapped Hackernagel, in sharp, savage
undertones, which effectually scared the sacristan’s hilarity,
while the Syndic’s jaws fell with an audible chap into their normal
longitude, as Gretchen Hackernagel, basket on arm, stood at his elbow.
“Gretchen, my good girl!” he asked turning on her, “what do you do
here?”

“Do?” mechanically echoed the girl, in whose eyes, as she turned them
on Prudentius, and then on her father’s face, was a strange bewildered
expression, “I was—only—on my—way to market.”

“And is this the—way to market?” mimicked Tobias, joining his arms into
hers, and roughly dragging her from the spot. “What were you doing
there?” he demanded, in curiously less honeyed accents, when they were
well out of the sacristan’s hearing. “Skulking about?”

“Father, I had but just crossed over, out of the hot sun.”

“By my soul!” he growled, letting his hand slip to her wrist, and
tightening his grip till she cried out with the pain, “if it were hot
as——”

“Father!”

“Let me catch you again within a street’s length of these popish walls,
and—What did you hear me say? What was I saying? Eh? eh?”

“Nothing, father,” faltered the trembling girl.

“Sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Did you hear me—smile?”

“I—I—fancied——”

“It was with pity then; of deepest, tenderest, heavenliest compassion
for—for that poor lost sheep Prudentius. Do you understand? Hey, do you
understand? Speak.”

“Yes, father,” answered Gretchen, casting down her eyes.

“Good. Now go,” said Tobias, releasing her and sending her on her ways
with a rough push. “And if you’re going to buy capons, see you give the
fellow half what he asks, and not a heller more. And hark you here, no
dead flesh mind; pick them out alive, and see them pinned through the
neck yourself.”




CHAPTER LIX.

WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK.


Whether Dasipodius’ visit at the Munster-gasse had brought Sabina
consolation, or rendered her fifty times more wretched, she was wholly
unable to determine; only she knew that her young life had come to
be very very hard to bear, and there were times when her desolation
was so utterly unendurable, that she was fain to creep away like some
poor sick animal, and do battle alone with her grief. Very womanfully
she strove to stifle into silence the memories which were as dear to
her as they were bitter. The more effectually to live them down, the
little woman had a habit of selecting that spot for her meditations
where hardly more than six months since, she and Conrad Dasipodius had
plighted their mutual troth.

There had been snow on the ground then, icicles had hung from the bare
trees, and the north-east wind had whistled over the frozen river, but
then there had been beating against each other two warm hearts which
knew not cold. Now there was but one, lonely and chilled to the core;
and not all the sunlight smiling so cheerily among the branches, and
flecking the grassy banks, and sparkling diamond-bright among the Ill’s
gentle ripples, could shed into it one ray of genuine warmth.

There was not a single word of that brief sweet stolen interview which
the girl had not treasured up; and the spot’s associations so vividly
recalled the mathematician’s every look and accent, that sometimes
Sabina almost cheated herself into the belief that all the later past
was some ugly dream, and that still he was beside her murmuring those
words of love. “Is it to end like this?” he had asked; and oh Heaven!
to think of the passionate tenderness breathing through his low calm
tones then! To end like this! Ah me! ah me! And then—then those strange
words more enigmatical now their signification had been in some sort
solved, than then when it had been utterly obscure to her. “Darling, I
think I could work miracles for your sake. And you? You will be brave
for mine?”

And belted knight was not braver than that love-lorn girl. She had not
dreamed then that it was such sort of courage which would have been
required of her. The giving up of his love itself; the very life’s
blood and nourishment of hers. Her pride of maidenhood would have
simply whispered her that if such a fearsome chance as that should
befall, then at one and the same breath, hers for him must perish too.
And yet the love she was bearing him now, outshone the old affection as
the finer’s gold outshines the earth-dulled nugget. Brave for his sake?
Ay, ay, for his sake.

And so one of those latter July mornings, Sabina von Steinbach, as
many a time she had done, and looked to do again, having set household
matters in good training for the day, donned hood and mantle, and
intimated to Niklaus, with a kiss on his bald crown, that she was going
out.

“Ay. So do, heart’s dear one,” said the Burgomaster, looking up from
his ledgers. “So do. The fresh air will give your cheeks some roses,
and I would come with you if——” and then he glanced with divided
affection from his girl’s face to the huge folios before him. “Shall I?”

“No, Väterle,” hurriedly assured Sabina. “I shall do quite well alone.
I am only going to take a little stroll by the river.”

“Bless my soul!” half-frowningly, half-smilingly soliloquized Niklaus
when she was gone. “What a fancy she always has for the river to be
sure! Now I call it rather a dismal sort of a promenade myself; but I
expect she carries her pockets full of crumbs for that posse of ducks
and geese that always quack one deaf just about there. That’s the
secret of it. Never was such a girl as she is for dumb animals!”

A veritable lover’s walk of summer evenings was that tree-bordered
river path leading from below the fishmarket, out under the bridges
to the Fisherman’s Gate. In the forenoon however the place was quiet
enough; and once past the St. Stephen’s Tower, it was (save for the
waterfowl, who, boasting an island domain somewhere out in midstream,
were given to prosecuting voyages of discovery along the banks) silent
and sequestered as saddest heart could desire; and Sabina, strolling
slowly onward, barely anticipated encountering a single straggler.
As however she neared the spot sacred to her hopeless love, which
stood somewhat hidden by a bend in the path, and shaded round by tall
bramble bushes, her ear caught a low wailing sound, broken by cruel
sobbings. Instinctively she stopped and listened. A woman’s voice! and
she made a step forward.

“Lonely and miserable is she, poor thing,” murmured the girl to
herself, the ready sympathy welling up into her eyes. “And why, I
wonder? why?”

With a light warning rustle of the bushes, Sabina stepped forward,
and found herself in the presence of a woman seated on the trunk of a
fallen tree; a market-basket, whence straggled the dislocated necks
of a couple of capons into the long rank grass, lying beside her.
Unconscious of the intruder, her face hidden in her arms folded upon
her lap, she sat rocking herself to and fro, moaning, “Otto—Otto—my
Otto!” and not a word besides.

“Why, Gretchen!—Gretchen Hackernagel,” said Sabina in a soft tone of
recognition.

“Who sent for you, Sabina von Steinbach?” fiercely demanded the
Syndic’s daughter, sitting bolt upright, and tossing back the red
golden luxuriant hair, all dank and tear matted, while she stared
through her blurred eyes at the intruder. “Who sent for you?” If
anything could have aggravated the girl’s misery, it was this most
palpable reminder of the existence of her, whom Gretchen in some sort
regarded as her rival in the graceless Otto’s affections.

“Dear Gretchen”—began Sabina.

“Leave me alone!” sobbed out the unhappy girl. “I hate vipers.”

“You hate?” reiterated the puzzled Sabina.

“Vipers. That’s what I said, Miss Innocence; and I suppose you’re as
happy as the day is long, now you’ve managed to coax him back. And—oh,
isn’t it nice to have come here, and caught me crying about him? Only
I wasn’t. Don’t flatter yourself. Cry about him indeed! Oh!” and she
laughed hysterically. “I like that. He’d be a rare fine bargain to cry
about.”

“He?”

“Ho! don’t stare at me like that, you false cat, you. You think I don’t
know. But I do—I do. And you’d like to be having them all to twist
round your little finger, wouldn’t you, if you could, and then bid them
be off for a pack of idiots: like you served Master Dasipodius. Oh, ho!
don’t I know? Doesn’t all Strassburg know?”

“Like I——” faltered Sabina, turning deadly pale. “Do you know what
you’re saying, Gretchen Hackernagel?”

“Every bit as much as you do, Sabina von Steinbach,” retorted Gretchen,
in broken but fierce tones, rising and picking up her basket, and
stepping a pace or two forward, she stood boldly confronting Sabina
with her tear-swollen eyes. “I suppose it doesn’t want spectacles to be
seeing that the prosperous Catholic Burgomaster’s dainty daughter is
a better bargain than the disgraced Protestant, Tobias Hackernagel’s.
Oh, no, he’s sharp enough when it suits him, is Otto—Otto!” and at the
name’s recurrence, her tears broke forth afresh, “and—do you hear—ah!
don’t go on staring at me like that. It will drive me mad—mad.”

“I won’t. I won’t,” assured Sabina, fixing her astonished gaze more and
more persistently on the broken-hearted Gretchen.

“And next, I suppose,” continued Gretchen, “you’ll be making believe
you know nothing about it all. Have done!” for Sabina strove to speak,
“telling me you don’t know where he went the other night, after he’d
rushed off like a whirlwind, swearing it was for ever—and ever—and
ever—oh.”

“Do you mean Otto——”

“Yes, yes, I mean—oh.”

“By our dear Lady’s honour, I do not know,” asseverated Sabina, lifting
her blue eyes from Gretchen’s to the hardly bluer sky, “for I have not
seen Otto for an age. He has not been near our house for——”

“Well?”

“Ah, for more than a fortnight.”

Gretchen’s face softened perceptibly.

“And,” continued Sabina, “tell me, Gretchen, calmly—if you can. You do
not mean that you and Otto have quarrelled?”

“He has,” said Gretchen, wiping her eyes, and turning them shyly, and
more than half emptied of their harsh mistrust and defiance, on Sabina.

“But, dear child, what about?” insisted Sabina, laying her hand
caressingly on Gretchen’s.

“Ah!” sneered Gretchen, shaking it off. “Now you’d dearly like to know,
wouldn’t you.”

“Indeed I would, if it could help to right it for you, Gretchen.
Else,” added she with a sigh, and in tones of such weary unmistakable
indifference, that Gretchen started and stood intently studying her sad
patient face, “else I care little enough I think.”

Hitherto there had been small enough sympathy between these two. The
devout Catholic girl with her illuminated missal and her thousand and
one quaint legends of Mother Mary and the Saints, shrank from the more
bare verities of the faith in which Gretchen Hackernagel had been
reared. She could not sit down and share with her dreamy speculations
over the Stigmata of gentle Friar Francis, the “Tolle lege” of the
great Father Augustine, the sweet charity of the blessed Elizabeth
of Hungary, or make with her brain pictures of Heaven’s golden gates
and sapphire walls. For Gretchen Hackernagel, these things wore no
vitality or colour, and her life’s conditions had only shown her the
Christian religion as a hard ungracious task-mistress. Then too, on her
part, Gretchen had for so long secretly hated Sabina as her formidable
rival; and so it had come to be that these two, occasionally thrown
together, were acquaintances, not friends. Yet now those last simple
words of Sabina’s had struck a chord of sympathy in Gretchen’s heart.
It may have been their sad hopelessness, or perhaps the ring of gentle
forbearance to which Gretchen was such a stranger in her own house,
that touched her.

“And I think,” went on Sabina, after a brief pause, “you will like best
to be alone again. If indeed,” she added wistfully, “I can do nothing
to help you to win that—win Otto back.”

“Would you?” and with keenly searching eyes, Gretchen looked into
Sabina’s face. “Would you indeed do that?”

“Ay, indeed,” said Sabina in tones of grave assurance. “Indeed, if
I could. Tell me how, Gretchen?” and again she laid her hands on
Gretchen’s, and this time they were not shaken off. “Tell me what I
could do?”

“He minds all you say to him,” said Gretchen, gazing with gloomy
speculation into the river. “It has always been Cousin Sabina this,
Cousin Sabina that, till I have just hated the very sound of your name.”

“Nay, now, Otto is my cousin,” contented Sabina, “and if he should like
me a little, that is only his duty; he would be dreadfully wicked if he
didn’t, and I won’t have you angry with him, or me either, for that,
you naughty child. If he likes ‘Cousin Sabina,’ isn’t it one Gretchen
Hackernagel we know, he has asked to be his wife? and that should be
enough, and a great deal more too,” she added with a little sigh, “if
you love him, Gretchen, as many a time he has told me he loves you,
don’t you know,” argued the cunning Sabina. “Come now, tell me. This is
no more surely than a little passing cloud between you?”

But Gretchen shook her head. “You know nothing about it,” she said.

“Nay, very well then; I will go. It would make me sorry to have you
fancying I was meddling in what does not concern me. So good-bye,
Gretchen Hackernagel;” and she turned and strolled homeward by the path
she had come, musing greatly as she went.

“Now, what can those two ridiculous creatures have found to quarrel
about? Just as if there wasn’t real misery—oh dear! of all sorts in the
world, without their making up any. Poor dear thing! I won’t have it.
No,” and the little autocrat pursed her lips resolutely, and set down
her small foot as she walked, “I will not have such absurd nonsense,
and I shall tell Otto so.”

Her opportunity speedily presented itself; for she came face to
face with that young gentleman as she turned the corner of the
Munster-gasse, and learning that she had something very particular
indeed to say to him, he followed her, most lamb-like of captives, to
the house, where his brain having been rendered lucid by a tankard of
ale, Sabina demanded without further preamble, “What he meant by it?”
and when, not quite unexcusably perhaps, he said, “Mean by what?” all
the answer she vouchsafed was, “Oh, you know very well”.

“Upon my honour.”

“Honour! Oh, really, now, that’s too good,” sarcastically flushed up
the indignant little lady. “A great deal too good. And you treating
poor Gretchen so. Oh, whistle as much as you like, sir,” as Otto
indulged in a long low sibilation. “That shows how true it all is; and
I know all about it, I tell you. Yes—all.”

“By Jove, you do!” cried he, starting up.

“By Jove, I do,” nodded she; “and now, see here, Otto, if you don’t go
back this minute, and make up with her, I’ll—I’ll never speak to you
again.”

“But—but—” said Otto, staggered by the awful threat, “but, look here.”

“I won’t,” she said, throwing her hood down on the table, and smoothing
back her bright ripples of hair, she seated herself at her frame, and
proceeded to stab her tapestry work with extraordinary energy. “And I
hate the sight of you, cross-grained, false, unkind, cruel creature
that you are. I should like to stick you all over with this needle;
that I should.”

“But, Cousin Sabina——”

“Oh! I’m no cousin of yours, I can tell you; and I won’t be. Never
again till”—and then just the very faintest flicker of a smile relaxed
the tightened lips—“till you turn Gretchen Hackernagel into another
cousin for me.”

“Are you so very anxious then for the connection, Sabina?” demanded
Otto in tones whose measured soberness impelled her to look up at him.

“That,” she answered, more composedly resuming her work, “has nothing
to do with it. A promise is a promise. Is it or isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes; all that.”

“And you’ve promised to marry Gretchen Hackernagel. Have you or haven’t
you?” persisted his stern inquisitrix.

“Yes! oh, yes; you know,” said Otto, “all that. I don’t deny that.”

“Very well then.”

“But look here, Sabina. You wouldn’t—I say you know, look here now,
Tobias Hackernagel is such an infernal old rascal.”

“For shame!” said Sabina with an odd gleam of satisfaction dancing
under the cast-down eyelids.

“Oh well, it’s the same thing. He would be, if he dared.”

“Are you going to marry Tobias Hackernagel?” she demanded grimly.

“Upon my word and honour now, Sabina,” cried the despairing derelict,
“who’d have imagined you’d go looking at it in that light? I should
have—hem—supposed that you of all others—that—that—oh! really, you
can’t understand all about it; you can’t indeed!”

“I can, sir; I do, I tell you. I know a great deal too much; and I hate
people who—who make love to girls, and then, well, change their minds,
and want to draw back. And why pray? Just because fathers-in-law are
not saints.”

“It’s just because he is one,” groaned Otto, “that there’s no knowing
how to take him.”

“It isn’t very likely,” she rejoined, “that I should be fond of Syndic
Hackernagel. You ought to know that, Otto. I think you do,” and Sabina
bent her head very low over her work, to examine some ugly flaw in the
golden thread she was using. “But I’m a woman for all that; and I
should hope I’m able to reason properly, and I tell you that you are
very unreasonable, and very, very wicked, and very, very, very cruel,
and—oh, so horribly, so detestably stupid,” and the thread snapped off
at a tangent, “not to know a good thing when you’ve got it.”

“A good thing?” vacuously echoed Otto.

“Oh thou dear Heaven!” sighingly ejaculated Sabina, a bright rose-flush
dyeing her pale cheeks. “How plain one has to speak, to be sure! Yes,
that’s what I said, sir. A good thing. A true woman’s love.”

“Oh, well, as to that,” returned he, stroking his hyacinthine locks,
“there’s no end of it. I mean, you know, there are heaps of girls.”

“Otto,” gravely said Sabina, pausing in her work, and resting her hand
on the frame’s edge, “there is not the faintest necessity for you to be
telling me that our Antinous there,” and she pointed with her needle
out to the courtyard fountain, on whose marble ledge a magnificent
peacock stood pluming his spread tail, and arching his satin neck in
the mid-day sunlight, “is nothing like the vain, conceited animal you
are. But girls, as a rule—as a rule, mind—don’t like that sort of
thing. I don’t, for example; it’s turning things, as it were, wrong end
first. And you may look a long time—a very long time—before you’ll find
any other girl to worship and bow down to you, and make you everybody,
and herself nobody, as Gretchen Hackernagel does.”

“I do think she’s fond of me,” languidly smiled he.

“She loves you, Otto. Trust me. I know, I can tell; loves you
dearly—dearly. And will you throw such love away? Do you want her heart
to break for your sake? Would that be a triumph to please you?”

Otto was not sure that it might not be; but he felt Sabina’s gentle
eyes upon him, and contrived to look contrition’s very incarnation.
Sabina gathered courage.

“Would you like her death to be at your door?” she hurried on.

“Oh, _Himmelsdonnerwetter!_ What things you do say to be sure, Sabina.
No, of course not. Who would? I only thought——”

“Of yourself, as you always do,” she said in stern reproach. “But
Otto—dear Otto,” and then her tones softened, and she rose, and coming
beside him, laid her hand lightly on his shoulder, “if you have any
heart at all, and indeed I know you have, take back, take back this
that the good God has given you, and thank Him on your knees you
have not lost it for your carelessness.” But he only shook his head
gruntingly.

“Do you know,” she went on, “how many there are who have played away
with such a thing, or misused it, or lost it—nay, I do not know how.
I cannot tell. Maybe because it never was really and truly theirs, as
Gretchen’s has been—is yours, Otto.”

“It’s an awful sacrifice,” grumbled he, thrusting his hands into his
pockets, and surveying, in a sort of absent admiration, his pair of
outstretched comely legs, “and then it’s frightful to think what
that dispensation for marrying a heretic will cost. It’s a precious
extravagant game; and upon my honour, I don’t altogether think it’s
worth its candle. I—I don’t mind telling you I don’t, Sabina.”

“And I wonder you’re not ashamed of yourself for your pains!” flashed
she.

“And if I _do_ do it, I do it against my better conscience look you;
utterly and entirely against my better conscience.”

“Oh, never mind your conscience!” joyfully cried the unprincipled
little woman. “Now go—do,” and she sent forward the chair in which
he was tilting himself at perilously sharp angles, with such force,
that he had to spring to his feet to save himself the alternative of
measuring his length on the floor, “go and set about it at once.”

“Oh, I can’t do that. No, look here now, Sabina, you can’t make me do
that.” And Otto emphatically shook his head. “I’d sooner die. See now.
I’ve sworn I’ll never set foot in his house again.”

“What a silly boy you are,” laughed she.

“Oh, you may call me names, but hang it, I mean to stick to that, so
there!”

“Then do,” she said, still quietly laughing to herself, “go to the
Fisherman’s Walk, and if she’s not gone, she’s sitting there—in that
little nook, you know it, don’t you, Otto? just short of the St
Stephen’s Tower, where I left her, sobbing her heart out, and all for a
piece of rubbish like you.”

“Do it on the sly. Be clandestine, be——”

“Oh, Sabina!”

“Ah, be what you will, if only you do it at once, and—see now, Otto, if
she’s gone, find her—wherever it is. Yes?”

“Oh, all right,” grunted he.

“You’re safe, you know, always to find her on the way to market at all
events.”

“And how is it possible for me, I should like to know, to be leaving
the Studio at such an hour?” objected the ardent lover.

“Ah, just as if Conr—the Professor Dasipodius was as strict upon you
as all that! I’m quite sure you’re not so precious as not to be spared
one little half hour. Come now, if you make good haste, you’ll catch
her now. I will walk with you as far as your house. Radegund seemed but
poorly last night, and I want to see her, and try to cheer her up a
bit. So come. I will take your arm, Cousin Otto, if you’re so gallant
as to lend it to me.”

And after this fashion, Sabina compassed the getting of Otto as far on
his quest as the corner of the Domplatz.




CHAPTER LX.

“MAN PROPOSES.”


Preparations, as the sacristan has told Tobias Hackernagel, are being
made on a grand scale for the Horologe’s unveiling and inauguration.

In the Cathedral, High Mass having first been celebrated by the Lord
Bishop, the Horologe is to be solemnly denuded of its bonds and
shroudings; and a musical service of strophe and antistrophe, decani
and cantoris is to follow, especially arranged by Master Wolfgang
Dachstein for the occasion, and to swell whose triumph burst, all the
city’s capable harps, sackbuts, and dulcimers have been chartered. An
Orpheus indeed, Master Dachstein, with his music that promises to hush
down for once the strife of tongues, and charm into one vast friendly
concourse under the mighty old Cathedral’s roof, men and women of all
persuasions.

The bishop and his chapter are to preside; and Strassburg’s civic
dignity is to be represented by all her chief magnates, Town Council,
University rector and dons. A raised crimson-draped dais, flower
garlanded, has been erected for all those engaged in the making of the
Horologe, and the central figure of this goodly body will of course be
the Professor Conrad Dasipodius. These duly accommodated with specially
assigned seats, “first come, first served” is to be the order of the
day; and Teutonic endurance will meet a crucial testing, since by seven
o’clock ante-meridian, Brother Prudentius is to open the great western
portals, and admit the outside world to the broad nave and aisles of
the church, although not sooner than ten o’clock the long procession,
with wreath and banner, and smoking censer, will enter in ceremonial
and festive garb; and chanting the introit as they proceed to the
celebration of Mass at the High Altar. But, as Prudentius says, it will
be such an affair as you’ll never see the like of again if you lived to
the age of Methusalem; and if you can’t keep yourself still for three
hours for the sake of it, you must be poor creatures!

By almost general consent, party differences have then been sunken on
this august occasion. Rector Sturm of the University, albeit of the
new persuasion, is no bigot, and all the professors have followed his
suit, and accepted my Lord Bishop’s invitation to attend the ceremony.

The municipality, consisting, indeed, of many Lutherans and Calvinists,
has also signified that it will have pleasure in attending; and the
science of Professor Dasipodius seems to present a basis of unanimity
and cordiality which gladdens the hearts of most.

One member only of the municipality, Master Syndic Hackernagel,
declines to countenance the festivities. “Is it to be supposed, or
conceived, or imagined,” as he pathetically puts it in his response
to the invitation, that he should dream of imperilling his precious
soul’s welfare by putting even as much as his head inside the place?
and then with phraseological flow and elegant circumlocution, he sets
forth some few of his motives for refusing to be present at what he
styles a preposterous piece of papistical pageantry. Before it had been
half read through, however, this priceless document, forwarded in due
course to the Horologe Managing Committee, and intended by the inditer
to be preserved among the city archives, owing to pressure of affairs,
got set aside for the moment, with a view to after consideration; and
by misadventure slipped into my lord’s chaplain’s waste-paper basket,
so that it was never known in its entirety. Had it been read to its
ending, it would have been found that Syndic Hackernagel further
intimated his intention of withdrawing the light of his countenance
from the very city itself on the great festival day; and in order to
avoid as much as possible all their profane preparations, contemplated
taking his departure early on the preceding evening. “Your scarlet, and
purple, and fine linen offend my vision. Your sweet odours and incense
stink in my nostrils,” politely wrote the Syndic. “Is this a time, oh!
sons and daughters of Adam, to pipe and to make merry?”

That it is, clearly speaks the prevailing opinion; and the old free
city vies with the Cathedral in preparations for pranking herself out
with gay garlands and streamers, and gorgeous Flanders tapestry; and
the solemnities over, there is to be rope-dancing and mountebanking,
and rumour, though some hold that news too good to be true, says
the conduits are to run with wine; and at sundown there is to be a
magnificent civic banquet, when health and long years to the Professor
Dasipodius is to be drunk with three times three; and for those who
do not regard play-acting as the devil’s own pastime, there will be
performed the merry comedy of “The Birds,” done into the vulgar tongue;
but since even Aristophanes made easy may prove _caviare_ to some
of the groundlings, the whole is to conclude with a fytte or two of
mummery and buffoonery; so that sage and simple, rich wits and poor
ones, and no wits at all, may have their fill of pleasure. Lastly,
when darkness has quite set in, a fine transparency, allegorical of
everything, is to be lit up, and fireworks are to turn night into day,
and proclaim to Elsass far and near that the famous Horologe stands
complete in all its wonder and beauty. And so “man proposes”.

The mainspring of all this busy stir, Professor Conrad Dasipodius, in
his own heart of hearts, is hardly so enraptured as some consider it
behoves him, at all these noisy honours. To begin with, a brand new
suit of clothes will have to be struggled with on that hot auspicious
morning; for hot most unmistakably it promises to be; and although the
raiment’s magnificence is of the soberest sort, still it is new; and
Dasipodius abhors new clothes, and all his mathematical genius has no
more helped him to solve the problem of fitting himself comfortably
into a yesterday’s made doublet, than it has revealed to him the way of
fitting square into round. It is a minor evil, but it worries him in an
ever-present sort of way, just as does the consciousness of his having
to make a speech at that banquet; and the mathematician is not great
at sparkling rhetorical impromptu. All this is the Nemesis of genius,
impregnating its laurels with a bitter taste; and Dasipodius utters a
passing word of impatience over it to Isaac Habrecht, accompanied by a
sighing wish that the day were well over, and the world in its senses
and its work-a-day dress again. But for once the great mathematician
has miscalculated; and his perplexities find no sympathy from the
downright unsentimental Switzer, who wholly and unreservedly sides
with the populace. “They were never more in their senses than they are
now,” roundly asseverates he, “when they’ve made up their minds to give
honour to whom honour is due. They’ve got certain rotten-egg scores to
wipe off, and they know it; and how they—ha! ha! ha!—how they did hoist
that young jackanapes up aloft.”

“For pity’s sake!” laughed Dasipodius, “I hope they will not extend
any such attentions to me. One must need sharp eyes for such giddy
elevations. I can’t conceive how he managed to hold on.”

“He didn’t—long,” sardonically grinned Isaac. “He came down like a
plummet.”

“Never mind, Isaac, let that be; Otto’s an honest lad enough, and he’s
done good work lately.”

“Ay,” grunted Isaac; “I’m not going to deny that; and I’m right glad
he’s to be one of us when we take our seats on that fine dais they’re
hammering up—alongside of you, master.”

“You on my right hand, is it not so?” asked Dasipodius.

“Nay,” rejoined Isaac; “I on your left. Mistress Radegund on your
right.”

“Ay, to be sure. How could I forget her? That comes of being the
poor blind mole I am. Place of course to fair ladies; and our gifted
townswoman will look a veritable rose among weeds like us, eh, Isaac?”

“It will be but a white one then,” answered he. “Mistress Radegund has
grown sadly pale and thin lately.”

“Why, that is bad hearing,” said Dasipodius in a tone of real concern.
“She has been working too hard perhaps?”

“I do not know,” shrugged Isaac. “I see only she is greatly changed
these last few months; since about—well, I think you would scarcely
recognise her, if——”

“If I could see her? I hope it would not be so bad as that. You are a
croaker, Isaac, and see through grey spectacles.”

“May be so,” acquiesced Isaac, “but I’m not the only one who does, I
take it. Doctor Wolkenberg, and he should know, sees it too, or I much
mistake.”

“I think you must,” returned the mathematician. “He has breathed no
hint of it to me.”

“Like enough,” sententiously responded Habrecht, glancing up from his
work at the calm blind face before him. “Men—nor women neither, I
suppose, don’t always say all they think. If they did, the world would
be pretty soon upside down.”

“True, true,” said Dasipodius absently; “and now can you tell me,” he
went on, “since you seem to be having the order of the day at your
fingers’ ends, how the—the other ladies are to be placed?”

“The ladies,” echoed Isaac, looking up again from his brass filings,
and fixing his eyes with an air of profound mystification on his chief.
Had he heard aright? “Did you say—the ladies?”

“Why not?” challenged Dasipodius, turning away and bending over the
sill of the lattice to fling it wider open.

When he faced round again, there was a deep flush on his pale
cheek, possibly the result of his struggle with the window hook. “I
simply asked you how the ladies, the Syndics’, and professors’, and
Burgomasters’ wives and sisters and daughters are to be accommodated?”

“Oh bravely. Though it is said that there’s no end of hubbub and
squabbling going on about it. They all want the best places, you see.
Frau this vows she won’t sit second to Frau that; and Frau the other’s
madly jealous of both. I expect the committee’s got a nice time of
it between them all. Mistress Sabina von Steinbach,” went on Isaac,
scraping away with increased vigour, “has a special seat assigned her,
as chief Burgomaster’s daughter. And lovelier Queen of Beauty never
graced knightly tournament. ’Tis a pity our Lily’s heart is not as
gentle as her face.”

“What did you say, Isaac?” sternly demanded Dasipodius.

“I say,” replied the shifty Isaac, “that folks do say Mistress Sabina
has declined to be present.”

“Likely as not,” sighed Dasipodius; “but on what ground?”

“A woman’s; that never yet grew rhyme nor reason. But I say it’s not
true. She’ll be there. Trust her for it. Oh yes.”

“Do you think——” said Dasipodius brightening.

“I think never was raree show that didn’t bring young maids, ay,
and old ones too, and matrons too, to say nothing of the widows,
out of their shells, like snails after a shower. They’re all of one
weft—women.”

“What a misogynist you’re grown,” said Dasipodius with a faint smile.

“Am I?” said Isaac, pushing his tools together, and pocketing the
result of his labours. “Well, Strassburg seems to me a rare good
training school for that craft.”




CHAPTER LXI.

ST. STEPHEN’S TOWER.


When Otto von Steinbach reached the St. Stephen’s Tower, he found
his Ariadne gone. Calmly consoling himself with the reflection that
to-morrow would do just as well, he went home again; and after
some little beating about the bush, informed his sister that he
had determined on mending the breach between himself and Gretchen
Hackernagel; at the first blush of which piece of intelligence,
Radegund was inclined to be angry; but the natural generosity of her
soon asserted itself, whispering that the course was the only right
one, and “at least, poor child,” as she said, “there will be one heart
with a little peace in it again.” Otto, however, said he didn’t know
so much about that, and that, turn it how you might, right it would
never be. How was it possible, for example, that Tobias Hackernagel
would tolerate a son-in-law who refused to enter his house; and enter
it, the young man swore to himself, no powers natural or supernatural,
nor the two combined, should induce him. Their meetings would, as a
consequence, have to be _sub rosâ_ ones; and altogether, take it at its
best, it was an awful nuisance; but then he had promised Sabina, and
come what may, a fellow must stick to his promise.

On being pressed by Radegund touching his suddenly conceived abhorrence
of Tobias Hackernagel, Otto first grew furious, and then falling fathom
deep into sulky silence, he finally betook himself to bed, where
only he felt secure from further cross-questioning. Next morning,
being the Saturday preceding the all-important Tuesday, he, fearing
to be importuned afresh, made a desperate attempt to get out of the
house before his sister showed herself; but she detecting him in very
_flagrante delicto_, dragged him back into the hall, and placing in
his hand a key, desired him to carry it across, and deliver it to the
Bishop, “and to my lord himself mind; and no one else,” adjured she.
“He has just sent for it.”

“If it is so particular,” crossly returned Otto, “why on earth don’t
you do it yourself?”

“Because,” returned she, “it is impossible for me to leave the house
just now. The Countess of Rumpelpuppelschnarchenstein is waiting in my
studio to begin a sitting, and she’s frowning thunderbolts already,
because I begged her to excuse me for an instant. So run now, Otto,
there’s a dear boy.”

But Otto did not run; he dawdled at snail’s pace across the Platz,
keeping up a grumbling commentary as he went. “I don’t half like the
job,” he soliloquized, “and what’s more, I shan’t do it. That place,”
and he glowered up at the massive stone walls of the Episcopal Palace,
“always gives one the notion of a prison; as if one mightn’t get out
again if one once got in. And then, my lord—well, Radegund may admire
him, but he’s got such a deuce of a way of looking one through and
through, as if—no, thank you. Besides, it’s not at all the proper sort
of way of giving up such an important trust. It’s informal, unbusiness
like, wretchedly unbusiness like. These women never do have any head
for that kind of thing. Wasn’t it my lord himself who delivered it
into her hands? and isn’t it she who ought to give it him back, her
own self? Of course, of course. It’s only my duty to point out to her
that it is her clear duty; hers and nobody else’s, certainly nobody
else’s. And as to his wanting it in such a hurry, that’s absurd.” And
Otto glanced towards the wide-open cathedral doors. “He can get in half
a dozen ways if he wants. And anyhow, when I come back will be time
enough, and to spare. No.”

And the ultimatum arrived at, Otto slipping the key into the breast
pocket of his doublet, walked on with the speed of a tortoise in the
direction of the river.

To-day crowned his quest, and he found Gretchen at the very spot
Sabina had indicated. The delicate mission he came on he accomplished
entirely to his own satisfaction, and with an ease that astonished even
himself. That Gretchen would refuse to receive him back into her good
graces, had not crossed his calculations for an instant; on that point
he was confident favour and prejudice would for once be on his side.
His great anxiety was that Gretchen should feel herself through and
through impressed and suffocatingly impregnated with the magnitude of
the sacrifice he was making. The selfishness which is part and parcel
of vacillating natures was Otto’s in abundance. He had, for example,
thought little of playing that sorry trick on his blind chief, which
had brought about such an evil, and involved himself so unpleasantly,
all because he happened to be annoyed at a few rebukeful words which,
after all, he richly deserved for his negligence. His careless head had
never calculated consequences, or indeed troubled itself to imagine
there could be any; but from a deliberately mean act, such as Tobias
Hackernagel had laid bare as the matured growth of his miserable little
soul, the young man’s nature instinctively shrank; and to shake off
everlastingly the poor scape-goat Gretchen, and wipe the dust of the
house of Hackernagel from his feet, had been not his first impulse
only, but the course he would have clung to and persisted in, had he
been left to his own devices. Against it had of course arisen that
difficulty of carrying his defection off bravely before the world. He
had been yesterday very near to making a clean breast of his whole
dilemma to Sabina; but for once he had held firm to his resolve, and
contrived to keep his own secret; not assuredly out of any compassion
for Hackernagel, but, though he hardly guessed it himself, from some
latent feeling of pity for the fair fame of Hackernagel’s daughters,
and especially for her whom he had at least distinguished by asking to
be his wife, dimly cognizant of the unpleasant truth that a stigma upon
her would in some sort besmirch himself. Understanding so thoroughly as
he did the conditions of Gretchen’s life, he was not disturbed by the
least fear that, all woman though she was, she would breathe a syllable
of that disgraceful encounter of which she had made herself witness.
And now, being driven into patching up a peace with Gretchen, there
was, as he affectionately remarked to her during their stolen meeting,
nothing left but to “make the best of it; and you are a good girl,
Gretchen, I do believe that, though you—oh come, don’t keep on crying
so, you know, don’t, I say.”

The poor girl’s happy tears, however, would rain so thick and fast,
that the breast of his brand new dove-coloured doublet got all wetted
and stained with them, and was obliged to be sent to the tailor’s next
day to get a fresh piece let in.

“You are a good girl,” he said, dragging from his breast pocket the end
of a wisp of gossamer he called his pocket handkerchief, and rubbing at
the marks. “A very good girl, and not a bit your rascally old father’s
daughter. And your mother must have been a good woman, and was, I
know, of high and gentle blood; else, my dear, Otto von Steinbach would
never have had anything more to say to you, be sure of it. No, not for
fifty Sabinas.”

“Sabina?” echoed Gretchen, looking up with suspicious eyes through her
tears into her lover’s face. “And what has she——”

“Oh, ah! h’m—yes,” said he, pulling the ends of his moustache with his
disengaged hand. “I—don’t you see—I happened to meet her yesterday
morning when—when I was hunting about after you, Gretchen; and we
just exchanged a word or two, she and I; and among other trifles she
happened to say she had seen you, Gretchen.”

“Yes, yes?”

“Ah well, and she’s an odd sort of girl, very odd, Sabina von
Steinbach. I’ve always told you she is; and—and pretty, eh? Yes?”

“That’s a matter of taste. Handsome is as handsome does,” tartly
enunciated his sweetheart.

“Then,” blurted Otto, “by that rule you should think her beautiful as
an angel, my dear; for if she had not told me you were breaking your
heart because—well, because you had not happened to have seen me this
last day or two, I was quite of two minds whether I should have come
looking you up just to-day. Quite of two minds.”

“I was as happy as a queen without you,” fibbed Gretchen. “Sabina
von Steinbach knew nothing at all about it; and I took pretty good
care to tell her she didn’t,” she pouted on with a toss of her head.
“What should she understand, I should like to know, about true love? A
coquette of a thing like her! playing fast and loose as she does with a
gentleman of Master Dasipodius’ sort.”

“Nay, now, Gretchen——”

“Oh, don’t tell me, sir. You’re as bad as all the rest of them, making
such a ridiculous fuss about her. Oh, yes of course, she’s a saint, an
angel, isn’t she? She can’t do wrong, no. Not even when she plays the
jilt and——”

“Be silent, Gretchen!” sternly commanded Otto; “you know nothing about
that. I do perhaps.”

“Oh, of course you do,” retorted the jealous Gretchen. “Anyhow you
think you do.”

“Just that,” nodded he. “I’ve got my reasons, and I don’t mind telling
you I think what I think,” and Sir Oracle looked volumes.

“Oh,” said Gretchen, pursing her lips.

“And I think,” blundered on the provoked lover, “that Sabina von
Steinbach loves Conrad Dasipodius every bit as dearly as—well—as you
love me, Gretchen.”

And to shield himself from any awkward consequences of the frankly
expressed opinion, Otto bent his head and imprinted a kiss on the lips
that were near; and though they flouted and pouted terrifically, they
made not the faintest effort to elude the salute.

“That won’t reach far then,” purred she with a smile that made her
ordinary face beautiful; and then shyly stealing a glance at her
handsome lover, she gazed up into the sailing sun-gilded clouds
overhead, and silently wondered what the dear Heaven itself could offer
her half so sweet as that moment. “No distance at all.”

“Only somewhere as far as death itself, Gretchen,” said the presuming
creature; “and as much beyond as may be needful, eh, my girl?”

“Do you think that?” demanded she, rousing from her blissful dream and
looking fixedly and thoughtfully into Otto’s face, as if some new light
had suddenly broken in upon her. “Do you think that, indeed, indeed?”

“By my honour I do,” he said earnestly.

“But can you swear to it?”

“I tell you I think. Isn’t that enough? And by the Mass! something
too much. So keep a silent tongue in that head of yours, do you hear,
Gretchen? I won’t have tittle-tattle. Do you hear, I say?”

She nodded.

“So, and now good-bye, child. Goodness knows when I shall see you
again. One of these fine days, I daresay. There now, there”—for still
she clung to him fast—“I must go, I must indeed. What if your father
should find us here! I say, you know, Gretchen!” remonstrated he.

“I shouldn’t care,” she smiled rapturously.

“Oh, but I should just. Come,” and he wrested from her fingers the
doublet they had drawn quite out of its elegant pleats, and set it in
order again, and patted down its gay passementerie. “Be a good child,
and don’t grizzle. Listen now, if you can get out without a chance of
being seen, safe and certain mind, I’ll meet you here again—let me
think—Wednesday morning. There now, what do you say to that?”

“And this Saturday!” was her slow whimpering comment.

“Well, look now, I’m so awfully busy, don’t you see. Tuesday the
Horologe day. I shall hardly have an instant to breathe till that’s
over. Dasipodius is so everlastingly wanting my opinion about this,
that, and the other; and I’m due over and over again at the Dial now.
And look, see, Gretchen, you wait here, don’t stir an inch, till you
think I’m well into town. Yes? It’ll never do for us two to be seen
anywhere near each other. I shouldn’t like it at all.”

“It’s so hard for you to be ashamed of me,” she said sadly.

“Oh, well, it—no, hang it, don’t say that, Gretchen. I’m not exactly
that. But—I might be prouder of you certainly. That is to say, of
course—well, you know, devil take it! I must be off, I must indeed.”
And breaking from her, and blowing her a kiss from his finger tips, he
was soon out of sight, whistling as he went; for he was pleased with
the noble and disinterested manner in which he had comported himself.

And she stood watching her lover’s receding figure until the windings
of the way hid him from her eyes. Then she sat down upon the bank
to revel for a few stolen moments in the ecstasy of her recovered
happiness. For her there is sunlight again now upon the river, and the
sky is translucent with Heaven’s own azure. The long grass and the
wayside flowers rustle and flutter so cheerily in the light noonday
breeze (which for the last day or two has sprung up a little stormily
perhaps), as if they were whispering all together of the tryst they
have just witnessed; and then presently the restless frolicsome
element, with a “hush! hush! yes, that’s good news,” saucily stoops
till it sweeps the very ground, parting the tall grass blades to their
stems, and next instant is out in mid stream, dancing with the river
wavelets; but it has not been quicker than Gretchen Hackernagel’s eyes,
which have caught sight of something shining in the grass under the
sunlight rays like molten gold.

“He has dropped one of his beautiful rings,” murmured Gretchen, rising
to pick the thing up. “But no, it’s too big for that. Is it perhaps his
golden crucifix?”

Neither the one nor the other. It was the key!




CHAPTER LXII.

A DILEMMA.


The brass key which Radegund had entrusted to him! Gretchen at once
recognized it from a description Otto had once given her of it, or
rather of its original, which hung on Prudentius’ girdle; but the
exquisite modelling and repoussé work of Master Wenzel Jamitzer’s
own hands was to her all one with the copy’s coarser lines, and she
recognized it by the _W. J._ on the neck which formed an important part
of the design.

“Now what is to be done?” cogitated she, looking at the thing as it lay
on her open palm, and mentally seeing Otto when he should discover his
loss. “He’s been having it to go in and out about the Horologe with;
and when he finds it out—perhaps he will at once—perhaps he’ll come
back.”

Enraptured at the possibility, Gretchen waited as long as she dared.
Longer. Half-an-hour was her extremest tether of time, and when at
last she reached home, she had to submit to a sound rating from Syndic
Tobias, for her loitering ways generally; and this especial hideous
wasting of precious time. Certainly her adventure did bring about
quite five minutes’ delay of dinner; and that catastrophe made the
spark, igniting the seething wrath of the head of the house into its
threatened outburst. The first rush found vent in an embargo upon
Gretchen against leaving the house for—how long he did not vouchsafe to
explain—under the awful penalty of never entering it again. “Three or
four days at least; and that reminds me,” thundered on he, having first
summoned every member of the establishment into his dread presence.
“Understand once and for all, that after the first stroke of midday on
Monday, not a creature of you all stirs from this house till Wednesday
at the same hour. I will have no precious eyes contaminated, no state
of grace under my supervision, imperilled by their vain and frivolous
vanities. Time was,” he continued, upturning his little eyes, “that I
had looked to see the Horologe inaugurated with much fasting; and that
the first duty its hands would have found to do would have been the
telling off of a delivery of a Christian-like discourse of improving
length and the spending of the previous night season in much watching
and pious contemplation; but the woman of Babylon sits once again in
the high places, and all our sackcloth and groanings are turned into
scarlet and fine linen, and fiddling. Surely I repent me sorely of
ever having put a finger to the thing,” went on the Syndic with marked
feeling; “and now it is in vain that I lift up my hands and my voice
against it, and cry Woe! woe! for they heed not. But I may restrain
my household from the paths of destruction; and therefore I say unto
you,” shrieked Tobias, bringing his clenched hand noisily down on the
chair back forming his temporary rostrum, and glowering at the scared
faces before him, “that he, or she—emphatically _she_, I repeat,” and
his piercing glance sought Gretchen, standing sullenly withdrawn into
an uttermost corner; “for is it not the poor weak female sex which is
Satan’s easiest prey in the matter of looking out of window?—he or
she who shall dare to lift a curtain, or peep through a chink of this
house’s closed shutters, after my hands have bolted them at sundown,
or sets foot after that hour outside my doors, shall never enter them
again!”

Having delivered himself of which overwhelming threat, the Syndic went
on to intimate that whatever the existing larder supply might afford,
must suffice for the garrison’s victualling till the Horological
orgies should be ended; and that indeed entire abstention from eating
and drinking would best become them all. Then before dismissing the
trembling convention, he explained that as far as he himself was
concerned, he should possibly spend all Monday night in the company
of certain Christian-minded persons, who—and then the Syndic paused
modestly. Well it was not for him to say how those hours would be
spent; it sufficed to remind them all that while half the world was
wrapped in sleep, the other half kept watch. And early on the Tuesday
morning, he trusted to return safe and refreshed to their bosoms. Upon
which aspiration, Tobias Hackernagel hung up his Damocles’ sword well
in the family sight, and the last faint hope of getting so much as a
glimpse of the show faded.

With dire dismay, Gretchen contemplated the state of siege under
which the household was about to be put; and she passed the whole
seventy-five minutes occupied by Master Peter Bakkerzeel’s discourse
next morning on the deceits of the flesh, in cudgelling her brains
for some way of restoring Otto his lost property. Ideas of disobeying
the veto on leaving the house rose to her mind only to be dismissed
as futile, and fraught with immense possibilities of mischief, even
supposing her father’s vigilance could be eluded. The only two places
where she was sure of finding Otto were the Dial and his own home; and
to seek him at the one would be to bring upon his devoted head, and
her own, a shower of witticisms from his companions of the studio,
which might jeopardize her scarcely cemented happiness past all mending
again, for Otto never was a friend to amusement initiated at his
expense. To search him out at his own house was, if possible, a worse
proceeding still; since besides that personally she stood in awe of
his imperious sister, she knew that Radegund’s power of ingress to and
egress from the Cathedral, lay in this identical key; and having a dim
and hazy perception of the real position of affairs, she dreaded any
possibility of dragging her careless Corydon into some terrible scrape
by any misplaced zeal on her part.

Turning from this Gordian tangle of difficulty, she strove to grapple
with that other problem—what could be taking her father away from his
own house on the night when, by his own showing, it behoved every
godly-minded person to be fast indoors? It was all very well for him
to proclaim pious intentions, but it seemed none the less strange to
Gretchen that he should elect to absent himself at such a time; and in
brief, knowing her father’s aptitude for fitting spiritual to temporal
needs, and his unscrupulous genius for making, when hard driven, the
former subserve the latter, vague suspicion of what he might be bent
upon was fed by the recollection of the miraculous friendliness which
he had seemed to be evincing towards Prudentius. And so, while Master
Bakkerzeel pounded away at the heads of his discourse, there came a
strange fixed thoughtfulness over the girl’s face, which deepened into
lines of strong resolution, till Otto, could he have seen her, would
barely have recognized his trembling, tearful love of yesterday; and
her hand sought that key lying against her heart with a nervous firm
clutch, as if indeed it were a treasure to love and guard to the death.

At least if the thing was actually and figuratively a weight and
a burden, yet what an untold consolation it was too, lying rigid
and hard against her heart! How lately it had lain nestled away in
Otto’s perfumed pockets! she felt a sort of fearful delight in her
acquisition, linking his fortune after a fashion, as it did, with
hers. It lightened her cruel sense of isolation; she was eternally
pressing the precious treasure closer, to make sure it had not melted
into thin air, until the amiable sisters, interchanging volleys of
significant nods and becks, affected solicitude as to whether she had
not been suddenly smitten with cardiac affection; and then took to
wondering in audible asides, what Otto von Steinbach could possibly be
doing with himself all this long while? and really for their parts, if
they had such lovers—why really! and if men made themselves so scarce
before marriage, why it was a nice prospect for afterwards—_und so
weiter_,—_und so weiter_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meantime Otto, after parting from Gretchen, had put in an appearance at
the studio, and occupied in all good earnest the whole day, remained
in happy unconsciousness of his loss. Only when rather late in the
evening he turned the corner of the episcopal palace, the remembrance
of his unfulfilled commission flashed across him; and he came to a
momentary halt before the great gates, to consider whether he should
turn in and give up the key, or carry it back to Radegund with that
piece of his fraternal counsel he had concocted so bravely in the
morning. Against this alternative was to be set the sharp reprimand
which would inevitably fall upon his feather head, when Radegund
should come to know of his neglect; while, on the other hand, as he
contemplated those hated walls from this near view, he could not
dismiss the memory of that time when they had held him in vile durance
for three good hours. So between Scylla and Charybdis he stood, with
his hands thrust into the pockets of his trunk hose, vaguely fumbling
for the key into their uttermost depths, but coming upon nothing
besides a shrivelled plum, and a sticky sprinkling of marchpane crumbs,
with a large piece of which delectable stuff the diplomatic Sabina had
on the previous morning strengthened her arguments.

Momentarily startled at finding his fingers did not come immediately
in contact with the object of his search, he quickly recovered his
composure on recollecting that it was not in those nether garments, but
in the shallow breast pocket, whence the corner of his gossamer cambric
handkerchief was wont to peep so distractingly forth, that he had put
it, but—Aller Teufel!—not the ghost of a key is to be found there now.
With a chill turning him gooseflesh from top to toe, that sultry summer
night, his trembling hands tore the pocket inside out, but to a dead
certainty it was not there.

Slapping himself all over in his forlorn hope that it had slipped
through some torn lining, and even going the length of taking off his
shoes and thrusting his fingers into their toes, Otto collapsed at last
in despair, the short curly hair of his head bristling with dismay,
and his eyes roundly staring into space in the agonized endeavour
to collect his thoughts. So absorbed was he in the magnitude of his
mishap, that only the clear gentle “By your good leave, my son,” of
Bishop John, desiring to cross his own threshold, restored the unhappy
man’s outward perceptions.

Hurriedly removing his cap as he started aside, Otto would have fled,
but my lord further remarked that it was a fine evening, and promised
well for Tuesday; and Otto stammeringly acquiesced, letting his eyes,
as he did so, wildly seek every corner of the Platz, in some vague
desperate hope of escape from the benevolent gaze fixed on him.

“Good night, my lord,” at last he said, driven to desperation.

“Good night. By the way,” called the Bishop after him, “Otto von
Steinbach.”

“Did you speak, my lord?” said the miserable creature, forced to face
round.

“Yes I did. About that key?”

“What—wh—what key, my lord?” faltered Otto.

“The postern key to the cathedral I lent your sister some time since. I
sent to her this morning to say I wanted it back. It has not reached me
yet.”

“N—no, my lord? I—I believe—I fancy—that is I think—my sister——”

“Just so. Tell her from me, will you, that on second thoughts I do not
want it”—Otto breathed again—“and that I prefer she should keep it
until after Tuesday. You understand me?”

“Oh yes, my lord.”

“She might be requiring it again in——”

“In a hurry, my lord, yes.”

“Precisely; and—here, here! are your legs made of quicksilver that
you’re in such a tremendous hurry to be off?—tell Mistress Radegund,
with my good wishes, that it will be impossible for me to come and
speak with her as we had arranged; but that Wednesday noon will be time
enough, if that will suit her. Think you it will?”

“Oh, much better, my lord,” answered the interiorally rejoicing Otto.

“I am overwhelmed for the next day or two with matters demanding my
immediate attention.”

“I am sure you are, my lord.”

“The Horologe fills all our hands for us, eh?” smiled the Bishop.
“Good-night, my son, Benedicite, and fair dreams.” Then he passed in
and shut the gate.

Bishop John’s gentle valediction was not realized for Otto; his
slumbers were haunted that night by frightful visions, amid whose
chaotic mists loomed, brazen and fiend-like, a gigantic key with a
pale face and a huge nose. Never since he had shifted the Horologe
responsibilities had he been so plagued; and at daybreak he awoke with
a shriek and a start, for somehow the thing had grown and lengthened
out into a monstrous gliding reptile, winding in and out of the
Horologe, until the whole structure fell crushed to powder in its slimy
coils. Then, hopelessly awake, he lay for hours tormenting his brain
for some clue to the manner in which he had lost his precious charge.
And long before the city was astir, he was down by the river, searching
every inch of the path between the town gate and the scene of his
rendezvous. But alas! no key was to be found. The long dewy grass waved
in the early morning breeze, the birds twittered their glad salves to
the risen sun, and the geese slowly sailing up alongside of him, making
their toilettes as they came, quacked him a placid “Good morning,
gossip,” as if in the whole wide world was no such thing as worry and
bother.

“It’s dropped in there,” groaned the wretched Otto to himself, glaring
into the amber shallows. “I remember now how I kept close alongside
here, chasing that idiot of a water-rat ever so far, and it shook out
of my pocket here; that’s about the long and short of it. And if it is
so,” he went on, combing his hair up on end with all his ten fingers,
“why then, first as last, I had as well be lying along with it.” Then
he went home to breakfast.

“You did my bidding, dear boy, about that key?” Radegund asked, as she
seated herself at the table with him; “I could not ask you last night;
I was tired out, and went to bed directly that woman had gone.”

“She’s not a beauty,” said Otto, finding in her Serenity of
Rumpelpuppenschnarchenstein a loophole for changing the conversation.
“What does she want to be painted for?”

“It’s always the ugly ones who like dabbling most in that sort of
thing. And the key, Otto, was it all right?”

First taking measures, with the assistance of the venison pasty, to put
himself beyond all power of verbal response, Otto intimated by a wag of
his head that she need not worry about that.

“You saw my lord himself?”

“Of course I did,” replied Otto, quickly disposing of his bonne bouche;
“and he told me to tell you, Radegund, that it was not a bit of use
your bothering to see him until Wednesday at the very earliest. He
hasn’t got an instant to spare, he says.”

“Very well,” acquiesced she, “that must do.”

“I say, Radegund,” said the respited sinner, and indicating with his
fork a richly embroidered purple velvet gown thrown across a couch,
“that’s never what you’re going to wear on Tuesday.”

“Why not?” she asked listlessly; “it’s good enough, isn’t it?”

“Oh hang it, trust you for that always, Radegund. But the colour, my
dear, it will make you look like a corpse. You’ve grown so pale lately,
horridly.”

“Have I?” she said, smiling a little; “certainly I never did look to
you for flattery, dear child.”

“Oh no, I never flatter. That sort of thing’s an abomination to me.
Only yesterday Gret—ahem, a friend of mine was saying that was one of
my great charms.”

“What is your great charm, dear?” asked his sister, rousing from the
reverie into which she had fallen.

“Oh, upon my honour, Radegund, you’ve grown frightfully dense lately!
I do think you must be ill or something. Nay, no—but you are not? only
bothered a little perhaps—yes?” and his tones softened into genuine
solicitude. “Is anything bothering you, dear girl?”

“What should bother me?” she said irritably. “It’s hateful to be asked
such foolish questions; mind your own concerns, child.” And while Otto
proceeded to cut himself another wedge of pasty, she rose and began to
pace the floor like some caged creature; then suddenly coming to a halt
beside him, and placing one arm about his neck, she smoothed back the
clustering curls. “Otto dear, forgive me,” she pleaded humbly.

“Oh ay, all right, Radegund,” replied he good-temperedly, and carrying
on his ravages among the edibles. “It’s all right, I understand. I
know,” he went on, as she looked into his face with startled enquiry,
“how confoundedly cross things will persist in going; and as soon as
one thing’s got a little right, another—I say, don’t cry about it
though, Radegund,” for a tear has fallen on his upturned forehead, from
the dark eyes that look too aridly brilliant for any such grateful
moisture; “don’t do that. I can’t stand any more, I say, don’t, there’s
a dear girl. I can’t bear to see a woman cry, somehow; it does worry me
so awfully; and what with Gretchen yesterday, and now——”

“Gretchen!” interrupted Radegund, brushing away her tears; “you have
been seeing her again?”

“Yes, I have,” sturdily replied he, reddening to his eartips; “and
I’ve—I’ve made it straight again with her.”

“But——”

“Now don’t begin asking me how, because I shan’t—I mean I can’t, tell
you, upon my honour I can’t. It’s all Sabina’s doing, not mine. She
would insist upon it, don’t you see; and—there, come now, Radegund,
don’t be angry, and ask me to upset it all again, because I won’t be
bothered any more about it. What’s done should never be undone; and
people may say what they like, and laugh till they split, and—and all
that sort of thing, but I mean to stick to Gretchen, there!” And he
conclusively pushed back his plate.

“I am not angry, child,” she said gently. “I am very glad. I have come
to think Gretchen Hackernagel is a good woman, and loves you truly.”

“Oh, no end.”

“And will make you an honest faithful wife.”

“Of course.”

“And be a good mother to your children.”

“Oh come! I say now, Radegund,” interrupted the blushing Otto, “how you
do go ahead to be sure, when once you begin!”

“Do I?” smiled Radegund. “Well, well, and I see her taking good care
of you, and keeping you out of mischief, Otto, I am very glad Gretchen
Hackernagel——”

“Gretchen,” interrupted Otto; “why the mischief must you always be
tacking on her hideous surname?”

“Gretchen, then, is to be your wife. And give her,” and Radegund bent
and lovingly kissed the young man’s cheek, “give her this from me. Your
lips will make it sweet to her,” she added, smiling with a wistful
unwonted tenderness, and gathering up, as she passed, the obnoxious
gala garment, she went out.




CHAPTER LXIII.

“THE THREE RAVENS.”


After winding round the base of the St. Stephen’s Tower, the river path
terminated in a wilderness of plane and lime trees, whose unrestrained
luxuriance overshadowed a wild undergrowth of coarse grass and bramble,
through whose labyrinth, however, careful seekers might thread out
a narrow serpentine footpath, slippery and slimy with damp, and the
trailings of the slugs and toads, who in undisturbed tranquillity lived
and multiplied exceedingly thereabouts. All other winged creatures,
save and excepting the bats, and a brown owl or two, seemed to shun the
dense thicket’s sunless branches; and if they did chance to get astray
there, would rush through the heavy air into the cheerier world beyond,
as though oppressed by the dismal spot.

Pursued laterally for about a hundred yards, this path widened on
through an irregular alley of chestnut trees, finally sloping down to
the brink of a stagnant weed-grown pond, on one side of which, sunken
amid sombre willows, stood a low-gabled house, whose plaster walls,
green with the water’s exhalations, were timbered with reddish-brown
beams in many a fantastic criss-cross device. The wooden cornice-work,
belting the entire building, and mildewed and broken in many parts,
still showed patches of faded colour and half-defaced characters, once
eloquent of scriptural saws and other sage instances, but the whole
aspect of the place was now dilapidated, and peeling away with damp and
neglect.

Immediately above the low dark doorway, hung, in a scrolled iron
framework, a painted signboard, but so weather-worn and dirt-encrusted,
that something of the gift of second sight was needed to make out
its bearings. Minute consideration, however, revealed that those
three couples of yellowish-white small circles, pierced like shooting
butts with black spots, made the semblance of so many eyes in the
heads of a trio of weird and evil-looking sable-winged birds. These,
as the superscription explained, were the tutelary genii of the
establishment, “The Three Ravens,” kept by Ezra Schlau, and that
“accommodation for man and beast was obtainable there”.

The present Ezra was, however, only the blurred copy of another and
now defunct original, who had managed to hold his head higher among
his fellow-men than ever his son had been able to do. Ezra the first,
living and moving in all the stir of those days which had seen Luther
pin the Pope’s Bull up to scorn, had warmly embraced that Reformer’s
teachings; but in later years he had passed over into the ranks of
Doctor Calvin’s disciples, whose tenets recommended themselves strongly
to his gloomy temperament, which regarded everything as corrupt in this
world save the heaping up of money. The change had not been for the
better, inasmuch as his new creed rendered the man, by nature morose
and irritable, a contentious and overbearing fanatic. Notwithstanding,
he was as much a Christian as his religion permitted him to be, and
sincere to the backbone, but he had imparted little of this sincerity
to his son; and while he, for example, would have kicked a papist
customer from his doorstep, though he lay there perishing with cold
and hunger, his descendant, albeit as strictly conforming in outward
profession, was looser in his ways of conducting business, and by no
means ever over-careful to enquire too closely into the whence and
whither of his patrons.

This Ezra’s creed was one of inheritance, not of conviction; he had
taken it with his sire’s other goods and chattels, and drifting
with the fashion of the day, the rigid Predestinarian had developed
into the rank, self-asserting, but not more moral Anabaptist; and
though, pecuniarily regarded, he had found the change no unprofitable
investment, still somehow the glory of his house had departed; and
while thirty years since there had not been in all Strassburg, or its
neighbourhood, a more respected and well conducted hostelry than the
Three Ravens, there were worthy Protestant folks now given to shake
their heads dubiously about it, and allowed its allurements to become
a monopoly of the Anabaptist portion of the community; and those three
ill-omened birds on Ezra Schlau’s signboard, with their stolid eyes and
cunning beaks, curiously typified the stamp of humanity which came to
refresh itself in his guest parlour.

Once the place had been a centre where men of the various shades of
reformed opinion would meet to discuss and wire-draw the teachings
enunciated by their several leaders. The spot was a secluded one, and
the disputants felt themselves comparatively secure from inquisitorial
eyes and ears; and argument is dry work; and many a horn and beaker
were called in to whet the edge of those edifying discussions; and old
Ezra’s coffers waxed fat; and when the time came that his soul was
required of him, he, bidding his son take example, and strive to be
just such another godly and thrifty man as himself, paid the debt of
nature.

Touching the thrift, Ezra stuck to his parent’s counsel like a leech.
Touching the godliness, if a sour-natured, mean, grasping fellow,
who made long prayers in his conventicle, or at least turned up his
ferret eyes, and beat his breast, and groaned as if he were really
addressing high Heaven after his sect’s approved mode—if a creature
who adulterated his wine for his casual customers with poisonous
abominations, and strengthened his jugs and tankards with double
bottoms, until indeed these graceful artifices were detected, and he
was beaten for them within an inch of his life by his patrons, who
knew a good article from a bad one every whit as entirely as they
could tell you the difference between sanctification and self-imputed
righteousness—if a wretch who starved his dog and cat, and kept the
breath going in his one hapless servant’s body with cold bones and
mouldy scraps, and the dregs of his beer cups, and laid a gold piece in
the alms-platter after Lord’s day sermon—were a godly man, then, not
excepting Syndic Hackernagel himself, was there in all the city, or out
of it, a godlier than Ezra Schlau.

To-day, which is the eve of the great Horologe day, mine host of
the Three Ravens rose with the lark, and has been on his legs sans
intermission ever since, entertaining the strangers who are pouring
into Strassburg from all corners of the compass for leagues round;
and liberal-minded soul that he is, has been at less than even his
usual pains to ascertain whether they may be children of light or of
Beelzebub, or what may be the sound of their special Shibboleth, but
has pocketed Catholic and Protestant monies with equal alacrity, so
only that they rang sterling currency.

But the long day is drawing in at last; and the darkness is bringing
with it a heavy stormful feeling, and ever and anon, low thunderous
boomings echo distantly; and the late comers and loiterers who have
been patronizing the wayside hostelry, straggle out to the door, and
glancing overhead, and then yonder to the lights dotting up here and
there over the great city, pay their reckoning and trudge onward.

It must be close now upon the stroke of eight. From the pool a heavy
mist is beginning to rise; and the reptile creatures come crawling
and wriggling through the dank grass, to keep their nightly Walpurgis
with the croaking frogs under the alders. From the inn’s back premises
sounds a ceaseless clatter of plate and cup washing; and Schlau’s low
growling accompaniment of admonition to his luckless factotum Hans,
to mind what he is about, finds a continuous _basso obligato_ in the
music proceeding from some half-dozen nasal organs of varied shapes and
sizes, and all more or less delicately carnation-tinted, of the residue
of the revellers in the common room.

Soon, however, these will have to be ejected; and only because, for
the last hour and more past, Ezra has been expecting a distinguished
guest, grace has been extended to them; but the guest, no less a person
than one of his chief patrons, Syndic Tobias Hackernagel, is long a
coming.

“Still,” as he explained with a fatigued smile, when intimating his
intention of looking in that evening on Ezra, he might be late, “a
public man is never master of his own time; and the unforeseen so often
occurs for him. We are such slaves,” added the Syndic. “Sometimes not
even able to choose our very company.” And while Tobias sighed heavily,
Ezra, feeling himself called upon to say something, intimated with the
utmost delicacy in his choice of euphemisms, that if Syndic Hackernagel
found it advisable to bring the Prince of Darkness himself there to
hob and nob, he would ask no questions; and the pair of them would be
welcome to the best his poor house afforded.

Which assurance notwithstanding, it must be granted that Ezra’s faith
in his wealthy customer met a sharp test when, through the gathering
twilight mists, he caught a glimpse of Benedictine black skirts nearing
his door in juxtaposition with the prim grey cloth trunk hose of the
Anabaptist; and his amazement and perplexity increased tenfold when,
by the light of the oil lamp he held aloft to illumine the way of the
new comers, he beheld the shining round visage of Brother Prudentius
himself! for all Strassburg, friend and foe alike, knew the Cathedral
sacristan. Ezra was however equal to the occasion; and obedient to
the look in Hackernagel’s face, plainly intimating that now, if ever,
silence would best become him, he proceeded, as he was bidden, to see
after tapping a fresh cask of the Niersteiner.

The precious liquor lay down in a circumscribed innermost shrine, only
accessible through a large outer cellar immediately beneath the guest
room in which Hackernagel and his companion now took their seats. The
structural arrangement of these two cellars tallied exactly with that
of the chamber above. Between them was a massive partitioned wall,
pierced by a small iron-clamped door, which closed in the smaller
cellar, while the division in the guest room was marked simply by a
high step raising the floor platform-wise, and forming a sort of second
room, or rather an arched quadrangular space, whose latticed casement,
looking directly on to the pond, commanded a fine view of its green
and stagnant charms. Seen from without, this recess made a deep snug
projecting gable-end, whose walls would have had the appearance of
rising direct out of the water, save for an embanking rush-skirted
ridge of earth, narrowing at the top into a slippery slimy belt some
half-dozen inches wide, fringed with tall dank weeds and rotting sedge.
In the base of the wall, barely above watermark’s level, was fixed a
small rusty iron grating, admitting all available light and air into
the little outermost cellar below. Within doors, the guest room’s
larger division was apportioned to the hostelry’s ordinary frequenters;
while the upper recess had been, time out of mind, by general tacit
consent yielded up to the use of the Three Ravens’ more distinguished
guests, of whom Syndic Hackernagel in his generation might be counted
far from the least important; and to-night, as usual, he with his
companion were conducted to this seat above the salt.

Meantime, lamp and keys in hand, Ezra made his way through the imposing
array of casks and flasks and bottles in the outer cellar to the
double-locked door of the one beyond. Setting his lamp on a bracket,
the thrifty host turned its flame down to the thread of a gleam, for
the moon was up, and its stormy but brilliant light would, as he knew,
be shining full into his treasure house. First removing the heavy
transverse iron bar before the door, he let it slip with a loud clank,
and turned the key in its lock. Then thrusting the door far back, he
looked well round before setting foot inside. A singular precaution
apparently, but full experience had taught Ezra that it was no needless
one.

Like a chequered carpet the moonlight covered the stone floor, and to
its farthest crannies the place was more clearly visible than ever it
was by such scant and sickly daylight as ever filtered in there. Silent
and still as a death vault; yet Ezra, pausing there on the threshold,
gave a start, and then peered in with craning neck and staring eyes,
not caring to advance. Was it a shadow? a slender light-flitting shadow
which momentarily dimmed the luminous floor? Fancy of his it could not
be, the man was such a preeminently unimaginative one. With a grim half
smile at himself, he strode forward to the wine cask and tapped it.
Once again, as he stooped over the spigot, his lank fingers, showing
bluish white in the steely lustre, were overcast with sudden shadow,
and he turned and glanced wrathfully up through the grated aperture and
its rank trailing luxuriance, at the yellowing moon banked amid the
heavy clouds. “There’s a storm brewing,” he muttered to himself, as he
returned to his task. “And not a little one neither. Phew!” and he drew
his sleeve across his face, “what a cold sweat this hole always puts
one in! Enough to give a man his death of—Hei! huish!—sh! a plague on
ye all, for the screeching croaking imps ye are! Why can’t you leave
my premises alone?” growled Ezra up at his amphibious neighbours on
the other side of the grating, and hurling through it an enormous
toad, whose errant proclivities had got him into difficulties, and
precipitated him from his native slush on to the cellar floor. “It’s
well for ye all that water’s your liquor, or I’d pretty soon stop every
one of your noisy throats.”

Then his flagon filled, Ezra, barring and locking up his doors again,
came out and ascended to the guest room, where he placed the wine,
flanked by a couple of tall drinking glasses, on the table before
Syndic Hackernagel and his companion.

“Had I best leave you my lamp, Syndic Hackernagel?” enquired he,
glancing up at the four candles guttering and sputtering _in extremis_
in the rude wooden cross laths depending from the ceiling’s centre.

“Nay, friend,” said Hackernagel, “take it away. There’s light enough.”

“Ay, ay, and to spare,” laughed the sacristan, out of his reasons for
preferring darkness to light. “The moonshine here will show us the way
to our mouths.”

Lifting the lamp with one hand, and pocketing with the other the
gold piece Tobias had tendered him, Schlau retired, still lost in
bewilderment at the odd fraternization of two such inimical spirits.

“But what is to be will be,” was the Calvinist’s sage comment; “and if
there’s anything not—not entirely square about it, it’s the Syndic’s
business, not mine.”




CHAPTER LXIV.

“IN VINO VERITAS.”


“To think,” said the sacristan, sipping and tasting, and smacking his
lips over the brimming glass, and then smacking and tasting and sipping
again, and finally disposing summarily of the remainder. “To think,”
he repeated, setting down the empty goblet with a sigh, and a nod of
unqualified approval, while he cast his eyes with curiosity round the
dingy room. “To think such stuff as that——”

“Try it again, friend,” said Tobias, replenishing the cup.

“Thanks, Master Syndic. I don’t mind if I do. Such stuff as that
can come out of——” the sacristan paused, casting about for a less
depreciatory term than the one which had first suggested itself, “this
simple hostelry.”

“Good wine,” amiably enunciated Tobias, sipping his own modicum as
gingerly as if it were some medicinal concoction, “needs no bush.”

“By the mass! that’s true; and as to this,” and the lay brother tossed
off his second glass of the potent liquid, “there’s nothing in our
cellars, and we’ve got good stuff in them, can hold a candle to it.”

“Then prove your appreciation,” urged Tobias, lifting the flagon again.

“Nay now,” objected Prudentius, coquettishly protecting the outworks
of his glass with all his ten outspread fingers, but leaving its mouth
utterly unguarded. “It’s heady drink I expect, and one must be careful,
Master Syndic, eh? Yes?”

“Oh,” laughed Hackernagel, “dear me, you might drink this whole flagon
full, and feel yourself none the worse.”

A comfortable sensation diffusing itself all over the sacristan’s inner
man lent colour to this assurance.

“I say, Master Tobias,” he began in low tones, after a brief silence
spent in a closer survey of the quarters in which he found himself, and
a speculative consideration of the sleeping topers stretched about the
benches, “we’re safe enough here of course? Oh, no offence, none in
the world, only I—Holy Saints! what was that?” and hurriedly setting
down his half-emptied glass, the sacristan rose to his feet. “What was
it?”

“Thunder,” calmly said Hackernagel, making good the vacuum. “Sit down.”

But still on his feet, Prudentius drained his replenished glass to its
dregs.

“Hadn’t we best be jogging homewards,” he said then, a little thickly.

“Ah!” returned Hackernagel with an impatient gesture. “There’ll be no
storm yet awhile. Come, man, drink, drink. No heel-taps. Sit you down.”

“Oh no. N—no heel-taps,” echoed Prudentius, dropping heavily back
into his seat, and grasping the jug by its neck, he proceeded to help
himself to its contents. “No, ’twouldn’t be for the honour of the
house, w—would it, Master Hackernagel?”

“Certainly not,” replied Tobias, sipping on delicately.

“No. N—not for the honour of the house; and,” continued Prudentius,
drawing his portly little body up into a dignified attitude, and
blinking gravely across into his companion’s face, “and it is an
honourable house; and you’re all honourable gent—gentlemen here; and
you’re the honourablest gent—gentleman among them, and—I say, Master
Tobias, it’s time”—and the sacristan’s hand slid from the table’s edge,
and grasped fumblingly after the bunch of keys at his side—“Master
Tobias, I say, hadn’t we b—best—be jogging? I’ve got to be up betimes;
and if—if a man don’t sleep, he don’t wake so easy. Eh, stands to
reason he can’t, don’t it? That’s sound s—sense, say if it isn’t.”

“Very much so, my friend,” acquiesced his entertainer, sedulously
keeping up his attentions to the sacristan’s glass.

“Yes, common sense, as you observe, M—Master Hack—Hack—Hackernagel. And
so, as I say, o—old friend, if it’s all the same—the same to you, we’ll
be jog—jog—what a devil of a row there is out there!”

Tobias started and glanced towards the window; then his lips relaxed
into a smile, and he said laconically, “Frogs”.

“Frogs, is it?” said Prudentius, propelling himself with some little
difficulty along the bench towards the window, where, resting his
shaven crown against its worm-eaten upright, he leaned, and silently
stared with preternatural gravity into the night. “Th—there’s a woman
out there,” he said at last.

“A what?”

“A woman; a—ho! ho! ho! don’t be afraid, Master Tobias. Sh—she won’t
hurt.”

“Fool!”

“I—I’ll take care of you. I’m not afraid. N—never be afraid of a woman;
I’m not. I like w—women. I wonder what sh—she’s like, that one out
there; d—don’t you.”

“Idiot!” muttered Tobias between his set teeth, “drunken——”

“N—no, none so d—drunk as—come, Master Tobias, shall we be j—jogging?”
And as the words left his lips, the sacristan sank down like a log
on the window seat, still staring with vacant intensity into the
moonlight. “What the mischief can she be doing out there?” he added in
low thick _sotto voce_; “where’s she got to? Ho! hi!—sh—I say, Syndic
Tobias, sh—she’s gone. Come and see;” and he beckoned Hackernagel with
his forefinger, describing a curiously irregular half-circle, “come
and—see.”

“Drunken fool!” growled Hackernagel, engrossed in a thoughtful
examination of the flagon’s drained interior, and speculating
whether it would be necessary to sacrifice another gold piece on its
replenishing.

“D—drunk yourself, Syndic,” returned the offended sacristan. “D—drunk,
I like that! ho! and I’m no fool neither, m—mind that. If I was a
f—fool, I suppose I shouldn’t exactly have been having th—these in
my charge for twenty years last Corpus Domini,” and with tremulous
uncertain hands he lifted the precious keys and shook them at
Hackernagel. “Fool? N—no—no, not exactly, and I’m not d—drunk neither,
I sh—should hope. And I’ve got my eyes as well as the biggest d—dog of
a heretic in all the free city, and—and it is a free city, isn’t it?
and I’m free to—to use my eyes; and I say there’s—a woman out there on
the grass.” And propping himself up on to his feet by the aid of the
window sill, Prudentius stood pointing persistently down over it to the
spot immediately beneath; “and Master Tobias,” he went on, twitching
his face with drunken leer, “what do you say man, sh—shall we go and
fetch—fetch her in? Yes? It’s damp for her, isn’t it—out there on—on
the grass.”

“Grass!” savagely echoed Hackernagel, “that isn’t grass, sheephead!
It’s water.”

“Water?” returned Prudentius, swaying round, and gravely surveying
it with blinking, lack-lustre eyes. “Water—ho! ho!—water is it?”
he continued with a mocking chuckle. “Go and tell that to your
grandmother, ho, ho—ha.”

“Upon my honour——”

“Ho—ho—come, come now, Syndic,” and Prudentius shook a warning finger
at his gossip, “no swearing. And look you here, when I don’t know
eh—chalk from cheese, then will be time for you to be trying to make
a g—gull of me. I flat—flatter myself I can tell water from gr—grass,
and—grass from w—water, any day of the week; and you—you’re just a
d—drunken c—rop—eared igno—ignoramus of an anabap—baptist, and don’t
know what you’re t—talking about. Water! ho! ho! if that’s water, why
then, th—this”—and the sacristan stretching out his two arms, dragged
the empty wine flagon to his breast, and hugged it affectionately
against his cheek—“this is water; and—and I don’t know what—I’m talking
about. And—hadn’t we best be j—jogging, Master Hack—er—na—gel?” And
next instant Prudentius lay prone across the table, snoring in heavy
drunken sleep.

Three out of those four candles have expired in their guttering grease,
and the last fitful dying flashes of light through the long low-ceiled
chamber, leave it in the intervals in almost complete darkness; but
across the recess occupied by the two latest comers, the moonbeams
cast a sickly lurid light; and Tobias Hackernagel’s face, peering
cunningly intent from his shadowy corner over the sleeping sacristan,
looks as hideously and maliciously ugly as one of the demon gurgoyles
upon the Cathedral walls. “Come, friend,” he says, tentatively laying
his fingers upon Prudentius’ shoulder, and roughly shaking him; but
the sacristan, hugging his jug tighter and closer to him, only mutters
“Water,” and sinks ten fathom deeper into his drunken sleep.

Small chance of his wakening for hours to come. “A man doesn’t exactly
empty a flagon of Niersteiner as he would a glass of sugar water,”
thinks Tobias to himself as he turns, and descending the step, makes a
circuit among the slumberers scattered about the benches, and carefully
investigates the condition of each. Then with a nod of satisfaction,
for they could not be more hopelessly incapable and unconscious
than they are, of what may be passing around them, he regards them
collectively. No deception there; the Seven of Ephesus could not be
more utterly dead to external influence; as many corpses would be as
much aware of him and his doings as these; and softly closing the door
which Ezra has left ajar, he recrosses towards the recess. Sh! what is
that?

Swift as a lightning flash, some shadow flits over the lattice,
obscuring for an instant the form of the sleeping man. Psha! and what
else but lightning? for hark! one prolonged boom of distant thunder
rolls through the leaden air; or perhaps it is no more than a bat’s
flight, or the flap of an owlet’s wing, or the sudden breeze heralding
the onward coming storm, sending the gaunt tree shadows athwart the
panes. Psha!

Stepping lightly to the platform, Hackernagel seats himself on the
bench beside the sleeping sacristan; then sweeping one keen rapid
glance all round, he stoops over him and passes his hand deftly under
the cluster of keys hanging on the stout leathern thong attached to the
broad belt encircling the lay brother’s waist, and noiselessly lifting
them on to his knees, he spreads them out fan-wise.

There, bright as gold itself amid its dull iron compeers, shines out
Master Wenzel Jamitzer’s dainty piece of handiwork; and next instant
Hackernagel’s fingers are grappling with the buckled fastening of the
belt. As it yields to his careful handling, the Syndic’s meagre lips
twitch with triumphant satisfaction. Like pearls crumbling beneath a
hammer’s stroke, his chief difficulty has fallen before him. He had
laid his plans, provided against every obstacle. In his pocket lies a
knife of razor sharpness, and an assortment of tools in case of any
necessity for proceeding to extremes, but nothing is plainer sailing.
Strong in his integrity, the unfortunate sacristan had pointed to his
buckle belt, and proudly said you might catch a weasel asleep, but it
would go hard with the man who should ever dare to meddle with that.
Yet now, it is simple child’s play. The well-worn metal works smoothly
in its grooves; and ere the sleeper has drawn three more stertorous
breaths, Tobias Hackernagel holds the thing he covets safe in his
innermost pocket. Two more minutes, nay, less, hardly longer than it
takes for that light restless shadow to sway once to and fro across
the steel-blue lattice panes, and the nimble fingers have rethreaded
the unthreaded keys in order due, and rearranged the cincture about the
sacristan’s portly loins; and so once again descending the step and
groping his way through the now utterly dark room, Hackernagel passes
out into the corridor.

At the outer door Ezra Schlau is standing, contemplating the state of
the atmosphere; and Syndic Hackernagel observing that there seems to be
a threatening of rain, and that he will be getting homewards, bids him
good-night.

“And your friend, Syndic?” enquires Schlau, jerking his head in the
direction of the guest room.

“My friend?” echoes Hackernagel, turning with bland insouciance upon
Ezra. “I do not apprehend you.”

“Prudentius the sacristan, who came with you.”

“Came with me!” ejaculated Tobias. “My good Ezra, you pain me. I did
not look to be so misjudged by you. Friend! that papist and idolater
the friend of Tobias Hackernagel! But I forgive you, Ezra; the day is
yet to come when such as you are will be able to apprehend that it
behoves us to extend charity and hospitality to—Hark ye—and mind now,”
added Hackernagel with a sudden snarl in his tone, “if you’re asked
any questions, I stumbled upon that fellow out in the copse there.
Understand? and it’s not convenient to make an enemy of him and his
just now.” A ray of intelligent acquiescence shot into the innkeeper’s
face. “Good,” was his monosyllabic comment. “And I say,” continued
Hackernagel, “that it behoves the true Christian to—Hark you here,
friend Ezra, the best thing you can be doing with yonder sot is to turn
him out of doors neck and crop as quick as you can. And if you value
your credit at a batzen’s worth, I should be careful if I were you how
I let slip that his shaven crown has ever been inside the Three Ravens.
Our brethren in the spirit don’t quite perceive these things, and if
you said much about it, custom might fall off. It might, you know, but
you and I—we understand each other. Good-night to you, friend Ezra. May
you always grow in grace and knowledge—good-night.”

“You understand yourself, perhaps,” soliloquized Schlau, watching him
as he disappeared among the trees, “but may I turn double-dyed papist,
if I understand you, or ever shall. But it’s your business, not mine;
and what will be, will be, or it’ll be no fault of yours if it isn’t.”

Having thus delivered his mind, Ezra, chiefly impressed by his patron’s
counsel touching the advisability of getting rid of his black sheep of
a guest snoring away in the parlour, turned in and shouted to Hans to
come and assist in the contemplated ejectment; but dishclout in one
hand, and pipkin in the other, Hans was also wandering in the land of
dreams, and so far gone, that not a little tax upon his gentle master’s
pounding and punching powers was put into requisition, to charm him
back again. And so much achieved, there still remained the poor
wearied-out wretch’s wits to be collected; so that full a quarter of an
hour slipped away before Ezra had succeeded in making him comprehend to
all practical end the service required of him.

Without doors the place is as still, and save for the ceaseless frog
chorus, as silent as a graveyard. Scarcely have Tobias Hackernagel’s
footsteps died away among the fallen leaves than the old city’s belfry
towers proclaim that it wants but two more hours to that midnight
whose next dawning will usher in the long-expected festal day.

With the fall of the last lingering stroke upon the heavy air, a low
rustling sound breaks from the margin of the pond, on the side which
skirts up by the inn wall, and then splashing and floundering among the
swampy weeds, with bared arms and fingers desperately clutching at the
writhen willow and alder stems, a woman’s figure looms up ghostlike in
the vaporous mist.

With low bent head, crouching close as hare to covert, her dripping
garments clutched about her, she steals on among the tall rushes, until
she attains the opposite bank, which is crested by a stunted hedge,
beneath whose shelter, first pausing hurriedly to wring the water from
her skirts, and twist up her dishevelled, luxuriant, red-brown hair,
she peers cautiously forth.

Thrown into sharp distinctness by the moonlight, she can see the
three ravens staring across at her with their inquisitive painted
eyes; but no human eye marks her flitting, and gathering fresh
courage, she clasps one hand across her throbbing heart, while with
the other outstretched to tear aside the brambles clinging to her wet
cloak, and cruelly tearing her half-naked feet, for the pond’s mud
has detained her shoes, she speeds onward, stumbling over the rough
ground, trampling down straggling bough and briar, and every stay and
hindrance. And at last, clear of the brake, the woman gains the open
river path. Then, still on, as though the Eumenides were giving her
chase, swift as the lightning flashes playing about her, she speeds
between the dark water and the tall hedgerows, past the massive walls
of the St. Stephen’s Tower, slackening her pace for the first time
only, as she nears the gate below the fishmarket, where the sentry,
who is indulging in a hand of cards with a congenial spirit, coolly
observes as he pockets the gold piece she flings at his feet, that the
city has been consumedly dead alive of late, and if a lady or two of
her sort—and the son of Mars winks playfully—has a fancy for joining in
next day’s merrymaking—he’ll not be so ungallant as to deny her.

On again, fleeter than ever, through the echoing arches of the deserted
fishmarket, across the Platz, where the Cathedral lies a silent black
mass, with never a gleam within or without, to foretell to-morrow’s
glories, its pinnacled roof lying in sharp fretted shadow on the
moonlit ground—on—on, with just one glance towards yonder stately
house, where lies one, wrapped no doubt now in virtuous slumber, whom
passing dear that woman loves. There only, amid all the enshrouding
darkness, a light shines hazily through the close-drawn red damask
drapery; but what wonder in that, for does it not mark Radegund von
Steinbach’s studio, and at what unholy hours will not her lamp be found
burning?

A terrible impediment awaits the night fugitive just ahead in the shape
of the watchman’s box at the Munster-gasse corner yonder, if only it
be in working order; but six nights out of seven it is a mere scrape,
since Master Hunx, its sexagenarian occupant, has a custom, which he
rarely breaks in upon, of composing himself to sleep immediately upon
taking up the reins of office. And Providence rules that to-night
shall be no exception. Hunx has been, moreover, drinking success to
the Professor Dasipodius and the Horologe, and now sits blessedly
impervious, lantern on knees, thunderously snoring inside his shelter;
and rounding the angle of the Munster-gasse, the woman flits on
noiselessly, under the garlanded triumph arches, from which a few
fresh fragrant rose petals flutter down upon her clinging mud-sodden
cloak. Courage! and still on—only a few paces now, for the goal lies
before her dimmed and straining eyes. There! there, where the high
north-eastern wall of Burgomaster von Steinbach’s house is overhung by
an oriel window, lovely in its gracious intermingling of green fragile
summer creeper, and everlasting carven stone foliage; and gemlike
through its painted glass, shines the flame of the little silver lamp
burning night and day in the oratory of the Burgomaster’s daughter. So,
so—well done! and staggering to clutch hold of the wall’s deep stone
bosses for support, with closed eyes, and gasping convulsive breaths,
but a smile of infinite content on her white-drawn lips, that woman
stands.




CHAPTER LXV.

A CONFESSION.


Towards nine o’clock that same evening, there was brought to the
Professor Dasipodius, where he sat with one or two old friends after
supper, a message on the part of Radegund von Steinbach, desiring to
speak with him.

A shade of annoyance crossed the mathematician’s face; he had promised
himself to spend that evening with his father and his guests in peace
and quietness. It had been with them a sort of little gala night, such
as one does like to keep over some work well carried through, when
brain and hands long on the stretch, slacken their tension at last, and
dare to lie fallow. To-morrow of course, the mathematician must be at
the general disposal, but this night he calls his own holiday; and he
has counted on keeping it alone with Christian and Bruno Wolkenberg,
and those they best care for.

Dasipodius and his two coadjutors, Isaac and Kaspar Habrecht, have come
home late in the afternoon, flushed with their crowning exertions; and
now supper done justice to, they are gathered out in the cool twilight,
to discuss at leisure a bottle of the Marcobrunner; and the festivities
have just reached that comfortable phase embracing the Franco-German
Cession question, when Mistress von Steinbach’s messenger is ushered
into their presence.

“It is tiresome,” said Dasipodius. “I should have been obliged to your
mistress,” he added, addressing the servant, “if she could have let her
business stand over. Is it urgent, think you?”

“She desired me to say it was very urgent.”

“Shall I run across for you, Conrad?” enquired Bruno Wolkenberg.

“Ay, ay, so do,” smiled Burgomaster Niklaus. “I’ll warrant you the
doctor proves more gallant than the mathematician. Upon my honour, Herr
Professor, I dare swear it isn’t many would stand hesitating, when my
lady niece calls a parley.”

“Maybe it is some question concerning the Horologe. Hadn’t you best go,
master?” urged Isaac Habrecht.

“Ay,” answered Dasipodius. “Give me my stick, Kaspar.” And extracting
from the little company a promise that they would not stir till he came
back, he followed the servant across the Platz, and being conducted up
the broad staircase, was ushered into the artist’s presence.

She was alone in the shadowy room, lighted only by the magnificent
silver gilt lamp depending by long chains from the carved ceiling. The
deep windows, wide open, were entirely concealed by the heavy silken
curtains closely drawn, and even, wrapped across. In its accustomed
place stood the artist’s easel, with the Queen Eleanor, if only those
half lights did not deceive, complete as its creator’s hands could
make it; and standing out in its fearsome grandeur, like some terrible
reality of blood and crime. Even as Dasipodius entered, she seemed to
have been bestowing on it some finishing touches, for at the sound of
the opening door she laid down her brush, and gathered up about her
bosom the disarranged lace forming the ruff of the long loose white
wrapper she wore.

Magnificently beautiful the artist looked; yet the beauty was of a
stern, almost repellent sort, until as she advanced a step to receive
her visitor, the fixed severity of the wonderful lips relaxed into
a smile of rare womanly tenderness, and a deep flush suffused the
marble pallor of the perfect features, while a sweetness passing words
moistened the scorching lustre of her dark eyes, as she fixed them on
Dasipodius, standing there in the calm dignity of bearing natural to
him, tempered by the air of patient attentness which his infirmity had
rendered habitual.

A little hard it was to realize that that involuntary setting in order
of her disordered toilette had been a work of supererogation as far
as it concerned Dasipodius; so difficult to grasp the fact that those
luminous eyes, which seemed to see far beyond and above the ken of
ordinary men, saw indeed nothing. Only more careful consideration of
the grand face taught, that not in the eyes, but in the conformation
of brow and temples, and of the deep-fringed eyelids, lay all its
marvellous force.

“You sent for me?” he said.

“Ay, yes,” she answered. “Will you not be seated?”

“I thank you, no. I have left guests at home; and I must return to them
as soon as possible.”

“As you always must, Master Dasipodius,” she said with a bitter smile,
“when I crave a word with you.”

“Nay,” contended he. “It is always your pleasure to twit me with
discourtesy; but I am all attention. Is it the Horologe?”

“The Horologe! the Horologe!” she burst forth. “Is that thing to be for
ever and ever dearer to you than human hearts?”

“I trust,” he said with a half smile, which yet was very sad, “that it
may prove itself truer than some are. And now, mistress, your commands.”

“You are bitter on your friends,” she said, paying no heed to his last
words.

“Not so,” returned he with some fire. “Not so, by my faith. Do not
think that I complain. Then I should hate myself for the ungratefullest
wretch that ever cumbered this fair world. I wonder who in their trial
time have ever been blessed with such kind sympathy and help, Mistress
Radegund, as I?”

“Indeed,” she murmured tremulously, “we—they have all loved you well!”

“True metal all of them, save only one.”

“And she?” challenged Radegund, looking up earnestly into his face.

“God help me,” he said solemnly, “for prizing her beyond all the rest.
Dearly as the sailor prizes the Pole Star, though the sky be ablaze
with planet and constellation.”

“And that lost?”

“I beat about on a lifeless sea.”

“And pray for death?”

“No. I trim my sails as best I can, and bide my Master’s bidding. And
now——”

“And she? That life star?” said the artist.

“You push me too close,” he said with a touch of petulance; “and I used
a false simile. I tell you I deceived myself. You know I did. Such a
star I never saw, poor blind wretch that I am! It was but an empty
fleeting flash. Not the gentle saving beacon-light which most men find.”

“You are wrong,” she said in less hurried tones. “Wrong.”

“I was. To my sorrow,” assented he, bowing his head. “And as the tree
falls, it lies. Now will you be pleased to——”

“Cruelly, bitterly wrong,” she went on vehemently. “You were a fool, I
say. A miserable, blind, blind fool, Conrad Dasipodius.”

“As you say, mistress,” assented he, again colouring deeply. “And
if—well, you always were famous for speaking home truths.”

“Oh my God!” she cried, shivering at the chilly sarcasm of his tones,
and turning her head from side to side, like some distraught creature.
Was it her doom that he should always misapprehend her, that her words
should always sting him to the quick? “Did I mean that? I mean—it is
all a lie! A bare foul hideous deception.”

Once again the stately head drooped acquiescingly.

“It was no vain fiery toy. She was true; true, I tell you, and loyal
and constant as ever pole star.”

“We will leave metaphors alone,” he interrupted coldly. “Such
holy comparison can never stand for a poor shallow-hearted child
like—like——” he faltered, her name seemed sacred to him even yet.

“Her you loved?” demanded Radegund, her breath coming in short quick
gasps, and the hectic crimson in her hollow cheek fading and deepening,
and fading again.

“Like her I love.”

The artist’s eyes closed, and heavily as the head of a corpse, hers
fell upon her breast, while she sank down upon the couch near, and for
a space there was silence, broken first only by the striking of the
Munster clock. Ten! Then slowly lifting her face, fearsomely drawn and
death-white, she fixed her eyes, terrible now in their piercing but
lustreless brilliancy, upon Dasipodius.

“Yet,” she said, “you think her false?”

“I think,” he answered, “that I exacted from her what she had not to
give.”

“You do not blame her?”

“I,” he paused—“Mistress Radegund, I do not know by what right of yours
I should be brought here to lay bare that which my own soul,” and his
whole frame drooped and trembled agonizedly as he spoke, “flinches from
looking into. Is it some pleasure you find in mocking me, or do you
perhaps make yourself my scourge for my presumptuous folly?”

She smiled scornfully.

“Then bethink you,” he went on; “look into your own heart, ask yourself
whether there is nothing, no experience of your own life, to plead for
my weakness, and tell you we may curb, but not kill love.”

No answer, save the low panting breath of the woman near him. His
keen ear caught the sound, and he mistook it for the expression of her
heart’s pity for him.

“Have I not your compassion now?” he asked gently. “I know you can be
generous. Do you throw away your scorn, and give me your pity?”

Still no answer. Only silently the artist’s hand stole to the bosom of
her dress, and she drew from it a folded square of parchment somewhat
frayed and soiled, whose green tying ribbon was attached to it by a
broken seal.

“If,” went on Dasipodius, “she did not love me——”

“Ay, but she did, Conrad Dasipodius.”

He shook his head slowly.

“As that star you spoke of just now,” she continued; “true and
faithful, pure and unsullied as five times tested gold, Sabina von
Steinbach’s love is for you.”

But he only shook his head more persistently.

“Your kind words,” he said, “are bitter cruel. My wound is sharp; I
have borne—I do bear it as I may; but these sweet deluding assurances
of yours are cankerous torture to me, and by all your own heart loves——”

“Have done!” she wailed, starting from her seat; and staggering to his
side, she thrust the parchment into his hands. “Read that!”

“Mistress?” he said, reaching it back to her, a world of rebuke and
pained enquiry in his chill reproachful tones.

“God help me!” she murmured under her breath, gently, almost
reverentially, receiving it back from him. “Are my senses forsaking me?
Listen then.”

And in hoarse broken accents, with parched and cleaving lips, but word
for word, end to end, she read out to him Sabina’s sad little epistle
of farewell; just as she herself had written it at the girl’s dictation
that wintry afternoon, there in that very room, on the very spot where
they stood.

Once or twice as he listens the mathematician’s face lightens and
overclouds again with varying emotion, but as the last words leave
Radegund’s lips, it settles into stillness.

“I cannot tell,” he says then in icy tones, “what end this jugglery of
yours may be having to serve, Mistress von Steinbach.”

“Jugglery!” she cries, her eyes flaming now with wounded pride. “Oh,
I am well served, well served!” and she gnaws her pale lips. “Is not
this conclusive evidence enough how you have misjudged her?”

“Surely no,” returned he, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, and a
smile whose bitterness ill-suited the graciousness of his lips. “Any
more than I can conceive how this letter—which is mine, mistress,” and
he claimed and took it with both hands outstretched; “and which was
sought for high and low—got into your keeping. Any more,” he went on,
after a momentary pause, “than I can form a guess whom your cousin
deputed to write it for her. She is not able, I know, to do such things
for herself.”

“It was I who wrote it.”

“So,” he bowed. “At her bidding? You served her well in her hour of
need. She must feel herself beholden indeed to you.”

“And it was I,” continued the artist, cowering under the steel-cold
edge of his tones, “I who when Otto brought it back here again to me——”

“And why did he do that?”

“He can best tell, or some devil who prompted him. I cannot; I am
guiltless of that at least.”

“But——”

“Sometimes I have thought that its ending seemed kinder than its
beginning. You remember you deputed my brother to read it?”

“Yes, yes.”

“And perhaps for his own love suit’s sake with the child, he judged you
had best never come to know how warmly it closed.”

“Chilly warmth at best,” bitterly laughed Dasipodius.

“It might have whispered to you that she loved you still.”

“At the time? Yes, it might have done so,” he conceded. “It might have
deluded me into dreaming some such foolishness. Do you wish me to thank
you for keeping it from me?”

“That is why I was glad to keep it from you,” she murmured, in the
tones of some rack-wrung creature.

“Glad to—Mistress Radegund?” and slowly into the pure clear colourless
face of the mathematician uprose a crimson flush.

“Ay. Glad! glad! I tell you. To come between her happiness and—oh my
God! to think indeed that it was yours too!”

“For your brother’s sake you did this thing? For the sake of Otto’s
love for her?”

“Poor boy, no!” she cried, with a strange hard laugh. “I troubled
little enough about him. It—it was for my own love’s sake for you,
Conrad Dasipodius!” And seizing the mathematician’s hands, she laid
them against her eyes and cheeks and lips, covering them with wild
burning kisses.

“Woman!” he cried, recoiling and shaking her from him as if she were a
loathsome poisonous thing.

“Ay,” half said, half sung she, in a tone of reckless defiance, her
tall figure swaying like some fragile tempest-stricken reed, under the
violence of his gesture, while she turned her eyes luminous with their
passionate love upon him. “Woman! woman!—yes. Or devil was I? My own
love’s sake—my own love—for that, for you, I have staked all—body and
soul of me, and lost! lost! lost! Woman, you said? Are women fiends
then? for that,” and her voice sank to a low monotonous wail, “that
was I. Like a devil incarnate I stole between you and her—your love,
Conrad—your little love, Sabina. I told her you had no love for her;
and longed, if only you dared, to throw her by like some faded flower,
whose fragrance had sweetened your life for a day and then grown
loathsome to you, harmful even. Do you hear me?—do you hear, I say?”

For the face of the dead is not more impenetrable than his has grown.

“Do you hear me?”

“And she—believed you?” he said at last.

“Ay,” hurried on Radegund, half pityingly, all contemptuously. “Pretty
little fragile lily bud. I crushed her, though maybe I found my task
harder than I reckoned. Lily she may look, yet ivy never clung closer
to oak, than her love clung to yours; but——”

Then weak with the feverous blood of her long consuming passion, and
trembling with the weight of her remorseful shame, a thousandfold more
cruel and bitter that it seemed to her she loved the stern, marble, man
before her, as she had never loved him yet, she staggered towards him,
and sank on her knees at his feet. “But,” she murmured, “there was that
love to cope with, which was unconquerable. Mine for——”

“Ah, hush! hush! Tell me. She—Sabina——”

“Well, listen. Love it was, that grew and grew, until my womanhood
well-nigh forgot itself, and there was neither shame nor pity left in
me; forgot itself, and stooped—as it must now—as it must now, to lie
naked, grovelling in the very dust at your feet.”

“And she?”

“Ah, she. Yes, she of course—well, what I could not unwind, because
no human power could—for she clung to you so lovingly—who would have
guessed it of her? taking her very life from thought of yours—that I
tore—tore from you, and trampled on, and——”

“Stamped out,” he groaned.

“No, no.”

“Stamped out, till not one poor tendril was left. Yes, yes, you were
successful, you——”

“I tell you—no. She loves you still.”

But no gleam of credence in her words lighted the stony agony of his
face.

“By the life which is leaving me—for I am dying—the next spring
snowdrops will not find me here—the life I have sinned away for your——”

He turned shudderingly from her.

“By that I swear,” and she solemnly lifted her shadowy white hands. “I
think she loves you now as dearly—ay—at least as dearly as when first
she gave you her plighted troth. I think——”

“You think,” he interrupted in hard tuneless tones. “Seemingly your
thoughts are apt to run wild. You think, you say, but I—I know. I who
loved her so dearly, and once would not have believed my love was not
returned, though Heaven’s own voice had said it—I know.”

She lifted her eyes, where she knelt, fixing them with mute enquiry
upon his.

“You see, I argue, mistress,” he went on, “from fact, from—herself.”

“If you did that,” returned Radegund more calmly, “then her face, her
whole bearing would witness for me that what I tell you is true.”

“Those form no bases for me to draw conclusions from,” he rejoined with
such calm intonation as he might have used to elucidate some clear but
intricate problem from the University platform. “But if my eyes cannot
see, my hearing is sensitive. Acutely so, I sometimes flatter myself;
and that was wounded to the quick once out of the twice that we have
met, since you, mistress, so effectually sundered us. Once——”

“When, when?”

“When we met——”

“Ay, by chance?”

“By chance, yes; on my trial morning in the Cathedral.”

“And she said?”

“Oh, words, words, nothing more. So cold, so empty of love they
sounded——”

“Ay, perhaps, sounded,” sadly smiled the artist.

“Or of hate even, those I could have borne, I think; and so few, and
yet, few as they were, I have striven—Heaven knows how I have striven,”
he paused for an instant to wipe away the heavy drops of agony beading
on his face, “night and day to put them from me. It was well, was it
not, that I could not see her? At least that misery was spared me.
Could I have looked on the face from which the light of love I used
to fancy once shone for me, had died out—and lived? If I had seen her
then——”

“Ay, if you had,” smiled the artist with infinite scornful pity. “And
so—that other time you have met?”

“Yes, well; eight days since, in her father’s house. You too were
there? Saw for yourself surely, the excellence of your perfect work.”

“I tell you——”

“Ay, say now. Does she not seem all that a father’s heart could desire?
A calm even-minded treasure of a daughter? And that decision you
helped her to? How wise! is it not? Think what her lot might have been
but for you, mistress, you. Think of it. My wife. A blind man’s wife!
Look forward into the years to come, and strive, if you can, to realize
the future of that woman, whose lot should be linked with mine! Have
you ever done that? You sigh. I hear you. Or shudder, which was it?
Nay, nay, if you weep, dry your tears. I would not have them wasted
upon me.”

“Oh, Conrad! oh, my——”

“Hush, hear me. Have you ever done that? Have you ever troubled your
mind, though indeed I scarcely know why you should, to gauge the depths
of such suffering men endure afflicted as I am?”

“If I could bear your pain,” she moaned.

“Nay,” and his voice softened a little, “I think you mistake me. The
bodily pain is trifling enough beside the awful mental agony—the
Tantalus misery of having, and having not. Your art is dear to you,
yes?”

“Yes,” murmured she.

“As my science is to me. Think, if such a thing were possible, as for
you blindly to fix those fair proportions on your canvas—to limn
in colouring glorious almost as Heaven’s own dear nature, for so I
know your work is;—what it would be to you, for never a line—never a
gleam of it, to gladden the eternal blackness clouding you in? Do you
know—no, no, no, you cannot. Only when it is lost, we come to value
all the sweetness, the gladdening joy of looking upon what our hands
have done? The pleasure, the pride. Pride? Such pride it is then as was
Christ’s own when He went about doing the work the Father had set Him.
And that can never be mine again. Once there was a greybeard, they say,
who bartered his soul for his lost youth. Do you know, mistress, there
are moments—God forgive my heavy sin!—when my darkened life wrestles
with my very soul, and for one little hour of eyesight, I would barter
away its eternal hope. Had it pleased Heaven to have afflicted me with
aught but this—aught but this—if it had dulled these ears, maimed these
hands——”

And as involuntarily he stretched them out, the artist, scarcely
conscious of what she did, caught them in hers, and when gently but
resolutely he drew them away, they were wet with her silent tears.

“But why should I be saying this to you, Mistress von Steinbach? Well,
because I would have you know me as I am—to myself. As she, poor
little one, must have come to know me, had her life ever been part
and parcel of mine. As a man often cast down, despondent, impatient
of his burden, groping always in the utter bewilderment of his dark
way; fretful maybe, strive against it as my better angel may, and
struggling eternally; failing, times beyond count, that the shadow of
my affliction shall not vex and embitter the existence of those about
me. And what had she done, poor darling, that her pure sunny young life
should ever come to be blighted so? Could my love, boundless as it is,
atone to her for it? Think, Mistress von Steinbach, of all this, when
you think of your sin against her and me, and find in it what comfort
you may.”

“Comfort! comfort!” wailed Radegund.

“Ay, comfort; that you succeeded in doing what my selfish erring
heart’s love for her shrank and flinched even from dreaming of.”

“You are wrong! wrong!” wildly insisted she. “She, I tell you—she——”

“Is all that a good little daughter should be. And I say God bless her.
And for the rest, may He forgive you, Radegund von Steinbach.”

“But you! Oh, Conrad, you will not forgive?”

“Nay. I cannot.” And he turned slowly from her; but with her encircling
arms she stayed his feet, and laying down her head upon them, all her
dark hair sweeping the ground, she clung to them, sobbing tearless
sobs, which seemed to be tearing her whole fragile frame. But he
uttered no word; and wrenching himself free of her white enchaining
arms, left her where she lay, and descending the dim-lit staircase,
passed out into the night.

       *       *       *       *       *

Somewhere on the stroke of midnight it was when the drowsy porter
roused up to admit Otto. Seeing the light still burning in his sister’s
studio, the young man ran up to bid her good-night. Scarcely had he
opened the door, than he shrank back, petrified with horror. No picture
lay in its familiar place, but about the empty easel hung a few shreds
of parti-coloured canvas; the rest, torn into a hundred strips, lay
coiling serpent-like upon the floor about the form of Radegund von
Steinbach, stretched motionless there; one hand clutching her bosom,
the other gripping the hilt of the Venetian dagger which had served her
for the model of the one in the murderous queen’s hands, deep stains
lying still wet upon its blade gleaming in the dying lamplight.

Rallying courage, the young man rushed forward, and threw himself
beside the prostrate woman.

“Murder! Help!” he cried. “Help! She has killed herself!”

But no such foul crime lay to her charge; though indeed she had
stricken and destroyed all the last magnificent creation of her own
hands with that weapon, still red with the deed. And when Bruno
Wolkenberg, scarce more conscious than she, lifted her against his
own bursting agonized heart, and bore her to her bed, hers still beat
faintly.




CHAPTER LXVI.

“SWEET IS TRUE LOVE, THO’ GIVEN IN VAIN, IN VAIN.”


Eleven o’clock; and Burgomaster von Steinbach not come home. Somewhere
about sundown it was, he explained that he was going to sup with
Christian Dasipodius to meet a mutual friend or two, and help drink
success to the Horologe. Therefore he might be home late, he said.

“I have the postern key here,” added he, patting his pocket, “and can
let myself in.” Then, like some ungracious pastors do, “who reck not
their own rede,” the Burgomaster strongly exhorted his household to
go betimes to bed, so that next morning they might all rise fresh as
larks, for the impending festivities.

“And you, heart’s treasure,” he had said, kissing his daughter, “go
now, and get as large a stock of beauty sleep as you can, for—well,
for your old father’s sake. That is, if you still love him a little
bit. Yes?”

“Dear Väterle!” and twining her arms round his neck, Sabina sealed her
promise of obedience with a kiss.

“And I’ll warrant,” continued Niklaus, with that air of elasticity and
content which does possess itself of a man who is going to indulge in
a little harmless dissipation with congenial souls, “I’ll warrant me,
my lily flower, fairest of the fair in that pleasaunce of fair dames we
are to see to-morrow. Nay, never shake your head, though beshrew me if
I can quarrel with those blushes, that give the one thing lacking. But
hark! Tell me now. I want to know a secret, a grand secret.”

“A secret, Väterle?”

“Ay, bless my soul! Yes!” laughed Niklaus, in vast enjoyment of
Sabina’s mystified air. “How the new dress fits, that was sent home
yesterday, all spick and span, and ready to be jumped into. Now—well?”

“I—I——”

“Ha! ha! ha! How many times now has it been tried on? Come, tell true,
tell true. And does it fit daintily, ha? And the passementerie, is it
quite to your ladyship’s taste? Yes?”

“It is magnificent, father dear. Far too beautiful for me. Fit for a
queen.”

“But have you tried it on?” insisted Niklaus, somewhat mistrusting her
enthusiasm.

“N—n—not yet, Väterle. I am going to do so presently,” she added
hurriedly, when he looked vexed.

“Ay,” nodded he, swallowing his chagrin. “So do. I want you to look
perfection in it. By the mass! you’re a strange girl, Sabina. I had an
idea all young maids rehearsed this sort of thing before their mirrors,
half-a-dozen times at least.”

“Oh, Väterle!” ejaculated the scandalized Sabina.

“Oh, by my faith, yes. And they do too. Didn’t your mother do it?
Heaven rest her soul. And after she’d married me too, but you—you’re as
steady as old Time. Odds life! must I begin to bid you be fly away like
other maidens?”

“Where should I fly to, from you?” laughed she, stroking his face, “you
dear ridiculous old Väterle. And if I did fly ever so far, I think it
is to you I should come back again at last, like some bad heller piece.”

“Or the dove to the Ark, sweetheart,” and with his equanimity restored,
the Burgomaster took his stick and sallied forth; first with his own
hand bolting the great gate, and then locking behind him the little
postern, he put the key in his pocket.

Half-an-hour later, and not a sound is to be heard in the old
house, for the servants, willingly obedient to the master’s behest,
are gone to bed, and snoring the slumbers of comfortably housed,
well-fed dependents. Antinous has gathered up himself and his finery
into a cool nook of the ivied balustrade. Mitte, careless of those
oft-repeated warnings that some day she will get sat upon, and not a
bit inconvenienced by the heat, which is vexing the world in general
out of all patience, is curled up on the downy crimson cushion of the
Burgomaster’s easy chair. Preternaturally loud through the intense
silence ticks out the old clock in the dining-hall, dark and still as
Dornröschen’s own palace. Only in one window, giving on to the street,
a light still burns. An exquisitely carven oriel, whose corbel springs
from the enfolded wings of an angel with clasped hands, almost resting
on the broad top of the wall immediately beneath.

A marvellous careful chatelain Burgomaster Niklaus, yet no more than
ofttimes have proved since that mythic long ago, when Thetis dipping
her young Achilles into the magical river flood by the heel, left a
vulnerable point, is a fortress stronger than its weakest part.

That window with its painted glass, where now the soft light streams
through, flecking with fair colour the twining creepers and the great
spreading apple tree, whose branches kiss its panes, is quite within
reach of moderately expert climbers, by means of the deep zig-zag
ornament and big stone bosses in the wall; and so much achieved, the
artificial and natural foliage of the window itself would have afforded
excellent grip for attaining to the level of its lozenged casemates
aglow with cross and sacred symbol. But then, did not Argus-eyed Hunx
patrol that street every hour of the night when not otherwise engaged,
that is, in wrestling with the sleepy god; and even when Morpheus did
conquer, the Ill, and the Rhine to boot, would likelier run dry than
that any creature, though he were bold as Barbarossa, should dream of
attempting any such feat; for did not that window light the oratory of
Burgomaster von Steinbach’s daughter? And beyond, on the inner side,
lay her sleeping chamber.

And there, seductively outspread on the bed’s crimson coverlet,
lies to-night that wonderful gala gown. If ever beautiful clothes
delighted heart of woman, then that thing should have driven Sabina
frantic with delight over the grace and rich simplicity breathing
through its every fold. An adept indeed, with boundless mastery of
the _Ars celare Artem_, must have been its creatrix; for while it was
of the latest mode, there was a toning down about it of all stiff and
extravagant ruffings and plaitings, which made it a thing for all time,
present, past, or to come. No incongruity would it have been amid
the gleaming marbles of Diana’s own shrine, yet fitted to sweep the
gothic cathedral’s hoary stones, and shine a delight to the eyes, amid
mediævally carven saints and devil monsters.

Yet the thing brings no light of pleasure into the girl’s eyes, as,
her lamp held high aloft, she stands contemplating it. If outward
trappings should accord with what the heart feels, it seemed to her
that sackcloth would best have been her festive raiment. Still, no
doubt, the gown was rarely beautiful; and as she looked, she could but
remember the generous love which took a pride in giving her the best
his wealth could afford, and with the instinctive feminine desire to
look well, which rarely slumbers long together in a woman, came the
yet stronger ambition to do so for her father’s sake. And she began to
think of trying how the dress fitted, as she had given her promise to
do; but still so sadly and listlessly; ten times more sadly for that
persistent memory of how once in the old days, she had lain nestled in
Conrad’s arms, conjuring up with him visions of this day, far off then,
to-morrow now. And she must live it through—alone?

Setting down her lamp in front of the great ebony and silver-framed
mirror, and doffing the light summer wrap she wore, Sabina fastened the
gown about her lissome young figure.

Once on, what sort of Eve’s daughter would she have been if she had
not stood for some minutes contemplating her own gracious reflection,
and narrowly criticising the setting of seam and sleeve, and minutely
examining the texture of the soft ivory white satin damask, with its
cloth of gold bordering worked in real pearls and sapphire stones of
the deep sea’s own blue; while ruffs of soft Flemish lace were gathered
up about her white throat, and finished the dainty wrists of the
gold-slashed sleeves, caught down at intervals by narrow jewelled bands?

It fitted like a glove. No woman, though far more fastidious than
its wearer, could have found a stitch of fault in it; _Finis coronat
opus_; and turning to a velvet casket on her dressing-table, Sabina
took from it a golden tiara-shaped band, set with pearls and three
large sapphires, her father’s gift that morning, and fastened it among
the rippling coils of her bright hair. For a moment or two longer, the
transient light of interest and excitement lingered in her eyes, but
with the finishing touch, it faded; and her gaze fell to wandering
listlessly over the picture before her; seeing through the mist dimming
all its glitter, no reflection of herself, but a tall, slender,
slightly bending figure in a scholar’s dark fur-bordered gown, with
pale thoughtful features and luminous dreamy eyes, which seemed fixed
on hers, with a gentle smile upon the grave lips, all attent, as if
to catch some strain of sweet far-off music. But with the tears she
strove to press away, the vision faded, resolving itself into some
semblance indeed of that gracious figure, but, oh me! how changed!
how grievously changed! There indeed is all the beauty, all the calm
dignity, but pale and lightless now as sculptured marble; and no trace
of a smile transfiguring the features to their old indescribable glory.

With a low wail of agony, the girl strove to shut out her brain’s
imagery. Yet no, stern or gentle, it abides with her still. All the
spiritual being of the man, crushing down self, dominates and pervades
hers. In him alone is her life. Silently and from afar she has watched
day by day his contest in life’s battle, all his endurance, all his
courage. She marks his triumph now, and rejoices in it; a sad enough,
desolate rejoicing, but still a deep and infinite delight.

Then once more, like stars at dawning, the gems on her rich gown
glimmer out from the mirror’s chiaroscuro, and, like living things,
they begin to grow dear and lovely to her, for the sake of him in whose
honour they are to shine. To bear witness of what this man is among his
fellow-men it is that to-morrow she will stand attired in this costly
garb, these almost priceless gems, fit for a bride—ah me! yes, fit
for a bride. Then a proud flush of pleasure dyes brow and cheek of the
lonely-hearted girl, and fading as quickly as it came, leaves her face
pale as the flower her father loves to liken her to, but infinitely
sweet, and soft, and steadfast. And so turning from the mirror to the
threshold of her oratory, she crosses its inlaid marble floor, and
falling on her knees before the little shrine, where the pitying Christ
looks down from His tree of suffering, pours out all her heart there,
in the shadows cast by the tiny lamp hanging from the star-gilded roof.
But such dim light is enough and to spare for Sabina, who needs no
printed book to pray from. The supplications she has to make are all
graven deep, deep in her heart, and—but shall such sacred, fast-sealed
things be laid open? What if that little believer in kind saints, and
pitying angels, and marvellously extravagant miracles, did pray that
there might be brought about some mending of the cruelly snapped golden
thread, at least all unselfishly, all conditionally she made her plea.
If so be that it was well for him. Not else—oh Heaven! no, not else.
And if it were not for his best happiness, why then, only God bless
him, and keep him, and lighten for him that sad, sad, darkened life,
as He alone might do, and shed on him all her own allotted measure
of love and of worldly content, every life’s good which should have
been hers. Here to the Blessed Christ’s own dear feet she brought
her willing sacrifice, holding her affection for this man to be no
idolatrous one, but full of sad, deep gladness in the priceless love
she felt.

It seemed to her then, as many a time it had before, what happiness
hers would have been, if she might have been let lay down her life for
him, if she might suffer for his sake some great, sharp terrible pain,
so that in the years to come, when she lay cold and world-forgotten, he
might now and again spare her a thought, and say in that voice of his,
than which in her ears no music was half so sweet: “I think the child
loved me!”

Yet how could such a lot be hers? Rather to the end what could it be,
but one of mute endurance? The life-long, weary, humdrum striving to
be just one more respectable, even natured feminine creature, with
whom life rumbles on, more or less smoothly or uncomfortably, as the
ruts on the road to the churchyard admit of? Well then, one day at
least the slow torture would reach its ending. Sooner or later, the
time must come. One day—and so at last the silent tears well up to
overflowing, and trickle down upon the rich, velvet-bound, illuminated
book of Hours beneath her convulsively clasped hands. The brave heart,
ready to endure to the end, as hitherto it had unmurmuringly borne, was
yet very, very human; and in the solitude and silence of those night
hours would pause and turn to dwell on what had been—and—perhaps—in
Heaven—who could tell?—might be again. Perhaps——




CHAPTER LXVII.

“LADY’S LEAP CORNER.”


“Sabina!”

Some one whispered her name? Nay, how foolish! What was it but the
rustling of the leaves against the open casement panes? Pray Heaven
this threatening storm——

“Sabina von Steinbach!”

Hush! a voice, and unmistakably a human one; a woman’s whispering
voice! The girl’s heart stood still, and lifting her head from her
pillowing arms, she listened.

“Sabina! child, speak. Are you there?”

Chilled with terror, Sabina rose to her feet. The quick, impatient
utterance so vividly recalled to her that other summons which had
dispelled her brief dream of love. And as once again this one is
repeated, through the open window there fell upon the trailing skirts
of her dress a little shower of pebbles and dry leaves, and then a
face, with tangled hair and gleaming, eager eyes, stared in upon her
through the parted tendrils.

A sigh of relief escaped the startled girl. Not this time the dusky
tresses and great dark eyes of Cousin Radegund, but the red locks and
pale, half-scared glances of Syndic Hackernagel’s daughter!

“Gretchen!” cried Sabina, flying to the window, and affrightedly
grasping the wrists of the two slender hands clutching at the sill,
“for Heaven’s sake—you’ll fall!”

“Nay,” hurriedly answered the girl, “my feet touch firmly enough on the
coping here.”

“Wait an instant,” returned the amazed Sabina, still retaining a tight
grip with one hand on one of her strange visitor’s, while with the
other she reached up to unclasp the oriel’s entire division, “and I
will help you to pull yourself in.”

“Have you the courage,” challenged the other with a low hysterical
laugh, “to pull yourself out?”

“Nay now, for shame,” rebuked the mistress of the house, unconsciously
relaxing her hold. “Are you mad? why should I do such a thing?”

“Well,” gaspingly returned Gretchen, tightening her grip, “as you will.
Only, if you love him, as I think——”

“Him?”

“Ay, Conrad Dasipodius.”

“Gretchen?”

“Do you love him? Do you indeed?” and keenly and scrutinizingly
Gretchen’s eyes peered up into those gazing down all bewildered into
hers. “Swear it. Ay?”

“Heaven knows I do.”

“As I know now, Sabina dear,” returned Gretchen, with a smile and a
sigh of deep, unalloyed content, as though the result of her scrutiny
had brought her all, or even more than she sought. “So, listen then:
there is mischief hatching against him. Do you understand?” she panted
on; “mischief—murder—I know not what.”

“Murder!” gasped the girl.

“Ay, perhaps. Some foul play in any case. And he—my father—oh Sabina!”

“Your father?”

“Hush—sh! If he knew I was here now, he’d kill me. Child—hush—I
dare not stay; I must get home—home before he comes, to find
out——Listen, he, this man,” she hurried on in hoarse rapid whispers,
“has—stolen—from Prudentius the sacristan, the key—of the—Saint
Thomas Chapel. I saw him do it—Hush then—to do what? I don’t know.
Only for some treachery it must be, and—can let himself—don’t you
understand?—let himself in by the postern—just whenever it suits him.
And so, too, can I. See here, my—my girl—so can I! See here!”

And with a low stifled sob of laughter, clinging on by elbows and left
hand to the ledge, she contrived to pluck from her bosom a small brass
key, and flung it at Sabina’s feet; “and so may you. That opens it too.
A duplicate key.”

“But—” began the amazed Sabina, picking it up.

“Ah! does it matter how I’ve come by it. Honestly though, let me
tell you, honestly. Take it, child—take it, and—use it, as—you will.
I—I thought I would rather have died than parted with it; but your
need—and—and his, it is so great. And Sabina—child—you have been
good—to me; and—ah Heaven! the lightning!—and your heart is true,
I—I think; and there is not an instant—not one, to lose. Heaven help
you—I—I can—do no more.”

The bleeding fingers relax, leaving, as they slip away, an ugly smear
on the stone ledge. A destructive creaking and crashing among the
vine trails, a crunching rattle of loosened mortar, a brief silence,
then a thud on the path below, a broken bough or two, a dark, shadowy
figure rushing with noiseless, stumbling haste along the silent street,
a long low thunder-growl, and then is all as still as becomes the
Burgomaster’s excellently guarded habitation.

Only the brazen key in Sabina’s hand, only the blood marks of the
hand upon the window-sill, left to tell her the whole thing is not a
delusion of her brain; nothing besides, save the remembrance of the
earnestness of that white, scared face.

“Not an instant to lose! oh, Heaven! Dear father! and you not here—not
here to help me!” cried the girl, wringing her hands. “Not an instant
to lose if—now,” and flinging herself on her knees upon the Prie-Dieu;
“God help me then, and He alone, for I go!”

Not staying to lay aside her rich dress, never a thought of her
sparkling head gear, one instant for dragging down a large fur-lined,
cloth mantle, a comfortable providing of Niklaus for her against rainy
days, and carefully letting it fall from the window on to the wall
below; then springing lightly to the broad window seat, she gathered
her trailing skirts close round her, and prepared to descend.

In after days people would gaze curiously up at that window; and the
angle of the wall it overhung was for many a generation after called
“Lady’s Leap Corner”. It was held to be a miracle how Sabina came,
as she did, with never so much as a bruise to the ground. Gretchen
Hackernagel, who did the feat before her, halted, poor thing, like
a lame hen for weeks after; but the slender fragile lily came off
scatheless. Some romantic folks were fond of saying that it was because
love, who laughs at locksmiths, lent her feet wings; but natural
evolutionary law was less outraged than may at first sight appear,
inasmuch as Sabina was acquainted with every corner and curve of
her beautiful window; and times out of number, when little, naughty
daughter of Eve that she was, she had slipped down on to the wall after
the rosy apples bobbing so seductively almost within arm’s length. Here
it was that poor Gretchen had come to grief; but Sabina boldly trusting
herself to the old apple tree’s firm friendly arms, comes safely up on
the topmost zig-zag of the wall’s cornice, and so to the broader one
below; now only one more, and she is landed firm between the tall prick
ears of the great stone lion’s head glaring out of his circular niche,
barely four feet from the ground. Letting the faithful apple branches
fly upward now, and gripping with both hands the leonine ears, she
swings down to terra firma. Now for the cloak—ay, wrap it well round,
child, gather close under it the sheeny dress, for the perils of the
way are but beginning!

With ears strung to catching the echo of a fly’s footsteps she stands
to listen.

Not a sound. Strassburg, for its silence, might be a city of the dead.
Holy Virgin! What lightning flashes! Think of the storm that must be
rending the mountains now; and the thunder so near; kind angels, so
near it must be—hush! all still again, and dark. Now. And fleet and
light as a doe she speeds down the street.

What about Hunx? Grandly the lofty silhouette of the cathedral’s
façade rises before her through the shadows cast by the huge lanterns
swinging in mid street from their ropes. How near and yet so far lies
her goal; and involuntarily her hold fastens tighter and tighter
about the precious key as she nears Hunx’s hateful watchbox; and what
a joy to catch, when still she is some yards from it, the rhythmical
proclamation of his profound somnolency!

With cat-like tread she prepares to steal past, but hark! hark! Voices!
Gracious powers protect her! Her very heart throbs loud enough to
betray her. Like a creature at bay, she turns, seeking refuge, and
there is none, save only the shelter of the space between the wall and
Hunx’s watchbox. Almost better face the worst than such a perilous
sanctuary! but danger threatens yonder for the man she loves; and—and
“there is not an instant to lose”. Not an instant—hush—help her now,
thou dear, dear Heaven! Thou— Clit-clat over the stones, and her
father’s cheery voice, harmonising its deep basso with the clear gentle
accents of Bruno Wolkenberg.

Friends! Friends if ever friends were, and her first impulse is to
spring forward, but the second chains her fast; for a confusion of
footsteps tells her they are not alone; and to blazen out the secret
of her mission so might be death to the man she is flying to save. In
a minute they will all be past; and with stifled breath she crouches
shrinking in her hiding-place.

“And for my part,” Niklaus is saying, as foremost of the little group
he nears the street corner, “for my part—Bless my soul! what sort of
a guardian now of the city’s safety do you call that?” he demands,
veering sharp round, half-vexedly, half good-humouredly, and pointing
with his stick at the slumbering Hunx. “Before he’d waken we might all
be burned in our beds! Well, well; but as I was saying, Dr. Bruno,
I can’t say I see anything so surprising in it myself. Such a rare
willing horse as Dasipodius is, you know. He’s done up. That’s the long
and short of it. He’ll be better to-morrow after a night’s rest. And he
didn’t downright complain of anything, did he?”

“I suppose he’d die before he’d ever do that,” answered Wolkenberg.

“It’s the last straw that breaks the camel’s back,” growled the voice
of Isaac Habrecht.

“Yes,” said the Burgomaster, “and that confounded Horologe——”

“I cannot think it had anything to do with the Horologe,” said Bruno
in musing tones. “Don’t you know not half-an-hour before he had been
saying so cheerily that the thing was ready as a bride on her marriage
morning; and that there was nothing to do now but to step in first
thing just before the doors were opened to-morrow, and set it ready for
going.”

“Ay, truly. So he did,” said a voice which was strange to Sabina. “And
we were all as comfortable as could be, weren’t we, till”—the speaker
hemmed and hesitated—“till——”

“Till—out with it, man. Don’t mind me,” said Niklaus, “till that
kill-joy niece of mine spoiled the sport with her messages. What the
mischief could she be wanting with him at such an unconscionable
time? Never look to Mistress Radegund von Steinbach for teaching the
proprieties. Oh, no offence, Dr. Bruno; not a bit of it. Only women
are such deucedly queer creatures. Aren’t they? Such odd contrasts, as
one may say. When I think now of that little girl of mine, safe and
snug—God bless her—in her bed, hours upon hours ago, and then—By Jove!
how his face haunts me! I can’t get it out of my mind. Like a ghost’s,
wasn’t it?”

“So pale and weary,” sighed Kaspar Habrecht’s clear young voice.
“Bidding us good-night like a man in a dream.”

“I never saw him so strangely moved,” murmured Bruno.

“Ay, once he was near to it,” said Isaac. “Don’t you remember, Dr.
Wolkenberg, when they wanted to steal his plans, after that piece of
devilry—Hark! Some one is calling.”

“Otto von Steinbach!” cried Bruno in a startled voice, and the group
turned enquiringly on the wild hatless figure flying towards them.

“Bruno! dear Bruno!” gasped he. “Quick! quick! for God’s sake!
Radegund, my sister——”

“What now?” irascibly demanded the Burgomaster, bringing his stick down
heavily on the stones. “What now?”

“Oh! I don’t know! I don’t know!” distractedly sobbed the young man.
“We have just found her stretched like dead!”

“Dead!”

“No—no, God forbid! She is breathing. Oh, Bruno——”

But already Bruno Wolkenberg is disappearing through the wide open
flung door of the artist’s house, where lights are flitting to and fro,
and signs of sudden confusion are manifesting.

“Positively!” ejaculated the Burgomaster, gazing after his nephew, who
has followed close on Bruno’s wake. “And past eleven o’clock! What
the hangman does she mean by it? Ill is she? If she’d gone to bed and
got her rest like other decent maidens, it wouldn’t have happened, I
suppose.” And bidding the others good-night, Niklaus turned, and at a
more leisurely pace crossed the Platz to learn how it fared with his
niece.




CHAPTER LXVIII.

A VIGIL.


The last clit-clat of the Burgomaster’s stick on the threshold of the
artist’s house, left the Platz once more in silence; but Sabina’s
heart sank within her, for the scene, which had taken place under
the watchman’s very nose, had disturbed his slumbers, and he stirred
and grunted, but it was only with a view to settling himself more
comfortably; and after a few seconds—or was it an eternity?—the snoring
recommences with at least undiminished vigour, and Sabina ventures to
peer forth from her refuge.

By the almost unceasing lightning flashes, she can clearly discern the
little door of the Saint Thomas’ Chapel. Once across the open space
before her, and it will be gained.

In the next interval of darkness the courage of desperation seizes her,
and darting from her hiding-place, she speeds like the wind across the
Platz. Then on, round under the south-western wall, till, like some
hunted creature in sanctuary at last, she finds herself in the deep
sheltering arch of the chapel door. With hands which, for all they
tremble like storm-shaken aspen striplings, are still sure and apt, she
fits the key into its lock. Easily and noiselessly the thing does its
work, and stepping across the threshold, she carefully closes the door
behind her, and stands in the Cathedral—alone.

Alone! So her wordless prayer was that she might be. And yet at the
thought a mortal terror thrilled her. The world is so wise now-a-days,
so scientific, so intellectual, so reasonable, so positive in the
classifying and labelling of nature’s every secret, that nobody worth
the name of anybody would ever fall into the mistake of trembling
and turning pale if chance did bring them into such a situation; but
with Sabina, whose mind was a clear page in regard to every ology,
but brimful of saints and angels, and spirits good and evil, and
well attuned with that of the princely student’s, who said: “There
are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy,”—with her it was a vastly different thing. Standing there,
in the pitchy darkness, for she had neither thought, nor would have
dared to bring a light, only the fitful moonbeams to guide her, and the
forked steel-blue lightning illumining the vast edifice from end to
end, and from roof to the marble monuments, where many an effigy lay
stretched grim and rigid above the corpses resting below.

Not recklessly, not fearlessly the girl had come there. For her mind,
the supernatural with its awfulness, its alluring sweetness, was as
real—more real than the palpable conditions of her daily life. Had
it been foretold to her that she should ever do this that she was
doing now, she would have shudderingly declared death to have been
preferable; but there was that ruling her—ruling all her strength, all
her weakness, which made her whole being subserve its will, and clad
her heart in panoply strong as steel.

Brainsick and giddy, her limbs half paralysed with terror, Sabina
groped her way to the Horologe, and grasping its fluted columns, stood
and listened.

No sound but her own panting breaths—Ah! what long low rumbling is that
beneath her feet, shaking the Horologe to its base? TWELVE! The first
stroke of midnight booming out from the belfry overhead. Midnight and
alone. Midnight and the strange weird deeds beginning then within those
walls! In her mind’s eye, but there only, for the temporary gold and
crimson arras draping the arch of the Saint Thomas Chapel hid the tomb,
which otherwise would have been visible from where she stood,—in her
imagination, Sabina could see the awesome effigy of her namesake, the
sculptress Sabina von Steinbach, rising from her marble couch, and,
with white waving arms, and sad distraught eyes, pass gliding amid the
aisles of the mighty church.

But was the figure there? After all that was a question. Only the day
previously, Doctor Wolkenberg, looking in at the Burgomaster’s, had
happened to remark that Master Rudel had grumbled loudly at being
hurried over his work of renovation, and said the fault would not lie
at his door if it was made a bungle of in consequence; and that if it
was not for the sake of Professor Dasipodius, he would not attempt it.
This jeremiad reaching the Professor Dasipodius’ ears, he had begged
the sculptor on no account to vex himself by hurrying over it, for a
thing not thoroughly done was infinitely worse than not done at all;
and Sabina, whose mind was a storehouse of every syllable that people
ever said the Professor Dasipodius had said, naturally recalled this
little circumstance; and so, after all, was the figure there?

At intervals, which each time grow longer, and fainter and still
fainter, the moonbeams stream in through the windows far overhead on
to the Horologe; and Sabina’s eyes, lifted in trembling curiosity, can
see now Kaspar Habrecht’s exquisite carved work crowning its lofty
central apex, now the brilliant colouring of Radegund’s pictures round
the cornice, fair and soft in the silvery shimmering haze. Poor girl,
what ailed her to-night? But only a passing thought for Radegund now.
Sabina’s very terrors hushed at the sight of the gigantic wondrous
thing. She was striving to realize that it was indeed, as her touch
left no room to doubt, the solid structure, and not the mere baseless
fabric of those sad dreams for ever haunting her, sleeping and waking,
when Dasipodius had thrust her from him; and she had staggered, blinded
with misery and tears, against its panels, and the lustre of her love
had all faded out.

Almost on that spot itself, but a little to leftwards of it, she stood
now, gathering, as the moments passed, calmness to reflect over what
she has done—is doing, and asking herself, if in absolute truth and
fact she is standing alone in that vast silent Cathedral at dead of
night. All dark, utterly dark, but for the one gleam of light shining
like a star in extremest distance yonder before the high altar. If
that symbol of the Abiding Presence had always been a joy to her in
broad daylight, amid the stir of human life around, what was its
companionship now in this fearsome loneliness, when though outside the
earth might be fainting and groaning for heat, here all was still as
the very grave; and shiveringly she drew her long cloak closer about
her and listened. Not a sound besides the ever-rolling thunder, and
presently the rain falling heavily against the windows. The rush of it
was welcome to her, coming like some old familiar acquaintance out of
the ordinary work-a-day world, and nerving her to stand up on her feet,
and advance to the arras. If those were but lifted—and with a desperate
courage she laid hands on them—why then, yonder tomb—ONE! The low,
solemn clang arrested her hand; and long after its last wave of sound
had died away among the arches of the choir, she still stood with the
arras in her hands, not daring to stir.

Flash after flash of lurid light break over her, sheeting clear as day
legended window and lofty pillar. Thunderous peal upon peal burst,
as though the crack of doom were falling; but the awe she was wont
to feel at such stormful terrors plays a mere secondary part to that
nameless dread possessing her, of the dead sculptress’s monumental
tomb. Supposing that there in some way the hidden danger she has come
to grapple with should lie, and she—oh, coward little heart!—hangs
trembling on these curtains!

With a desperate courage she lifted them, and forced her scared eyes to
confront the dreaded thing as the next lightning flash fell.

Not there! Only the bare shining surface with its crimson cushion
at the upper end, of cunningly simulated crimson broidered velvet,
just as she had been used to see it all for these weeks past. And now
in the soul, where many and many a gentle tourney had been tilted
between Imagination and Reason, rose up a sore conflict touching
the whereabouts of that stately marble lady with her lovely still
face, whose faint tints on eyelids and lips did always but render its
corpselike aspect the more real; and her dress all gem-bordered—painted
gems indeed, yet faceted and polished so craftily, that they looked
as real as those upon her own gown. How strangely, the little woman
thought, with the feminine instinct faithful to her at even such a
time, fashion does repeat itself! To think that the dead Sabina von
Steinbach, dead two long hundred years, had worn such garments as would
pass muster in the fashionable world now! A little difference in detail
possibly, a degree less exuberance of ruff and furbelow, a trifle
less stiffness, a shade more of graciousness; but the girl, with her
abhorrence of modish extremes, always ordered all such uglinesses to
be toned down in her own dress, as far as the code permitted, and the
result was that the mediæval Sabina might have stood beside the Sabina
of the new era, and seemed no anachronism.

But what an appalling conclusion! Holy Virgin! It chilled her almost to
the petrifaction of the stone she had schooled herself to approach and
look upon. Almost she feels the dead woman’s hand upon her shoulder;
and, overpowered by her terror, she sinks down on the tomb’s broad
steps, sobbing and shrieking aloud, till the place echoes with her
hysterical cries. But no human help or harm comes to bid her cease. All
silent still, when at last the paroxysm subsides. It has brought her
overcharged spirit relief, saved her perhaps from losing sanity itself;
and rising from her lowly seat, she dares to stand leaning against the
tomb’s alabaster cornice. How stiflingly hot it has grown! So it seems
to her, out of the fevered heat supervening upon those chill damps of
an hour ago; and she gaspingly unclasps the cloak from about her neck!
Ah! what an idiot to cry and shriek out so; as if somebody—something
had—oh, for shame—for shame! Fine courage that! A little child put
to bed in the dark would not have been so foolish! What was there to
be afraid of? Here in a church, a sweet, lovely, beautiful church of
churches, protected, too, by God’s own dear Mother! Shame to dream of
being afraid! How many and many a time had good Bishop John, standing
in the pulpit yonder, told how this was none other than the house
of God, where day and night holy angels kept guard. Could she look
yonder, where the perpetual light gleamed, and be afraid, though all
the sheeted dead around her rose from their graves? Why, think of it
only! Outside in the dark world, how the storm was raging, and hearts
were quailing at its fury. Hark how the rain deluged and drove, and
the deafening thunder rolled, yet here, against God’s house, how calm
and still! How impotently the rage of the elements spends itself! The
very Ark, resting calm amid the seething waters, is this old Cathedral,
and——TWO!

Night wearing away, and with it the storm. Each lightning flash less
vivid, and the thunder sulkily rolling farther and farther in distance.
A little while, and the rain ceases, and bright through the clerestory
windows a star or two shines down from the deep cleared sky, and
still, her vigil undisturbed! but never for one instant the thought of
Gretchen’s warning sleeps. Like the burden of some antique song, she
murmurs again and again! Danger to him—to the Horologe! Danger! that is
her watchword—Danger!

THREE!

And now at last is the time at hand? Is it the storm which has delayed,
or perhaps destroyed, this that was to have happened? Soon it will
be daybreak. Two hours more, and the whole city must be astir, and
then—Listen! No! not a sound; and though dawn is so near at hand, all
black as midnight still. No ghastly lightning even to guide her now!
and not daring to stir, half sitting, drooping with her weary vigil,
she waits on, eagerly watching for the first ray of dawn which shall
help her to some pillar, some refuge where she can hide and watch.
Would the arras be safe? or below here, upon the tomb’s broad foot
paces, hidden under her cloak’s ample folds, or perhaps the shadows of
the Horologe itself, the Horologe, the Horo——FOUR!




CHAPTER LXIX.

SAVED!


But never a stroke heard she. Gently and tenderly dawn’s first streak
looked down through the shadows upon the figure of the girl, sleeping
restfully as if her head were pillowed on the downy pillow of her own
bed, instead of on that hard, unyielding cushion of stone; and the pure
light, which is like none other on sea or shore, kissed the closed
eyelids, and flushed with rare loveliness the cheeks and brow pale as
whitest alabaster, and streaked with soft prismatic hues the sheeny
folds of her white dress, with its sparkling border of precious stones.
Sculptor Rudel coming in now would have torn his hair with envy at the
sight of so rare a substitute provided for that vacant spot. Adept in
his craft though he might be, never had he come near to conceiving
a pose at once so full of exquisite grace and so unconventional.
Not in deathlike prostration, but her figure slightly turned, her
jewel-crowned head resting on the rounded left arm, whose little hand
touched the carved cornice of the tomb, while the other lay outspread
upon her bosom, as though protecting some treasure hidden there.

Fours hours she had watched and waited, and then sleep had stolen
its march upon her. The Good Shepherd, Who once lay sleeping upon a
pillow when the tempest raged, had sent His lamb a brief respite; but
it was no more. Just a mere physical relaxing of overstrained power,
no restful deep repose of mind and body, for all she lay still as her
marble namesake would have lain. The muscular tension of her tired-out,
aching limbs had succumbed, and the place’s profoundest silence had
lulled her brain to something of quiescence, but not for an instant
to unconsciousness. The will had rather rebelled than taken part in
it; and when barely half-an-hour later she stirred, and that first
perplexity which comes between sleeping and waking had faded away,
she was terror-stricken to think what a sorry trick that brief dog’s
sleep might have played her, lying stretched there in the full sight
of—Listen! No, no. Thank God! all silent; and she stirred. All quite
silent and light enough now, and to spare, though still the filmy
shadows lingered. Hush! what was that?

Stricken motionless, daring not so much as to lift a finger, she lies,
listening, heart and soul of her, to a strange burring sound proceeding
from the rear of the Horologe—so low, so stealthy, that it may be some
mere spontaneous electrical stir of the thing’s organism, or the dry
skitter of insect wings upon the walls; but the sharp unmistakeable
click immediately following proclaims that some one is tampering with
the chapel’s postern lock. An enemy; for would not a friend boldly turn
the key and enter without more ado? But that? a crafty, cowardly sound!
and paralysed in the very act of stirring, Sabina sank back, her eyes
wildly fixed in the direction of the sounds, like some nightmare-bound
creature.

Two paces can bring this intruder where he can plainly see her; for the
arras, which intercepted her own view of this spot where she now lies,
hang thrust back as she has left them.

If she can but fly to their thick and ample folds. Impossible! for
already the shadow of a man, cast by some light he carries, crosses
the angle of the Horologe and steals on; a short cloaked figure, with
a hat whose broad brim entirely conceals his features. In his left hand
swings a dark lantern, and his right clutches—Great Heaven!—a knife!
whose bright steel gleams and flashes with the action of throwing back
his heavy cloak.

Creeping on, with stealthy cat-like tread, he comes, until, gaining the
front of the Horologe, he pauses, and lifting his lantern as high as
his mean stature allows, turns its rays in every direction across the
nave of the buildings. Then satisfied apparently with the result of his
survey, he lowers it again.

As he does so, a chance gleam catches the dead sculptress’s tomb. With
a scared, startled look, he turns, and again hurriedly lifting his
lantern, jerks its full rays across the recumbent figure there. Drawing
back a step to obtain a fuller view, he stands staring long and fixedly
at the stone-cold, breathless seeming of a woman.

“After all, then,” he mutters at last, setting down his lantern, and
dragging a handkerchief from his pocket and pushing back his hat, he
proceeds to wipe and mop his face and brow; “after all you’re there,
are you? Done and fixed up. Ten thousand plagues on you, and him who
made you, for giving me such a start!” and the speaker bestowed another
mopping on his face.

The face of Tobias Hackernagel. She saw it distinctly, daring to steal
one swift glance at him, as he turned himself about; and even had
the uncertain light deceived her, it would not have been possible to
mistake his harsh, rasping utterance.

“If Strassburg,” he went on, setting his teeth like some irritated
hyena—“if Strassburg was what she was ten years ago, and not the beast
returned to her mire, wallowing that she is now, you’d never have been
put back at all; painted clay lump that you are!” and brandishing his
knife and stepping forward a pace or two, he scowled savagely at the
obnoxious figure, “with your wicked wanton arms, that might be flesh
itself, for their lustful whiteness; and your face—where were their
brains, that they didn’t give it a touch of vermilion? Ho! ho! fire
and faggot are the stuff I’d like to touch you up with, or this,” and
the Syndic lifted his knife and aimed its point at the marble still
figure—“or this, Mistress Sabina von Steinbach, this pretty little
thing here would chip you out of all knowledge. But,” and then Tobias
chuckles savagely, “just to-night I haven’t leisure; we’ve got as much
as we can do. We’re going to begin with the Horologe, don’t you see;
and put the Professor Dasipodius’ pipe out for him. I’ll warrant he
won’t hold his head up quite so high again after that for many a long
day to come. Curse him! Oh yes, we’re going to begin with the Horologe.
We’re going—to—begin—with—the—Horologe.”

Twirling round on his heel, Hackernagel proceeded to take a survey
of the Clock’s façade. “Oh ho, friend!” he snarled with another
spiteful chuckle, “you look bravely now, don’t you? A fine thing
you for a Christian temple, with your gilded gewgaw manikins. But
trust me, I’ll stop their struttings and their antics before they’re
ten minutes older. And you,” and he glared up at Kaspar’s _chef
d’œuvre_, “have you screeched your first yet? May it choke me then if
it be not your last. Painted abomination! but for you, would Tobias
Hackernagel have fallen—fallen—fallen like this?” and his teeth gnash
with maniacal fury. “Driven to beg his pardon! Think of it. His!
forsooth. Sorcerer—Elymas—blind devil in human shape whom men fall
down and worship! This fellow, fit only to be broken on the wheel for
the magic-monger he is, and sent to burning flames, while I—I on whose
lightest word the people once hung breathless—am scorned, and pointed
after, and defiled with rotten filth a dog would turn at! And they
grin—oh, righteous Judge, have I not caught them at it?—grin! Tobias
Hackernagel grinned at! oh, ha! ha! ha!”

The low hysterical shriek of savage laughter stopped his utterance,
wakening the echoes of the place, until it seemed as if a legion of
fiends were shouting sympathy. “Ha! ha! Triumph! he! he! Triumph! It’s
not much of that, I take it, you’ll be having to-morrow morning, friend
clockmaker! you and your crew. Triumph! oh ho! he! he! he! Triumph!
we’ll see about that—we’ll see—about——” _Five!_

So late? Then indeed not an instant to be lost. Thrusting the knife
into his belt, Hackernagel flung off his hat and cloak, and unbuttoning
the wrists of his close-fitting doublet, turned them carefully back.
Then taking up his lantern, he crept round by the Horologe panels,
casting, as he went, more than one glance over his shoulder, with eyes
staring and rolling in their sockets, like those of a man stealing on
to strike a deathblow.

Ay—death—death to the Horologe! The woman lying there divines all his
purpose now. Distinctly the loud hoarse whisper of it reaches her from
his writhing, hissing lips; and the lantern’s sickly gleam, mingling
with the moted sunlit haze now streaming in from the window above,
casts a ghastly glare upon the evil face as he disappears round the
back of the wooden case. Death to the Horologe! Death!

She can hear the low chuckle escaping him, as he flings open the little
door in the panelling closing in the whole mechanism. At last the game
is all in his own hands. One sharp, well-aimed stroke, and the thing is
done. Who can step in between him and his foul intent? Who?

Yonder monument is tenantless now. She who lay there stands hidden in
the arras, so near that not a twitch of the coward face, not a movement
of the eager hands escapes her. Steady, steady with the lantern. Make
no blunders. Many a chain, many a wire coils itself about the one
spot, where only, like Siegfrid’s cross, the wound can be mortal. No
blundering. Steady. Ay, there—safe in its cunningly devised little
chamber. Cut that slender wire, scarce thicker than a hair, and—has not
Dasipodius said it?—the whole organism will thrill and shiver to its
extremities in one agonising death-throe.

There it lies. Strong in its weakness, weak in its strength, delicate,
fragile, true as the heart of her who stands watching. Steady—hush!
Some one trying the door? Fool! who could be doing that? Prudentius
belike? Oh! ho! he! he! No, not exactly—not—Voices? Psha! Steady now.
Steady. Just here, no botching. Just here—and obliquely the weapon’s
keen edge lies fixed across the wire spring for one half instant, the
next it is pointing impotently up in air, and with a loud screech of
rageful terror, Hackernagel staggers back, powerless, pinioned by the
two elbows in a vice-like grip cutting like ropes into his flesh.
Frenziedly the baffled wretch wrenches round his neck to discover
his assailant. At sight of her a ghastly pallor supplants all the
purple-red hues of his face, and his whole frame shakes with abject
terror. No living woman his coward conscience sees, but the dead raised
up to avenge his premeditated crime! Not the supernatural tenacity of
a despairing woman’s clutch he feels, but the awful strong grip of a
corpse risen from the grave! There, in her white-jewelled dress, she
stands, her dead pale face rigid in its accusing horror.

“Sabina von Steinbach!” breaks at last from his clammy lips.

“Ay,” she gasps brokenly, “what—foul—deed——”

At the sound of her voice the man’s whole aspect changes, and he
laughs aloud. No ghost then, this! Just a woman. Devil seize her claws
scratching and pinching at his bared flesh. Just a woman, a weak
woman, about as strong as the fragile flower people likened her to,
and whom one blow of his hands—always supposing them free—could crush.
This weak, weaponless child. Ugh! Were her fingers tigress taloned?
“Ugh!—leave hold!” yelled he, writhing and smarting with pain. “Curse
you! Leave hold. Dost hear?”

Perhaps, or perhaps not. She made no sign. Every sense, every nerve
gathered up and concentrated in the grip of her little hands.

“Leave hold, I say!” and bending his head, he fixed his jagged ogre
teeth in her wrist. The muscles relaxed, and, as her hand fell off
powerless, a sharp wail of pain escaped her; but though the savage act
left fearsome marks, it was a cry more of mental than of physical pain;
for Hackernagel’s right hand was free now. One slight effort on his
part to shake her off, and he could return to his interrupted crime.

Pain and terror daze her brain, until her eyes see nothing but a
whirling chaotic mass. Dark—darker—and shriek upon shriek break from
her pale lips. “The Horologe! Help! The Horologe!”

“Hold thy cursed tongue!” he yells, as with a violence that sends her
staggering against the curtained walls, he wrenches himself free, and
turns upon her, murderous fury glaring in his dilated and terrified
eyes. “Screeching devil!” But, entangled and clinging among the arras
folds, she contrives to elude his grasp, stumbling forward until she
has gained the front angle of the clock. “The Horologe!” shrieks she
with one supreme concentration of her fast-waning strength.

“Will you?” he shouts, rushing upon her; and seizing her by both arms,
drags her to her knees at his feet, “will you have me wring your
accursed throat, you——”

The words die on his lips. He has stumbled with his prey into a group
of men; and with his cruel clutch upon her neck, finds himself face to
face with Conrad Dasipodius.

Foiled, baffled, a hideous mingling of fear and rage distorting
his features, and the laugh of a demon on his foaming livid lips,
Hackernagel, loosening his hold upon his victim, turns with uplifted
knife on the blind man.

“Conrad! Love!”

Whose blood is this streaming over the white neck of her whom
Dasipodius, standing unscathed, but an awful mazed horror upon his
face, holds strained to his heart? Does he know whose are the brave
arms which thrust aside the murderous aim? whose breast has shielded
his, warm now with the stream flowing from the terrible gaping wound in
that white flesh? Ay, truly, her yearning cry as she threw herself upon
him told him. Truly he knows.

“Sabina!”

Only her name. So dear, that even his own lips had for so long dared
not to utter it.

“Sabina!” he murmured in his perplexed agony, bending his face over
hers upturned, death-white, on his sightless eyes.

“Ay,” sighed she, a smile of infinite content breaking over the
pain-wrung lips, and a rare gladness dawning upon her pallid brow.

“Darling! speak,” he implored; “speak to me.”

“Ay—yes. Not—hurt—are you—Conrad?”

Oh God! for the warm wet life-blood trickling over his hands clasping
her about! He struggled for speech, and failed for the awful throe
convulsing his heart. And yet she must have read in his face some
answer contenting her, for again she strove to speak.

“That is—well,” she murmured, and a transient flush glorified the gray
gathering shadows of her face; “I do—think—I saved you—from——”

A convulsive shudder stayed her, the arms flung protectingly about
his neck relaxed and fell heavily, and the pale eyelids drooped. Yet
for one instant only, then they were lifted again, and the dim eyes
entreatingly rested upon his.

“And—will you—Conrad, just once—again, will you—kiss me—love—just once?”

Again that rare faint flush overspread the face, white indeed, but not
deathlier white than his, as his lips touched hers; and then her head
drooped upon his breast and pillowed there; and there came over her
weary face a light so radiant, so full of utter content, that it seemed
as if the joy of the old days was hers once more.




CHAPTER LXX.

“FINIS CORONAT.”


Not a cloud as big as a man’s hand dimmed the glory of that blue sky
shining over the old city on Saint Laurence’s day. The storm of the
past night had cleared the air of all the foul vapours and heaviness
loading it for weeks past; and a light cool breeze fluttered the flags,
and toyed with the garlands festooned about window, and sign, and
balcony of the Platz, until their wet leaves glistened again in the
morning sunbeams.

In and out about the Cathedral’s rugged walls the birds darted merrily,
chirrupping in the highest spirits, and perking and pluming with
uncommon care, as though they fully recognized the duty incumbent
on them, as part and parcel of the place, to be spick and span on
this notable occasion. Citizens and citizenesses, maids and matrons,
gallants and prentices, all pranked in their best, thronged the
streets; while farmers and rich peasantry, from many a Vosges village
and hamlet, kept flocking in towards the centre of attraction, and were
packed in the Cathedral aisles, until there was not room left for a pin
to drop between them. Veritably it seemed, as they said, as if the good
God had answered the prayer of many an expectant heart, and made a day
on purpose, so bright and fair it was.

Yet one thing lacked. What was it? Strangers had not set foot five
minutes within the city gates, before they asked themselves this
question, vaguely conscious that in some strange manner all the spirit
and life of a great general holiday were wanting. First and foremost,
what had become of the music? Not so much as a drum-beat’s echo, or
the faintest squeak of a fife! Feast, holiday, forsooth! Better have
stopped at home and listened to the cat purring! And then those knots
of folks, with mazed, awe-stricken faces, interchanging low hurried
words, more for all the world as if everybody had come together for a
funeral than for a merry-making. Hush! hush! Yes, death, indeed, hovers
low over Burgomaster von Steinbach’s roof-tree, stretching out his hand
for the Lily, where she lies broken and bleeding, with only a faint
fluttering pulsation at her brave heart to tell that life is still
there.

And then from mouth to mouth flies the strange story, until by eight
o’clock every mother’s son and daughter has at fingers’ ends, with
all the _ad libitum_ variations of each individual fancy, how Syndic
Tobias Hackernagel, miserable villainous wolf in the dark that he
was, broke last night into the Cathedral to destroy the Horologe; and
how—there is the marvellous part of it—how little Mistress Sabina von
Steinbach, Burgomaster Niklaus’ daughter, was beforehand with him and
saved it; and how it chanced she had saved Master Dasipodius too, when
the wretched scoundrel would have murdered him, and the knife struck
her instead, somewhere in the shoulder, for she threw herself upon the
blind man and hung there like a shield; and there she lies—a-dying? Ah
Heaven! canst thou be so bitter cruel as that? And then for the woe
that has stricken their good honest Burgomaster, not alone women’s
tears fall fast, but men’s eyes glisten, now sad, now ragefully; and
with low passionate clamourings, they demand if the prison walls hold
fast that would-be assassin?

Ay, ay, safe enough, safe enough, so much is certain. They had him down
and bound in an eye’s twinkling; but for the rest, all is a riddle, and
threatens to remain so for some time to come; since from the moment
of his arrest, Hackernagel, man of law that he is, has not uttered a
syllable, saving all his eloquence for the defence he is no doubt busy
concocting, and Tobias is as dumb as lead.

Inside the Cathedral, things are terribly at sixes and sevens. There
seems to be not a creature about to marshal the crowd, or to tell
people their assigned places. Barriers are disregarded, and individuals
squeeze into nooks where they have no more business than bulls have in
china shops. City magnates puff and purple with indignation; while fine
ladies, who have fondly looked to being the observed of all observers,
are shunted and hustled every bit as much as the commonest clay there.
Disgusting! and to-morrow the managing committee shall know what they
think about it. Where, in the name of decency and order, is Prudentius
the sacristan, that he permits all this lamentable confusion?

Prudentius the sacristan, with a racking headache, and excruciating
pains in his limbs, and a conscience sorer than all, lies in durance
vile, some few hundred yards off, safe in his own bed, whither he has
been transported from a spot not far outside the city gates, where he
was found lying in the morning’s small hours, drenched through and
through, and altogether incapable of standing upon his legs, or of
lucidly accounting for his deplorable plight. The burden of certain
feeble and disjointed maunderings which escaped him, touching some
woman—“Yes, a woman, I tell you, a woman,” in no way influenced my
Lord Bishop to regard the unfortunate lay-brother’s misdemeanour in a
more favourable light; but at present Bishop John has little leisure
to bestow on the sinner and his enigmatical falling away. A whirl of
thoughts is perplexing his brain. Like some great actor, distracted
from his _rôle_ by the painful realities of his actual life, the Bishop
wonders how he is to go through with his very prominent part in the
ecclesiastical pageant which, shorn indeed of many of its most imposing
adjuncts, is still ordained to take place.

The very bells which were to have rung out such a merry peal, are
silent lest they should disturb the unconscious girl; and it is
certain that more than one gap will be left upon yonder crimson dais.

Burgomaster von Steinbach’s genial face must assuredly be missing; as
also, from circumstances over which he has no control, the countenance
of Syndic Hackernagel will be conspicuously absent. In yonder gallery
of fair dames, the sweetest flower among them all will not be seen.
And concerning Mistress Radegund, whose beauty some reckon more
peerless than even her cousin’s—just as some care more for roses than
for lilies—much speculation is rife, whether or no she will grace
the little band of horologists on the dais. Whether, circumstances
considered, she will hold it becoming—but there, it is worse than idle
to be hazarding conclusions over what Radegund will elect to regard
as becoming or unbecoming. And it must be conceded that there are two
sides to this case in point; and stop away or come, she will inevitably
shock some one’s sense of the proprieties, according to the respective
ratios at which they fix private and professional claims. Only on one
point all are assured, that Mistress von Steinbach will do as she
chooses, utterly uninfluenced by any second opinion.

Soon the question settles itself; she is there. If that woman on the
Horologist’s dais in the magnificent robe of purple velvet, slashed
with cloth of gold, be indeed Radegund von Steinbach? If those
stern-set features and hollow eyes, encircled with dark rings, making
her look more like a galvanized corpse than living woman, can be the
brilliant artist. No glimmer of a smile relaxed the drawn pale lips,
as she turned to acknowledge the murmur of applause greeting her
appearance; and not a word has she for those about her. With a glance,
half careless, half curious, she looks round. In search perhaps of
Bruno Wolkenberg. But Bruno is not there. This moment of Radegund’s
triumph his soul has so long thirsted for, has come, and does not
find him there to see; for Doctor Wolkenberg is busy, duty has called
him elsewhere, and he sits watching in that darkened chamber in the
Munster-gasse. Yet he has found time to implore Radegund to renounce
her intention of going to the Cathedral. “Will my not going give the
child back her life?” she said hardly. “Is the world to come to an end
because she——”

“Nay,” interrupted Bruno, jarred in spite of himself by her tones. “If
not for that, then for your own life’s sake.” And then, with all the
eloquence his wrung heart could muster, he pleaded the consequences of
such a heavy tax on her own frame, weakened by the previous night’s
cruel attack upon it; that sickness to which the skilful master
of cause and effect could find no clue, or if he did, shrank from
following up. “You need rest; absolute rest.”

“Ay,” fiercely assented she. “Yes; and that one finds best in the
grave.”

“Radegund—why,” he said brokenly, “why will you speak like this to
me—to me—Radegund?”

“Because—psha! Bruno, tell me now, am not I indeed fit, as you call it,
to go? Will you really not answer for my life if I go?”

He turned from her with a moaning sigh.

“Answer me, Bruno. Why, come now. Come, Doctor Bruno Wolkenberg! Am
I a patient to be fooled and put off with some puling lie? Tell me
true—Bruno, dear Bruno, then, dear kind friend—Bruno,” and the hot
hands sought his. “Tell me, is my life come indeed to be so weak a
thing, that I might forfeit it just by only crossing over into yonder
church?”

“I tell you—yes,” he said.

“Then it is hardly worth trying to keep,” she returned contemptuously.
“One had better break than bend, I take it. Now go—where they want you,
Doctor Wolkenberg.” And with the abrupt dismissal, she rose and left
him; and summoning her servant, she, with many a pause for battling
with the deadly faintness oppressing her, stood dressed at last, and
refusing all aid but Otto’s arm, found herself in the seat reserved for
her on the Professor Dasipodius’ right hand.

The hem of her rich raiment straying across his footstool, first tells
him of her presence; but sparing her no syllable of greeting, he turns
to exchange a word or two with Isaac Habrecht on his left. From the
building’s furthermost recesses the mathematician’s appearance has been
greeted with applause, prolonged and deep, but not loud. The enthusiasm
which the sacredness of the place would hardly have restrained, was
chastened down into something of awe at the aspect of the blind man,
on whom every eye was fixed. There were few in that vast concourse
unacquainted in more or less garbled fashion with the events of the
past night, and few consequently who were not able in some degree to
participate in the feelings which must be ruling him at that moment;
and sympathy with these increased tenfold, when all notwithstanding,
the people found he had kept faith with them, and the acclamations they
would fain have offered him, spent themselves in a hushed respectful
murmur.

One of rumour’s tongues said Dasipodius had been wounded; others said
no such thing; but all could see in his face that some mental wound,
sharper than keenest sword-thrust, agonized him; that he had passed,
nay, was passing through some ordeal too terrible for words. Radegund
von Steinbach, looking upon him now, was not the only one recalling
more strongly than ever the picture over yonder in the Saint Laurence
Chapel. A solemn, mysterious beauty rested upon the features composed
into such stern endurance, lending them a softness which rendered them
not all stern; and about the temples, grown somewhat worn and shadowy,
and over the resolute mouth, shone a tender light, repressed and
dimmed for many a month past, but now infinitely sweet in its sadness.
Standing there, in the presence of that vast crowd, the observed
of all, seeing no ray of earth’s light, his spiritual beauty spoke
silently eloquent, drawing, as it ever did, men, women, and little
children, and all God’s creatures to love and trust him.

Master Dachstein’s music is gloriously beautiful; as it peals forth its
pæan, the long train of richly-vested ecclesiastics and white-robed
choristers winds with cross and banner, gleaming amid fragrant incense
clouds, towards the high altar, bathed in the sunlight streaming down
through the painted choir windows.

A few years more and the old Faith is to lie trampled to the dust
within those walls, crying: Ichabod! Ichabod! but to-day the glory of
her glows out unshadowed by any threatening darkness of desolation;
grand in her ceremonial as ever she has been, since the days when good
King Pepin set the corner-stone of the venerable shrine. And yet, the
rich colour, the sweet triumph song, seem to jar upon the senses. The
very Horologe itself, the fulcrum and motor of all this concourse of
humanity, is being regarded with something very near to a secondary
interest. Only at last, when Bishop John bestows with uplifted hand his
benediction on the all sorts and conditions of assembled Christians,
and from the lips, which for the nonce have laid aside their
differences, responds one deep Amen, and midday is upon the stroke,
attention undivided and absorbed is devoted to the Horologe, while
the eyes of him who, yet seeing nothing, has been the work’s creator,
are fixed attent, till the first burr, and a succession of clicks and
snappings and whirrs, proclaim all to be in motion. Then breaks forth
from thousands of lips a rapturous murmur, and upon those upturned
faces one simultaneous grin of delight, as one after the other of
the automata go through their evolutions in just the very self-same,
confident, dogged, wooden way that they do now.

To descant upon the satisfaction of that moment is, however, a
superfluity, since who that runs may not still read? “The famous clock
remains uninjured,” reported the war correspondents, when bullets and
cannon balls were riddling the brave old city not so many years ago.
Uninjured in spite of all! And tourist pilgrims may still enjoy for
themselves any day of the week the wonderful clock’s performance; for,
guide-book in hand, before Master Dasipodius’ Horologe, still gathers
daily a motley group, native and alien, and if no cruel wars come, are
likely to do for as long as any youth lingers in this old planet.
Providence be praised, it is not all beaten out of her yet; and royal
princes, gaitered bishops, gaping country folks, dreamy poets, beauty,
intellect, aristocrats, socialists, Philistines, philosophers, old men
and maidens, and matrons, make a point of seeing the Horologe in all
its glory of full working power when they pass through Strassburg city.
Of course, with human ingratitude they smile when the performance is
over, and pooh-pooh the Horologe for a clumsy piece of absurdity; but
the real test is the rapt attention it earns while it is in motion. And
like a clever actor, only wider fame accrues to it by criticism.

Now too, as then, the crowing cock wins special appreciation. “And his
wings, Kaspar?” asks the mathematician, laying his hand on the boy’s
shoulder, with a faint enquiring smile, as the wooden chanticleer’s
whoopy screech strikes his ear. “They flap well—yes?”

“Perfectly, master,” answers the young woodcarver, a transient smile of
pleasure lighting up the face which has hitherto mirrored the sadness
of Dasipodius. And he flushes with pride, for does he not hear his name
whispered from mouth to mouth in the crowd below?

“Splendidly!” ejaculates Otto von Steinbach, sinking down with a gasp
of satisfaction, whose intensity is only known to himself. “Perfectly,
by Jove! and never a jerk. Scoundrel!” but though his eyes are fixed
fiercely on the wooden lord of the farm-yard, his animadversion is not
addressed to it, but at some absent object, vividly evolving in his
imagination.

The ex-chief horologist does not share prominently in the day’s
proceedings; does not desire to do so, perhaps, but modestly remains
as much as possible in the background, and that even when his name is
signalized with those of his brother horologists.

Nevertheless Otto has his consolations.

So for the first time the Horologe plays its part, and a brilliant
success it is.

And the price of it?




CHAPTER LXXI.

“THERE COULD NOT BE GREATER LOVE THAN THIS.”


It is towards evening. Such poor show of merrymaking as has been
attempted throughout the day has dwindled into silence. There is to
be no banqueting, no dancing, no fireworks. With one consent all such
junketings have been set aside. People wending homewards through the
Munster-gasse step softly, casting, as they go, mute enquiring glances
up at the windows of Burgomaster Niklaus’ house, fearfully asking each
other what news? and go their ways with the scanty consolation that it
is only not the worst.

Consciousness, but not speech, has returned; and for days to come
life and death must hang in the balance. Such is Surgeon Wolkenberg’s
bulletin; and to those who hold her life dearer than their own, he
can offer no more comfort than that the knife has not touched a
vital part. The wound is a flesh wound only; but the end of all its
supervening fever and weakness “who can foretell?” says the truthful
Bruno, feeling that any false gloss would be worse than mockery. Then
having said his worst, he speaks of the hope that lies in her healthy
young life.

In across the old dining-hall the setting sun casts long shadows,
firing to dazzling red the needleful of golden thread Sabina left
half-stitched into her tapestry work last night. A score of suchlike
trifles speak of her. The open virginal, the hooded scarf thrown across
a chairback, the smart ribbon round Mitte’s neck, tied on last night in
anticipation of this day. A little bedraggled and out of gear is that
ribbon now, with the poor creature’s wanderings to and fro in search
of her lost mistress; and her dismal mewings and the clock ticking up
in its dark corner are the only sounds which have broken the silence
for hours past. Their ceaseless monotony has grown unendurable to the
Burgomaster, where like one gradually wakening from some fearful dream
he sits waiting; and with a sudden impetuous start he rises from his
chair, and, crossing the floor, lifts his arms to arrest the hands of
the clock. But some sudden thought, call it a memory rather, checks
him; a memory of how, so many a time, when she was no more than a
toddling baby, he had lifted her up in his arms to see the great,
quaint, friendly eyes goggling in their sockets, and how proud he
always was to think she was not afraid, but delighted hugely in the
broad, round, brazen face; and so the thing had come to be a sort of
companion to her young life’s many lonely hours. “‘Wait-tic, wait-tac,’
it always says, Väterle, when you are away you know;” she would often
say; “it preaches one patience better than fifty sermons. Dear old
thing! do you hear it?—‘Wait-tic, wait-tac,’ ever so plain!”

Of all inanimate things, if inanimate it could be called, Sabina best
loved that clock.

And to stay it now would be like sacrilege. Moreover, some vague
superstitious dread of doing so comes flashing across Niklaus’ mind,
and the respited clock burrs on—Wait-tic, wait-tac.

The despotic Bruno has banished Niklaus from the sick chamber, where
he has so piteously pleaded for leave to remain. It is best, the
surgeon says, since any excitement of recognition which would come
with restored consciousness might prove fatal; and Niklaus, sadly
acquiescing, thinks of the girl’s dead mother, and how only hired women
servants tend his darling now. Well, well, hired though they be, could
mother or sisters more entirely love the little housemistress than they
do? And when his sister Ottilie, for whom a messenger has been sent in
hot haste, arrives from her Freiburg convent, it is only because the
good nun’s nursing skill is perfection itself that she can be preferred
to those already watching.

Niklaus’ banishment increases his anguish tenfold; but the terrible
time is not passed solitarily. Hours ago there came to his gates one
with the agony of living death upon his face craving a moment’s speech
with Dr. Wolkenberg; and Niklaus, hearing his voice, has gone out, and,
silently taking the speaker by the hand, has led him into the house,
and there, falling upon his breast, has wept out tears which, till
that moment, had seemed ice-bound; but no tears come to relieve the
mortal suffering of the blind man; and Dasipodius’ clear, calm tones
are barely recognisable in that hollow, broken voice, when at last he
essays to speak.

“I would have given my life for her,” he says.

“Ay, ay,” sobs the Burgomaster; “do I not know it?”

“And she—she”—but utterance fails him, and for a while there is
silence, save for the convulsive sobbings of the old man. At last,
gently raising Niklaus’ head, Dasipodius disengages himself from him.
“The sight of me must be hateful to you,” he says, and turns to go; but
the other, looking up, bids him stay.

“She loves you so well,” he said wistfully.

“God forgive me,” groaned Dasipodius; “that I did not——”

“Ay, I know; you need not tell me. There has been some mistake—yes?”

“No mistake, Burgomaster,” sternly replied Dasipodius.

“No?” said Niklaus, gazing with dreamy intentness at his companion.
“Good then. That is well. At least that is well. Because she must love
you so truly, must she not? There could not be greater love than this
that my little child has shown for you. Such sort it was as our Lord
Christ’s love for us all. Ay, sure I am now that she must love you very
dearly, Conrad Dasipodius.”

A tearless sob is the blind man’s only response.

“Surely she does,” meditatively continues Niklaus, “though I—she—— See,
now then, for her sake you will stay. Will you stay, Master Dasipodius?”

And Dasipodius stayed. It seemed to Bruno Wolkenberg, when first he
came upon them thus together, a strange thing that Niklaus appeared to
be finding some sort of comfort in the silent companionship of the very
man who, however innocently, was the source of his unspeakable misery;
but in a vague way he understood it all, and from the depths of his
desolate heart he envied them.

A long interval passed before either spoke again; but at last Niklaus,
lifting his face from where it lay buried in his arms, suddenly
besought of Dasipodius some elucidation of the events they had that
morning lived through. “Tell me,” he said; “I think I could understand
now. I think I might bear it better if I might understand.”

But it was little Dasipodius was able to tell. He knew scarcely more
than those who were hazarding all sort of conjecture outside in the
streets. The only two who were apparently capable of shedding any light
upon the matter were the wretched culprit and his victim, one of whom
lay bereft of speech, while the other seemingly could only be brought
to display any remnant of his marvellous faculty under the persuasive
influence of boot or thumbscrew.

The mathematician could tell no more than that some time between
four or five o’clock in the morning, and soon after the rain had
quite ceased, he had risen with the intention of stepping across to
the cathedral, in order to assure himself that everything about the
Horologe was in perfect train, and to apply a touch of oil to the lower
dial, which, he fancied, did not work quite smoothly.

He had started with the intention of going round to get the key of the
St. Thomas’ Chapel from the Sacristan’s apartments; but reflecting
that Prudentius would, in every probability, be already astir over
his finishing touches inside the cathedral, had concluded that to do
so would be unnecessary, and had therefore made straight for the St.
Thomas’ Chapel, expecting to find its postern open, or, at all events,
unlocked. Close by the chapel’s threshold, Dasipodius had come upon the
two Habrechts, who were on their way to his house, thinking that he
might be wanting their assistance. Having tried the door and found it
locked, the mathematician’s quick ear caught a slight sound within; and
although his two companions, also listening, declared he must mistake,
he had insisted that he did not; and that Prudentius and his assistants
must therefore be already at their work, having entered probably by the
western door. Passing round to the main entrance, they had come upon
Burgomaster von Steinbach returning home from his niece’s house, where
he had been detained, first by anxiety on her account, and subsequently
by the fury of the storm. The Burgomaster had strolled the few steps
back with them, and the little party, on reaching the door, had come up
with Bishop Johan and his chaplain, Master Gottlieb, and an attendant
or two, my lord being in the very act of entering to ascertain whether
Prudentius was yet stirring there; and, if not, as he had a little
anxiously remarked to Gottlieb, “why not?”

No sooner were the heavy doors open than those piercing cries, mingled
with imprecations, appalled their ears, and in a body all had hurried
up the nave in the direction of the Horologe, whence the sounds seemed
to proceed. “And the rest,” concluded Dasipodius, “you know, saw. My
God, which was crueller? To see, or to be as I was then, knowing all,
and helpless—helpless as a child; though her life’s blood was ebbing
away.”

“Do you know, Bruno Wolkenberg,” shivered Niklaus, “that that gown your
scissors have cut strip by strip from my darling is the gala one she
should have worn this morning? That seems to me so strange!”

“Strange indeed,” sadly acquiesced the surgeon. “I too have wondered at
it. How she should—that is, what—what freak, so to say——”

“Freak!” exclaimed Niklaus, with a touch of his wonted fire. “Do you
dare breathe suspicion of my child?”

“Great heavens!” returned Bruno. “Who talked of it? I meant no such
thing.”

“Then choose your words better, Bruno Wolkenberg,” said Dasipodius.

“If I knew how,” stammered the unfortunate surgeon. “I only meant to
say that since women do—take such—such—extraordinary ideas——”

“Some women,” frowned Niklaus. “If my niece, Radegund, now had been
found masquerading—— No, no; I don’t mean that precisely——”

“I trust not, Burgomaster von Steinbach,” interrupted the surgeon,
flushing crimson. “There are some to whom Mistress Radegund’s honour is
very dear.”

“I think my brain is going,” sobbingly broke forth Niklaus. “Did I say
something—something? Ask him to forgive me, Conrad.”

But Bruno gently laid his hand on the old man’s shoulder as he passed
out to return to his watch. Nevertheless those few speculative words he
had let slip did but express the thoughts of the two men keeping their
silent companionship together. It could only be so. How came she there?
How came she there? could but be the refrain of their sad musings.
What concurrence of circumstance had brought her face to face, alone,
at early dawning with Tobias Hackernagel? Such a possibility, however
remote, might still be conceivable of any woman in the city save and
excepting this one—this girl, who always shrank instinctively at the
bare mention of his very name. Yet speculation could but be utter
mockery; and in all the city there did not appear to be a creature able
to afford the faintest clue to the mystery. So with never an answer to
their heart’s unspoken appeal, daylight had faded, and the shadows were
falling apace; and it must have been towards eight in the evening when
a message was brought the Burgomaster that Gretchen Hackernagel desired
to speak with him.

Niklaus looked up frowningly at the sound of the name grown so hateful
to him, and was about emphatically to deny himself to her. “She comes,”
he said, “with some whining plea about that loathsome reptile she calls
father. Her time is ill-chosen,” he added, after a pause, spent in
curbing down some violent emotion—“ill-chosen, tell her.”

“Mistress Hackernagel,” continued the servant, with timorous
pertinacity, “further enquired whether the Professor Dasipodius were
still with you, Burgomaster?”

“Now,” sharply demanded Niklaus, “does she imagine he is likely to push
her suit for her? Bid her pack and begone, for the devil’s baggage she
is.”

“Nay,” interposed the mathematician, “you are wrong, Burgomaster,
Gretchen Hackernagel is a good woman. Many a time I have heard my poor
girl say that of her.”

“Wholesome fruit of a poisonous branch!” harshly returned the
Burgomaster. “No, no, we don’t have miracles now-a-days.”

“At least her trouble is bitter.”

“Can it be like mine—yours?”

“Ay, worse.”

Niklaus lifted his heavy, tear-dimmed eyes, fixing them with puzzled
inquiry on Dasipodius, and as he did so, all their angry glitter died
out. “Bid her come in,” he said. “Now, Mistress,” he continued, when
Gretchen, with pale, scared face, entered, but halting just within the
threshold, not daring to advance, and casting shrinking glances from
one to the other of the two men. “Come, your errand.”

“Will you prefer to be alone, Mistress?” asked Dasipodius, who had
risen on her entrance.

“As you will, Master Dasipodius,” replied she, gathering a little
courage from the gentleness of his tones; “what I have to say is
something—touching her. You best know how far that concerns you;”
and she bent a keen, scrutinising look on the blind man. The faint
flush suffusing his wan cheek appeared to afford her satisfaction and
the encouragement to proceed which she had vainly sought in Niklaus’
face. The characteristics of the two seemed absolutely to have
interchanged: all the Burgomaster’s natural geniality had chilled down
under the weight of his calamity into a stern, sullen gloom, while
the calm, even dignity of the mathematician had acquired a certain
softness, dispelling the sense of awe which, her admiration of him
notwithstanding, Gretchen generally could not help feeling in his
presence. At a less agitated moment Gretchen’s penetration might have
accounted for the anomaly by calling to mind how by one fell blow
Niklaus had been driven and stunned out of all his life’s sunshine;
while in the very valley of the Shadow of Death Dasipodius had come
again upon the treasure which he had believed neither this life nor
any future one could restore to him; and amid all the day’s torture,
that one sweet, bright assurance had spread itself out in his heart,
blessedly as warm sunshine upon frozen deeps, and softening it to
compassion, and even sympathy, for such sort of suffering as the
miserable Gretchen’s. And so gathering courage, simply and clearly as
tears would let her, she told her story, taking to herself neither
blame nor credit for the part she had borne in it. Once only she was
interrupted by Dasipodius demanding why, instead of secretly warning
one poor weak woman, she had not given alarm to the authorities. “What
alarm?” she asked. “What should I have said? What did I know? Think if
I had done that, and after all he—he——”

“Your father?”

She nodded and shivered. “After all he had intended no harm?”

“A man does not steal keys for good,” said Niklaus.

“And—was he not—my father?” she faltered.

“Du Herrgott, Du! Listen to her. Well placed sentiment that, truly!”
scoffed Niklaus. “Because he is the author of Mistress Gretchen
Hackernagel’s being, his devil’s deeds are to be condoned!”

“Nay, Burgomaster,” expostulated Dasipodius.

“Hush!” said Gretchen, turning grateful eyes on him. “Let him
misconstrue me—if he pleases, Master Dasipodius. Perhaps it is more
seemly that he should.”

“Untruth can never be seemly, Mistress Hackernagel,” returned the
mathematician. “Be frank.”

“If your father’s child can be,” frowned Niklaus.

“Oh! if I had never been born! If I had never been born!” wailed she.

“Speak! Your reasons!” thundered the Burgomaster. “Can you not speak?”

“Because I feared him then. From my soul I feared him,” she cried,
wringing her hands. “Because if he had come to know how I stole out
last night and watched him, he would have murdered me where I stood.
Would to God he had! Oh, would that he had! What is my life to me?
Who cares? Oh! would to God I lay where she does now. Where she does
now!” and in an agony of grief the girl fell prone at Niklaus’ feet. He
turned stonily away.

“Will you go home?” said Dasipodius, approaching and gently raising her.

“Home?” echoed she, wildly pressing her trembling fingers against her
dazed eyes. “Is that what you call home? Home, where Otto, he who was
mine once, said he would never enter again? Home,” and bursting into a
fit of hysterical laughter, she started to her feet. “Oh, but I know
a better! An ever so much better one! The green grass waves there,
and it shines clear, and soft, and beautiful, and bright. Oh, yes,
yes. Water is cold.” And she stared down shudderingly at the stained
and bedraggled garments she still wore. “Cruel cold! death cold. But
once—long ago—or was it the other day? No; long ago—years it must have
been—he spoke so kindly to me there. ‘You’re a good girl, Gretchen,’ he
said; and if—if— Ah! home! Yes, yes, let me go—home, Master Dasipodius!”

But Dasipodius held her fast by the wrists, and after a faint,
ineffectual resistance, she let them fall nervelessly. “And it was of
her he talked,” she went on in rapid tones, “and how she—yes, I would
have died to do her ever so little a service, I thought, and I— Oh,
God! See what’s come of it! See what’s come of it! If they break me on
the wheel, ’twill be too good for the wretch I am!” And she sank upon
her knees. “And yet—oh, let me speak. Conrad Dasipodius—Burgomaster, if
your hearts have any grain of pity, let me—if I—if I— Do you know why
I have come here?” she cried, clutching Dasipodius by the arm. “Do you
know what mad thought brings me? Do you know?”

“Have you not said?”

“No, no. Not that. Not that. It was because—because— Listen what a
mad, mad hope it was. I thought they might let me be with her. Do you
understand? I would dress and tend that cruel wound so skilfully. Oh,
but I could. Ask Dr. Bruno if I could not. Dr. Bruno knows what I can
do. Many a time he has praised my skill at the _Kranken-haus_, where
they brought the wounded soldiers last year, and said my hands put his
to shame. Master Dasipodius, she should not die, if I might be with
her. I would not let her. Do you hear what I say? I would not let her
die.”

And with clasped hands, she turned from one to the other; but Niklaus
stood as though he neither heard nor saw her; and Dasipodius shook his
head, and said: “My poor child, it cannot be”.

She turned from him despairing, and dragged herself to the
Burgomaster’s side, pleading there, as if she were pleading for her own
doom’s respite, but he shook her coldly off. “Go, go,” he said. “The
very sight of you is poison.”

“They told me,” said Bruno Wolkenberg, putting his head in at the door,
“that Gretchen Hackernagel was here.”

“Ay, ay,” cried she, starting up, a ray of hope breaking across her
face.

“Who wants her?” sternly demanded Niklaus.

“Your daughter, Master von Steinbach.”

“Great Heaven!” groaned the Burgomaster. “If only this awful delirium
might cease! If only she might be conscious.”

“She is so, Burgomaster,” said the Surgeon cheerily. “Has been in her
right mind this half-hour past. And ‘Where’s Gretchen? Gretchen? How
long will Gretchen be?’ she keeps asking unceasingly.”

“Will you go to my little girl, Gretchen Hackernagel?” pleaded the
Burgomaster.




CHAPTER LXXII.

DE PROFUNDIS.


With that returning consciousness, hope glimmered for the watchers,
and as each day passed, grew high. True that Hackernagel’s weapon had
driven cruelly, so that her white flesh would bear an ugly seamy mark
to her life’s end; but it had struck with a sideways random clumsiness,
inflicting a gaping terrible surface wound, yet not hopelessly
dangerous, provided it were treated with care and patience, and these
were never less wanting.

And so the shadow of the dread Reaper’s scythe was lifted from the Lily
flower, and never had life been so fair and sweet to her as now in this
time of weakness and of pain, which all Surgeon Wolkenberg’s skill and
Gretchen Hackernagel’s tender nursing could do no more than lighten.

At the wounded girl’s own faintly whispered wish, eloquently endorsed
by her eyes, Gretchen Hackernagel had remained beside her; and Aunt
Ottilie, with her gentle-hearted common-sense view of the case, had
taken no umbrage at Sabina’s preference, but on the contrary had made
it her special mission to bring over the demurring Niklaus. “Nun I may
be, brother, but woman I am too, and I know; and trust me, you mustn’t
interfere. They understand each other, these two young things; and
though it is truer than true, as you are always saying, that the parent
tree is a baneful one, the dear God’s providence has let the antidote
grow upon its branches; and it is not for you to grumble, but to thank
Heaven on your bended knees, that so much good can come out of evil;
for good that Gretchen Hackernagel is to the core, Anabaptist castaway
though the poor thing was brought into the world, and understands sick
folks as well as I do myself.”

And Niklaus after that held his peace.

Yes, never so fair—not in the earliest morning tide of her wooing had
life been for Sabina as now. To the bruised and broken Lily, slowly
lifting her pale head once more, all the past was like some hideous
dream; out from the tangle and the darkness she seemed to have wakened
in some fair garden, where the rushing of turbid waters had stilled
into a clear streamlet, glinting in the gentle shadows of green
whispering boughs, and catching the sheen of the fleecy sun-gilded
cloudlets in the azure far overhead. Shadows indeed there were still;
and shadows to the end there must be for her. Heaviest of all the one
which dimmed her eyes when they rested on her lover’s face, and she
strove to realise something of what the deprivation of his lost sight
must be. Tears would brim then to overflowing in her own eyes, and his
quick ear, catching the quiver of her breath, would bring his hands
stealing to the cheeks, gathering each day something of their old
roundness and bloom, and insist on the meaning of such telltale drops
being explained to him.

“What is it, dear one?” he would ask, bending over her, and oh, Mother
Mary! the sweetness of those moments to kiss them away. “Is your wound
paining you?”

“The one in my heart is,” she would confess, drawing down the hand with
her own unhurt one, and stroking it tenderly.

“In your heart?”

“Ay—when I think how night-dark everything is for you. Oh, Conrad—Love.”

“Child, no,” he answers her, an infinite tenderness welling up into the
sightless eyes’ calm mysterious depths. “Sometimes the light grows too
great for me. It seems like Heaven’s own endless day.”

And so with thoughts too many and too blessed for words, he sits
beside her, where in the broad window seat she lies couched and softly
pillowed, with Mitte curled snugly up on the coverlet, purring her
song of supreme content to the measure of the sun-god’s “wait-tic,
wait-tac,” whose eyes goggle and roll through the gathering gray with
a world of intelligence, and one by one in the gloaming the stars
twinkle out, and presently comes in Burgomaster von Steinbach, and
balancing on the couch’s outermost edge—for has he not the fear of
damage to Mitte before his eyes if he should trespass further?—he falls
to contemplating his girl’s bright face, and speculating how many days
before Dr. Bruno will be letting her take house-mistress’s place again
at table yonder; and Dr. Bruno, looking in as he goes home, promises
great things, if only she is careful, and takes no undue liberties.

“She won’t do that,” laughingly says the Burgomaster, looking up
from the hearth, whither he is gone to set light to the logs, for
the evenings are beginning to grow chilly again, and a blaze looks
comfortable. “I’ll warrant you she won’t be let do that, with Gretchen
standing over her. Gretchen’s a gorgon!”

“Gretchen’s a jewel!” says Bruno.

“And deserves the best husband Elsass has to give,” says Niklaus.
“Though by the Mass, I believe she means to stick to that nephew of
mine.”

“Of course she does,” says Sabina.

“It looks like it,” smiles the doctor; “I nearly tumbled over them as I
came up the steps there, just now.”

“Well, well. There is never any accounting for what womenkind take into
their heads, is there, Professor? Foot-rule nor plumb-line can’t make
head or tail of it, eh?”

And while the Professor smiles a grave, assenting smile, Sabina, with a
slight access of colour, changes the conversation, and asks how cousin
Radegund is?

“Much the same, Mistress Sabina,” answers Bruno, the transient
cheerfulness of his face all fading into the sad hopeless look it
always wears now.

“I wish she was well,” sighs Sabina, “if only for my own selfish sake,
so that she might come and see me.”

“No, no,” and the hand hers lies nestling in grips it with almost
convulsive force. “That must not—cannot be.”

“I know it can’t,” she quietly rejoins. “I must wait patiently till I
can go to her, poor girl. Though she refuses herself to everybody, she
would see me. Don’t you think she would, Dr. Bruno?” pleadingly urges
Sabina. “She would not refuse me,” she adds in a lower tone.

“She could refuse you nothing, I think,” answers the surgeon in a voice
yet lower.

For Bruno Wolkenberg knew all now—knew it by Radegund’s own confession
to him. That Saint Laurences’s day, at the close of the brief
ceremonial, the artist had tottered homeward, and had thrown herself
half dead with fatigue, upon the couch in her studio, where she had
lain almost ever since, fiercely battling with her mortal weakness.

The distracted Bruno, called upon by Bishop John to give a name to the
mysterious disease, which, with rare misgivings, the gentle-hearted
priest saw had taken such hold upon Radegund, spoke of overwork, and
falteringly admitted that the symptoms were of a consumptive tendency;
but the bishop, receiving the confession which, with a meekness sitting
strangely on the proud Radegund, she had desired to make to him, passed
out from her presence, with a startled, saddened preoccupation in his
ordinarily calm and serene face, and apprehended that there might be a
consuming of heart and soul, beside which that of the body would be but
a slight thing.

Such restitution as the conditions of her priestly absolving had
imposed on her, Radegund had, as far as lay in her power, already
made; but the penance had still to come, and that Bishop John
uncompromisingly demanded should lie in a full confession of all to the
man who so devotedly loved her. He would have nothing short of this,
perceiving as he did that justice to all concerned was only so to be
attained.

To which of those two hapless hearts the ordeal was the more cruel, who
can say? Sword sharp as the pang of shame to her, it was hardly keener
than the humiliation of him who had given this woman his best treasure,
and found himself driven at last to face the truth that she valued it
at less than nothing. For that poor substitute she had always declared
to be his was, to his passionate devotion, worse than her hate. And
yet, under the scathing test of all this wretchedness, the gold of the
man’s humble and unselfish nature shone out pure; and when, all being
told, she waited to see him turn spurningly from her, he said no more
than that Dasipodius was a man worthy of such love as she had to give,
and such indignation as could force itself into his breaking heart,
at that overwhelming moment, was all concentred round a vague mazed
astonishment that the mathematician could have so misprized the rich
gift she had laid at his feet.

But misery too completely overmastered the surgeon to leave him space
to think, and utterly prostrated, he would sit for hours in his dreary
laboratory, gazing at the poisonous simples there, and yearning for the
oblivion they could give.

He might have yielded to the temptation of them, but for the saving
grace of his calling, which whispered that if indeed no power could
ever quicken his own perished happiness, his life could still be
useful to his fellow mortals, and so Surgeon Wolkenberg continued to
do the work nearest to him; only now, as he went to and fro on his
merciful missions, people would silently mark how fast those locks were
silvering, which but a little while since were golden as a Norse god’s.

Against Bruno, the lot of Conrad Dasipodius promised a sharp contrast.
Sweet and fair beyond all dreaming his future lay before him. His
affliction, which he knew was a hopelessly incurable one, was indeed
as grievous to him now as when the dense darkness of it first set in;
and so it would be for him to the end. He put no gloss upon this truth,
assumed no meretricious cheerfulness, but simply nerved himself as best
he could to endure. Many a quest and venture into the science world
his genius had aspired to follow was impossible for him now that he
was at the mercy of others’ eyesight. Marvellous as was the atonement
of his acquired delicacy of touch, and of his natural powers of mental
perception, there remained practical difficulties, more or less like
those which had beset him in the course of the Horologe’s production,
which must for ever be hindering him, marring his loftiest efforts, and
denying his noblest ambitions; but that saddening conviction that his
intellectual life could at best be such a maimed and circumscribed one
was not the haunting, oppressive misery it had been in the time of his
loneliness and heart desolation. Heaven had seen fit to take away, but
then what had it not given! And then the high-souled, lofty spirited
scientist bowed his head in thankfulness, and felt he would not have
bartered his lot for the combined faculties, mental and physical, of
all the mathematicians of Heathendom and Christendom, when he felt the
gentle touch and the warm breath of that woman, who had counted her
life at less than a pin’s fee beside her love for him.

Only as time went over, bringing with it old routine and daily habits
once more, he was able calmly to set himself to try and gauge something
of that love’s breadth and depth; and then the great mathematician
failed utterly, finding it as boundless and immeasurable as that fair
world, which one winter’s night he had told his little betrothed wife
a certain legendary mouse suddenly found himself in. And Dasipodius
was content to accept his problem, as a divine inestimable gift, and
to hold it in his heart a thing apart, yet mysteriously hallowing the
meanest as entirely as the highest conditions of existence, and making
light its darkest crevices.

Equally when time brought healing, and he dared speak unreservedly with
Sabina, and there were no longer any restrictions laid by Dr. Bruno on
references to that terrible day, the words that passed between them
concerning it were comparatively few. Sabina did not need their poor
eloquence to tell her that the life she had nearly paid her own for,
would have been too hateful a possession had hers been sacrificed;
while the future now spared her to share with him was too holy and
precious to be much spoken of, even by each to each. Tongue could
tell but in a poor halting sort of way, how gladly, if the decree had
been reversed, and it had chanced to have been his life whose risking
had been demanded for her, he would have done it. All that the silent
eloquence of the daily intercourse of the years they trusted were to be
theirs, could alone realise for them.




CHAPTER LXXIII.

SYNDIC HACKERNAGEL RETIRES FROM PUBLIC LIFE.


Burgomaster von Steinbach’s one fearsome terror dispelled, his next
greatest consolation lay in the reflection that Tobias Hackernagel was
safe in the city prison; there, with no chance of ever getting his
liberty again. For Niklaus, the man, ever since he had borne official
capacity, had been a more or less sharp thorn in the flesh. The
Syndic’s harsh polemics and acid nature had always made him a dangerous
creature to be about in the city, torn as it was by political and
religious dissension,—a pestilent brand to all yearning for a lull in
the strife of tongues.

But now an extinguisher had fallen upon his machinations, and death
itself was not more silent than that once busy wagging tongue.

There only remained now the problem of how to dispose of him for the
rest of his natural life, and the mode of turning him to the one
advantageous purpose he could serve, of an ensample to evil-doers
generally. That the question reached to any consideration of his
natural life at all, Tobias possibly owed to those he had most deeply
sinned against. Those were not days when the crime of murder was the
only one punishable with death; and the general conviction prevailed
that Tobias Hackernagel would leave the judgment-hall, whither he
was quickly to be summoned on trial, a man whose life was forfeited.
There was, moreover, a general incitement to summary treatment of
Hackernagel, fortunately enough doubtless from the criminal’s own
point of view, for death and life still hovered disputing over Sabina
von Steinbach’s pillow, when his trial morning dawned; and though her
body lay too fragile and weak to lift a finger, her sense was active
with a preternatural keenness. Instinctively she guessed at what must
be taking place in regard to the miserable man; and all the well
intentioned endeavours to keep the course of events from her only
aggravated the feverous state her brain was reaching, until it grew
obvious that truth, and nothing but truth, must be told her. Then her
anguish at the awful doom of the man grew into semi-madness, as she
looked at the mute, despairing shame of Gretchen; and Dasipodius,
agonised by her agony, made his way into the presence of the dread
assembly, and pleaded for the would-be murderer’s miserable breath to
be spared him; and, for the sake of the pure innocent life hanging by a
hair, Justice laid aside her heaviest claim.

Their positions were strangely reversed now; and when the terrified
wretch’s scared eyes turned on the form of the blind man, advancing
up the hall, his ashen face grew sickly green. How could this man he
had pursued with his petty malignities, till they had culminated in
a passion for his blood itself, come there but as a damning witness
against him? And he uttered a loud screech of joy when it dawned upon
him that Dasipodius’ mission was a merciful one. Technically regarded,
never was such a curiously illogical mass of eloquent special pleading
as the professor’s intercession; nevertheless the judges, looking
through their tear-dimmed eyes at his sightless ones, accepted it
for consideration, deferring their verdict till next morning; and
Dasipodius, knowing this meant a reprieve from the law’s extremest
penalty, carried the news to his poor girl, who sobbed out a shower of
blessed refreshing tears upon his breast, and fell into a calm slumber,
which brought with it more healing than all the anodynes of Dr. Bruno’s
pharmacopœia.

And so the headsman sharpened his axe to no purpose. The Damocles’
sword demanding “blood for blood” did not fall. Tobias, as his legal
defender pleaded, had not absolutely consummated the death of his
victim; neither had he possessed himself of the weapon found upon him
with intent to murder. By his own confession, wrung from him by one or
two dexterously driven strokes of the wedge his executioners fitted on
to his leg, he had forced his way into the Cathedral, with the sole end
and aim of destroying the Horologe. “That’s all—good friends!” shrieked
he, as the hammer was lifted for one more frightful stroke. “On my
honour—only that.”

“And what of that oath?” sternly demanded one of his inquisitors.

“Oath? what oath?” broke forth the tortured, half-senseless wretch,
opening his eyes.

“WHAT oath? The one the witness Otto von Steinbach declares you to have
sworn upon his crucifix, that you would not injure the Horologe.”

“Oath! You call that an oath!”

“Ay, miserable, perjured man! Oath indeed! Sworn upon——”

“Upon a damnable dross idol!”

“Great Heaven!” ejaculated the surgeon, standing by to certify to how
much more pain the writhing creature could bear. “You counted it for
nothing?”

“For less than nothing!” and a leer of malicious triumph broke upon the
white contorted lips.

“Cursed be he who perjureth his word,” murmured a solemn voice out of
the dungeon’s gloom.

“And,” furiously hissed forth the Anabaptist, “thrice blessed, thou
foul-mouthed priest of Baal!—thrice blessed he who maketh a mock and a
byword of idols, and setteth them at naught, as I did then! For that
one poor testimony of mine”—and a gleam of fierce triumph glittered in
the fanatic’s livid features—“you and all your tribe shall one day see
me, from lowermost pitch, where you lie howling, sitting white-robed
among the Saints. And if I have sinned—for verily Satan toileth to
deceive the very Elect—for that witness of mine unto the Truth, I—I——”

A yell of agony, forced from him by the hammer’s valedictory stroke,
cut short the last flow of rhetoric which ever fell from the lips of
Tobias Hackernagel; and the unconscious wretch was borne back to the
cell whence he had been brought. Only, however, until his bruised limbs
were sufficiently recovered, to allow of his removal to the prison
of Freiburg, where it was recommended that the rest of his sentence
should be carried out, instead of at Strassburg; since the first of
that series of appearances he was doomed to make there in the pillory,
was greeted with such a storm of execration and savagery, that even his
flinty-hearted jailors took upon themselves to curtail the length of
time it had been arranged for him to remain at public disposal.

In the gloomiest corner of gloomy Freiburg prison, Tobias Hackernagel
spent the remainder of his days, beguiling their tedium by inditing,
for the edification of his sympathisers and admirers, a voluminous
outpouring of abuse upon a curious body of persons, calling themselves
Christians, which had recently sprung up, advocating the monstrous
creed that the Divine Suffering had been borne for all men, but that
only those who merited it by repentance and good works could be saved.

All circumstances—not forgetting the pillory conditions, which were
fulfilled otherwhere with somewhat modified demonstration—considered,
the Anabaptist gained by his translation to Freiburg; and he was not
slow to acknowledge, through his turnkey, his recognition to the
authorities of their consideration for his health and comfort which the
change implied.

It seems doubtful how far this view of his case actually weighed
with those in power; but it is certain that their chief motive for
dispensing with Hackernagel’s hidden presence in Strassburg arose out
of certain arguments propounded by the Professor Conrad Dasipodius.
To him it appeared an inexpressibly painful idea that the culprit’s
innocent daughters should be bowed to the ground with a degrading
sense of his ever-abiding neighbourhood. If this feeling could be
lightened, though ever so little, by his removal, Dasipodius felt it
should be done; and he confided his speculations on the matter to
Burgomaster von Steinbach, who promptly brought it before the Council.
Not a dissentient voice was raised. “I expect,” cheerfully commented
Councillor Job Klausewitz at the close of that day’s proceedings, “that
there’s not a draughtier hole in all Germany than Freiburg Castle on
a winter’s night. I happened to be coming under the keep there one
day last February, and the wind was enough to blow your head off. By
Jove, Burgomaster, it gave me the worst cold I ever had in all my life,
excepting that one I caught at Master Dasipodius’ little enquiry.”

If Hackernagel’s extinction was a general relief, nobody felt it so
entirely consoling as Otto von Steinbach. A trial almost, and yet not
quite too sharp for his constancy to Gretchen, these recent events had
proved. Once nerved by Sabina to maintain his honour at the sticking
point, he had striven with a perseverance astonishing his best friends,
most of all himself, to be true to her through all the evil report and
shame which inevitably fell upon his sweetheart and her sisters.

“She’ll make a good wife, Otto, dear,” Radegund said one day,
thoughtfully letting her wasted fingers stray among his curly locks;
“and you must not wince if there is a little prejudice about.”

“Prejudice be hanged, and favour too,” stoutly returned Otto. “I’m
going to stick to my bargain, Radegund; never you fear, and directly
you’re well again— Now don’t sigh like that, Radegund. It’s awfully
worrying to the nerves; especially when they’ve been so confoundedly
upset, as mine have lately. As soon as ever you’re well again, I say,
we’re going to be married. And I say, Radegund, here’s a bit of news
for you, my dear: Bishop John’s going to do us himself.”

“Do you?”

“Marry us. He’s promised. I asked him.”

“You should have done no such thing then,” said Radegund vexedly.
“He’ll never hear the last of it from the chapter for giving into such
a whim.”

“Whim! whim! Oh, come! I like that! Whim, indeed! Call marrying——”

“A heretic, my dear; a double-dyed one too; an Anabaptist.”

“She’s nothing of the sort. She’s as orthodox as—as you are.”

“So!” said Radegund, with a languid smile.

“At least,” amended he, “she’s going to be; and that’s just as good.
She’s grown sick and tired of the Christianity she was brought up in.”

“Really!”

“And she’s going to be a proper Christian, as soon as ever Prudentius
can stand upon his legs again.”

A multiplicity of trifles of the sort depended on Prudentius’
legs. Everything had gone cross, since they had lain disabled and
aching rheumatically, with the practical ordering of the Cathedral
arrangements. To the fact that he was indispensable about the place,
the little sacristan, in all probability, mainly owed the lightness of
the penance he paid for that egregious falling away of his down at the
Three Ravens. His absence proved his value; and the consideration of
his twenty years’ honest and faithful service, recommended him to more
mercy than he had dared to hope for. To the end of his days Prudentius
did penance for his dereliction, in coarsest mental sackcloth and
gritsomest of imaginary ashes, but practically he was let off with mild
punishment.

So obviously, it was represented in his behalf, had he been the
Syndic’s tool and catspaw, that not the sternest of his judges felt
disposed to do more than administer a severe rebuke, and hand him
over to the mildest form of chastisement ordained for a brother found
drunk and incapable. The corporeal conditions of his degradation the
little man endured stoically, counting it all as small beside that one
which deprived him of his keys and other prerogatives of office; but
these were but formally taken from him to be restored after a brief
term, during which chaos and dust reigned in the Cathedral; and my
lord, finding his sacristan’s punishment recoiling cruelly on his own
head, was fain to curtail the interdict; and a veil being drawn over
the past, Prudentius lived happy ever after; but the bare mention of
Niersteiner—much more the scantiest drain of it—never passed his lips,
for Niersteiner had come to be an abomination unto him.




CHAPTER LXXIV.

“ICH HABE GELEBT, AND GELIEBET.”


The wintry sun’s last rays fall lingeringly athwart the little
graveyard of Saint Thomas, illumining to transparent golden its scant
russet garb of autumn leaves, streaked to-day for the first time
with folds of glistening snow; for Yule-tide month is at hand again,
bringing with it many memories to the Professor Conrad Dasipodius, as
he wends his way along the narrow by-path leading to the fair marble
cross marking the grave of Chretei Herlin.

A year ago to-day it is that they laid the old man to his rest; and it
has been a frequent custom of the mathematician’s to make this little
pilgrimage to his old master’s grave, and one which in these brighter
days of his he has in no wise forsworn, only that oftener now than
not he does not perform it alone. And a mighty strange spot too, say
the gossips, watching from afar the gracious figures of the blind
mathematician, and his betrothed, with his hand linking down trustfully
into her helpful arm, a marvellous strange spot for a lover to go
taking his sweetheart to, poor thing!

But Sabina by no means holds herself an object for commiseration; and
that is not the first time by scores that the world, in attempting
to dive between the wills and ways of lovers, has come with its head
against a post. Wondrous wise, of course, it is in this case, and has
at fingers’ ends a dozen garbled versions of the eventful loves of
these two; but it will never know, as Sabina has come to know now, how
the courses of Conrad’s life and of her own swirled into such fateful
channels here, to-day a year ago. Neither can it grasp, what even she
must be content to apprehend only in part, aught of the attraction
which draws him to the solemn spot; and how here, as nowhere besides
so entirely, the intellect, still “chained to time,” communes with the
disembodied spirit hovering there.

For Dasipodius, the old man’s grave is a shrine of consolation, a
cheering refuge from the world’s turmoil; and what it is for him,
that and no other can it be for his promised wife. To-day, however,
he is alone, perhaps because some inference of her unselfish devotion
has prompted the fancy that solitude and silence will be more prized
by him, just for a while, than even her presence; or possibly for no
more occult reason than that the wreath of flowers, sweet and fair as
herself, which she is weaving for the old monk’s grave, lacks a few
finishing touches.

For an instant Dasipodius, unconscious of the task she was so absorbed
in, had stood hesitating and disturbed by her refusal to come with him,
lest one of those attacks of weakness and pain, still lingering on the
track of the ordeal she had passed through, had seized her now; but
she had earnestly assured him that she was “only busy—very busy”. “And
with that you’ll have to be content, Professor,” Burgomaster Niklaus
had said laughingly, “and go your ways, asking no questions. The sooner
you clearly understand that Mistress Sabina von Steinbach is the most
unbending despot on the face of this earth, the better for your peace
and quietness.”

“Till we meet again then, dear heart,” smiled Dasipodius. And so he had
come up alone.

Probably this enhances the vividness of his associations with that day
whose anniversary this is. Alone! now as then, a then which seems but
yesterday, and yet an age ago. Only one short year, yet so long!

Nature, who is no precisian, and assumes to herself in such matters
a certain law of liberty, had last year donned her full suit of snow
two weeks earlier; and that scene of utter, unrelieved whiteness, upon
which the black curtain of his affliction had fallen, and made the fair
world a blank for evermore, rose a strange, contrasting picture in his
memory, as he paused for an instant before turning along the little
winding pathway, leading to Herlin’s grave, passing on, with a step so
firm and sure, as utterly to falsify that little fiction of Sabina’s,
he so unblushingly lent himself to, that her eyes were absolutely
necessary for his goings to and fro upon the earth.

The clocks have already chimed four; and as the mathematician stands
leaning on his stick, beside the smooth grass-grown mound, the last
faint sunrays fade, and leave him in the twilight greyness, and the
silence, broken only by the low soft twittering of a redbreast among
the cypresses. Hush! Not all silent; and the little bird, with quicker
sense even than the blind man’s, has caught that strain of sweet music,
and lifts his voice in gentle response to the prayer of the brethren,
where, in the dimly-lighted chapel yonder, they are gathered to chant
the memorial requiem for the soul of the beloved brother departed.
“Requiem æternam dona eis Domine, et Lux perpetua dona eis.”

A strange thrill seizes Dasipodius, as those slow, solemn cadences fall
upon his ear. It wanted but their well-remembered sounds to complete
the illusion, and transport him a year back along the troubled stream
of time, to that gloomiest moment, save one, of all his darkened
existence. To that moment when, in his great agony, his voice had gone
up against the high God’s ruling, and he had begged for death. “Is
there no mercy—no pity left in Heaven? Let me die now—Father Chretei!
Father Chretei! My God! to think that it must come!”

And now in humble recognition of the infinite Power which had let this
supplication fall unheeded, Dasipodius bowed his head; but if something
of humiliation at his own finite conception of the supreme goodness
troubled him then, it all faded in the abiding sense of thankfulness
and trustful content, which death nor life could ever steal from him;
and out of his soul’s deepest depths, he murmured: “Peace—peace. Amen.”

Very hard it may be for the wretched to realise that there is joy still
left in the world; but almost harder still it is for men whose failing
cup of happiness has been suddenly and richly replenished to conceive
that things have not grown universally cheerier. The mathematician’s
gentle soul would have had the whole world of quick—ay, and of dead
too—share in the blessedness which had come to shine upon him. Truly
it seemed to him that fuller than ever it had been before, that coming
Yule-tide would be of “Peace and goodwill towards men”.

“Requiem æternam dona eis, et Lux perpetua luceat eis.”

“Amen. Amen.”

“Conrad Dasipodius!”

That voice! Dasipodius started from his reverie with some strange pang
of self-accusing; for the accents told him, as no sound besides, human
or superhuman, that there were flaws in his cup of charity. Only not
her! The deepest-dyed criminal who had ever sued for mercy would have
found it this calm, sweet twilight of a waning year, had Dasipodius
been his judge. Had he not pleaded for Tobias Hackernagel?—but that
voice he shrank from, with a horror so unspeakable that it deadened his
sense, and for the moment struck him speechless. If the associations
of the spot had been already so powerful, what were they now? Those
self-same tones! Oh, Heaven! was all indeed a dream then? and was he
wakening to the bitter reality once more? Those self-same tones! And
yet how changed! There was music in them yet, but how hollow and low,
broken, and catching so painfully for breath, though only his name had
passed the parched and trembling lips.

“Mistress von Steinbach,” he said at last.

“Ay,” she hoarsely whispered. “Yes—we meet again, at—the old
trysting-place, Conrad.”

He recoiled, for she had neared him by another pace.

“Nay,” continued she, with a low hollow laugh, and laying on his
chilled hands fingers that burned into them like fire, “but it is for
the last time.”

“When last we met,” he replied in hard, metallic tones, as he shook
himself free, “would have been our fittest leave-taking.”

The light force he used sent her staggering against the cross; and
stretching out her shadowy arms, all shrunken from their once perfect
contours, she clung to it, a veritable Magdalene, with her dishevelled
hair hanging about her shoulders, and a wild unearthly brilliancy
burning in her dark eyes, fixed passionately as of old on him. “Say you
so?” she gasped.

“Ay, that do I, by my faith,” he answered.

“By your faith,” she echoed, a mocking smile quivering to her
lips—“that tells no sinner may die unshriven. And, Conrad Dasipodius, I
am here to seek my dying shrift of you.”

“Am I your priest confessor?” he demanded. “God be thanked, mistress,
no; for I must have perished by a thousand tortures, before I could
have given shrift to you.” And again he strove to pass on; but she,
leaving her hold upon the cross, glided to her knees at his feet.
“Trample on me,” she said, “if you will. My poor breath would soon be
spent, and death from you would be sweet; but go you shall not, till——”

“What will you have of me?”

“Pardon.”

“Ask your priest, I say, for that, in God’s name; but do not ask it of
me. Leave hold, mistress—your very touch is loathsome to me. Let me
pass on.”

But her clutch upon him grew tighter. “Pardon, ere I die. Pardon.”

He shook his head; a marble face would have looked softer than his.

“Ere I die, did I say?” she went on. “It is that I may die. I cannot,
till you— Oh, many and many a time, they have thought me dead, for the
rigidness of death that has seized my limbs; but that was because all
hell’s fiends clawed me so fast down, gibbering and howling in my ears
that your heart could know—no—pardon for me.” For an instant her voice
failed her, then rallied again with the strength of despair. “Give them
the lie to that—give—them the lie to it, by that mercy you will one
day need. Ah, Heaven! your face grows human—at last. Your sweet, sweet
face, I bartered my soul’s health for, and would again, would—again——”

“Hush, mistress. This is the delirium of sickness. You should be in
your bed. How came you here?”

“Do I know?” she said, dropping her voice and glancing round with a
strange cunning defiance in her eyes. “They—who were watching beside
me, left me—for a little—thinking I slept. Ha! ha!—slept! How long is
it, I wonder, since the blessed sleep, and—and I parted company? Then I
stole out—before—she could fall upon me—that woman—with her murderous
fingers, to claw me down—down with her. Oh, yes, she was there, I
tell you. She was there, frightfullest among them all, with her cruel
beautiful face, though these hands tore it shred by shred, that—that
night when— Oh, yes, did I not hear her? She wolf—screeching in my ears
as I fled: ‘Come! come! for thou too hast marred two loves—two lives—as
I did. Come!’ But”—and a piercing discordant shriek of laughter broke
from her—“but, Conrad Dasipodius, I—I turned on her, and— ‘No, no—there
is time—time yet,’ I cried, ‘and he is angel good, and pitiful. He will
forgive—forgive.’ Ah, God! you shake your head!”

“Go home, mistress,” was all he said. “Death lurks for you here in this
cold.”

“Ay; cold, cold,” she shivered, cowering to the ground, and gathering
her scanty covering closer about her. “And yet I burn. Mercy!—hark!
Do you hear how they sing yonder? Rest—rest—eternal rest, for that
good brother, him thy soul loved so well, Conrad. I knew”—and a tender
wistfulness moistened the arid glitter of her eyes—“I was sure you
would be here to-night. Ah!” And as the requiem hymn broke again upon
her ears, she clasped her hands over them as if she would have shut
out the sounds. “Rest! rest! What prayers can ever avail for me,” she
moaned, “if you rise up and bid them hush?”

“God forbid I should do that, woman,” he said.

“What can they do for me, if you deny,” persisted she, “Conrad
Dasipodius, as here I hang upon you now, so my tortured soul shall one
day stay your feet at—Heaven’s Golden Gate, till it wrings from you my
pardon—pardon. Ah! is your heart turned steel that you can look like
that? Conrad, by all my life’s unloved loneliness——”

“Unloved!”

“Ay,” she said, with a terrible echo of her old disdainful laugh,
“unloved. By my forgotten grave, which dank and rotting weeds shall
hide—for who will remember Radegund von Steinbach? A beggar or two—a
dog, mayhap—Bruno for a little month even—Bruno Wolkenberg, until some
gentle maiden, out of his dream-stories, comforts him. Oh, Conrad,
mercy, pity—by all your love for—her.”

“By that it is,” he said solemnly, “I look into my soul, and find there
no pity for you. Did you spare her——”

“He that is without sin among you,” said a voice that was not
Radegund’s, “let him first cast a stone.”

“I cast it not, my lord,” answered Dasipodius, turning to face the
Bishop. “As there is a Heaven above us, Mistress,” he continued, “I
swear I think I have never nursed anger against you, for myself’s sake.
But she—when her life’s blood— Oh, God! I feel it now, upon these
hands, through—through to my heart. This cold, miserable, miserable
heart that had dared to doubt her. And you, will you have me lie,
mistress? I do not pardon you. Go home.”

Alas! for the eyes that could not see the agony of the fast-glazing
ones upturned to his! nor the despair of the grey face damp with mortal
dews. Did he know that death’s agonies wrung the hands clasped about
his feet? Could he see, as others saw, that already her sense was dead
to the presence of those who had sorrowingly sought her, and found her
thus? That she knew not how he who had thrown himself beside her now,
and with hands trembling in his soul’s supreme anguish, yet strong for
his great passionate love’s sake, was he who felt her shame to be his,
and her death the severing of all that made life worth living for him,
Bruno Wolkenberg?

“There is joy in Heaven,” pleaded Bishop John once again, “over one
sinner that repenteth——”

“In Heaven, surely, my lord,” returned Dasipodius with cold reverence.
“Let her seek there for what I have not to give.”

“She is dying—here at your feet,” brokenly said the Bishop.

“Even so, my lord,” said Dasipodius, paling to ashen whiteness.

Can this rigid, pitiless face indeed be the face of him whom men
and—God help them!—women so love for its infinite tenderness?

“The throes of death convulse her now—while I speak,” implored the
Bishop, in a voice broken with sobs of grief and indignation. “They
rend her——”

“Can they be as cruel as those my darling suffered, when that villain’s
knife——”

“Conrad!” burst forth Bruno, “are you human still?”

The dying woman’s lips moved, and she turned on her lover a look that
to his life’s own last breath he cherished with a joy no earthly thing
ever gave him more.

“Ay, Bruno,” sighed Dasipodius, starting slightly at the sound of his
voice, “human indeed. And not even for your sake can I do this.”

The burden in Bruno’s arms is growing heavy with death. Each gasp as
it struggles to her lips, bears with it another wave of the ebbing
life; and the awful intensity gleaming through the fast-gathering film
in the cavernous eyes fixed on Dasipodius, alone tells that life and
consciousness linger.

The sun has set, shadows are stealing swiftly over the graves. Yonder
in the Monastery chapel the music is hushed. Not the faintest breeze
stirs the sombre branches, only the fearsome struggling for breath
of the dying artist breaks the utter silence, and the low rustle of
withered leaves under Dasipodius’ foot, as he turns to leave the spot;
but a hand stays him, with a touch. Heavens and earth! how firm and
gentle and persistent! “You here, Sabina?” he demands in stern surprise.

“Ay, Conrad.” And she leads him, before he is well aware, back to
Chretei’s grave. “Bid her die in peace.”

“Child, I cannot.”

“Oh, love, love! Think of her misery. Think—what is all the rest
now?—of Bruno, for his sake, Conrad.” And her tears rain fast upon his
two hands she has gathered up in hers. Yet no sign of relenting softens
his face, scarcely more lifelike than the dying woman’s. “Conrad!”
wails the distracted girl, “if your eyes could see what mine do now.
Must my heart break too? Conrad, by all her love for you——”

“My God, no!” he cries shiveringly. “Come away, child; here is no place
for you.” And he strives to lead her from the spot, but she clings
heavily to him.

“Speak to her—speak—for Christ’s sake! Mercy! mercy! before it is too
late! For my sake—oh, love!—love——”

Some emotion he vainly struggles to stifle down flushes all his face,
glorifying it back to life, as she, lifting the hands hers hold, lays
them against her bosom. “Love,” she murmurs, “by that pain I bore for
you.”

And slowly he turned to the woman at his feet. “Die in peace,” he said,
“if my pardon can win it you. Radegund, with all my heart, which is
hers, as I hope to be forgiven, I forgive you now.”

“Conrad——”

So the artist’s soul went forth; and over the passion-wrung face, like
some pure veil, spread the infinite calm of death; and in her eyes,
fixed on him, lingered like the summer afterglow upon still waters,
the sudden radiance which lit them, as he spoke the words her weary
remorseful spirit thirsted for. With his name upon her lips she had
gone hence. And he in whose arms she had died, Bruno, unremembered
in that supreme moment, laid her down with the tender reverential
gentleness of a mother laying her sleeping babe to rest; and carefully,
so carefully, as though presently she would waken again, he pillowed
the beautiful head upon the soft low snow-covered hillock of the monk’s
grave, and—for does it not grow cold and chill, and in the light of
the moon rising clear and round over the chapel belfry, snowflakes are
sparkling down a crown of diamonds and pearls upon her dark hair—he
draws the mantle protectingly about her wasted form.

And so, silent, tearless, unconscious seemingly of human presence
there, Bruno Wolkenberg tended his dead love. Only when Sabina,
stepping to her side, knelt, and softly kissing the marble cheek,
reverently laid on her bosom the wreath of snow-white flowers she had
brought for Father Chretei, some dim wistful memory of his old sweet
smile flitted across his agony-stricken face.

Noiseless but swiftly now the snow is falling; darker and darker the
shadows creep on apace; the bird’s lullaby song in the cypress is
hushed, and silence falls, the veritable silence of the grave. Yet
hark!—where from the storied panes the tapers’ golden light gleams
forth to mingle with the silver moonrays’ radiance—still goes up the
prayer for the repose of the dead.

“Requiem æternam dona eis, et Lux perpetua luceat eis.”

And so they go down to the great city again, and leave Bruno alone with
his love.




CHAPTER LXXV.

“TO THE END.”


Woven now, and waiting to be loosed from the loom, stands the web of
the old Cathedral Clock’s story; and yet before the lacings that hold
it be severed for good, the weaver would crave a few minutes’ grace for
scanning it, to see no threads of it hang obtrusively fraying. Nay, let
that be, that harsh, coarse-grained fibre, bursting through its thin
pinchbeck veneer. Never vex finger with it again. Leave it zig-zagging
there, in its place, and be thankful that Tobias Hackernagel is
disposed of. Lift rather but gently this light, parti-coloured,
somewhat slippery silken thread—which in the flesh is Otto von
Steinbach—and knot it down firm and secure with the honest unbreakable
stuff which makes up the nature of Gretchen Hackernagel.

Out of sore tribulation long refusing to be comforted, Otto von
Steinbach is happy again. Not carelessly happy, as in that long ago,
ere the Horologe was born or thought of; for dear as is the wife he has
taken to himself has come to be to him, not even she can fill the void
which broke into his life when Radegund died. Radegund, than whom no
mother could have been so sweet and pitiful, when life’s wearinesses
and vexations bruised his shallower nature too roughly.

It is hard to say what mischief in the earliest days of his loss, the
young man, wandering half-distraught up and down his great lonely
house, would not have done himself; but its first violence spent,
he found distraction in the fuss and excitement which his marriage
preparations brought, modest and quiet, as reasons many made them;
and long before he was a housefather, Otto was himself again. Till
that auspicious event befell, he kept his dead sister’s painting-room
religiously closed, allowing none excepting himself ever to cross its
threshold. His children’s voices, however, wakened in him cheerier
memories of Radegund, and he came to think that the spirit of her,
whose pride always melted like snow in sunshine, in the presence of
little children, and all innocent helpless creatures would, if indeed
it hovered there—as so it seemed to him it did—be in no wise troubled,
but rejoice at the pranks of those curly-locked youngsters whom
Mistress Gretchen von Steinbach declared had no match for loveliness
in all Strassburg, and growing more and more like their father each
hour they lived. A postulate which Otto swears to be all favour and
prejudice, as he bestows a sounding kiss on their mother’s smiling
lips, and a pinch on the cheek which is fuller and rounder than ever
was Gretchen Hackernagel’s.

And so it came to pass that the old studio was turned into a nursery;
and the carven deities who once looked down with their unchanging eyes
on the tragedy of the artist’s life, witnessed now the merry pantomine
of childhood’s antics and oddities. O tempora! O Mores!

Gretchen’s three sisters lived and died in that condition of single
blessedness, which they always enthusiastically advocated as the only
tolerable one in this wicked world. Their wants were duly provided
for by the State, to which their sire’s goods and chattels were made
over, but it was at no great pains to oppress them with superfluous
luxury. For any of life’s little sweets, they were beholden to the
thoughtfulness of their sister, whose lot they never ceased to
compassionate. “Poor Gretchen!” these ladies would sigh to their
gossips. “Well, well, but after all, what a providence, my dear, that a
man can always find _some_ woman to love him!”

And now what of this piece of tough, strong—Thunder weather! leave
metaphor alone, for Isaac Habrecht steps to the fore. And what is to
be said of the stout horologist, more than that he lived and died in
harness, unless indeed that one fine morning Master Habrecht said he
was going Schaffhausen way—on a little business matter—and should be
back in three days at midday. And so he was, on the stroke of it,
but not alone; and with a blush on his brown face, as deep, if not
as dainty, as those chasing each other on the comely cheeks of his
companion, and whom he introduced to his friends and acquaintance as
his wife.

“And a good sort of one I reckon she’ll turn out,” he remarked
confidentially to Dasipodius, as he took up his file and began to
scrape. “I put my question to her ten years and five months ago this
very day. And a real good thing,” he added, a little apologetically,
“is always a real good thing.”

“Quite true,” smiled Dasipodius. “And God bless you both, Isaac. And
what,” he added, laying his hand with the old gentle pressure on
Kaspar’s shoulder, “what is to become of our Treuer Kamerad here? Does
the good wife take him under her wing?”

“Ay, surely, with all his chips and rattletraps, or she’d never have
been wife of mine. That was a bargain. The lad and I are not going to
be parted, because a petticoat’s come to whisk about the Wheel.”

“Some of these fine days,” merrily laughed a gentle voice at the
professor’s elbow, “if you don’t look well after him, Master Habrecht,
there may come another petticoat to whisk him away.”

“Time enough for that, Mistress Dasipodius,” grunted the ungallant
husband with a grim smile. “Time enough to let himself be made a fool
of a dozen years hence.”

And so, while healthfully as ever the old science life at the Silver
Dial still throbs on, it is cheered and spiritualized now by love’s
sweet presence. There was a passing difficulty between Burgomaster
von Steinbach and the Professor Dasipodius when the time drew near
for the transplanting of the Lily from the Munster-gasse. “What could
be easier,” Niklaus demanded, “than for Conrad to give up his house
and all its contents, sentient and inanimate alike, to become part
and parcel of his own great house, where there was room enough to
quarter a garrison? But Christian would no more give up his old home,
than he would have given up Strassburg to France, and Dasipodius
gently but firmly stood by his father’s wish, until Niklaus declared
that of all proud, obstinate, stick-by-your-own-way fellows, commend
him to a mathematician. And as to Christian, when the Fleur-de-lis
floated from the Cathedral tower top, he’d first begin to know what
was really good for him.” And though a truce was speedily established
over the Marcobrunner, Niklaus to the end of his days would find his
opportunities for saying: “Never was such a thief as you, professor;
carrying off my lily-flower to bloom in your garden!”

“Nay”—for so Time, as he flew, furnished the mathematician with a
rejoinder—“but the buds, Burgomaster?”

“Well, well.” And the mollified Niklaus would smile and say no more;
for very dear to the grandfather’s heart were those same young
blossoms; and no sound was so sweet to him as the light patter of
the little feet about the great fountain in his courtyard, and their
pealing laughter as they pranked with the beauteous Antinous.

Mitte of course went with her mistress to her new home. _Le levo
l’incomodo_ is the wise Italian phrase; and while incontestably a more
charming creature than Mitte did not exist, the Burgomaster found
compensation for the void caused by her departure, in the comfortable
sense of being able to sit down in his own easy chair, without that
ejectment therefrom which had so frequently laid him open to the charge
of inhumanity.

The cession question between Christian and Burgomaster Niklaus remained
open to the end; although each renewed discussion gathered in animation
as years flowed on, and the little cloud both politicians fancied they
had long discerned, showed unmistakeably in the reddening horizon.
Christian’s forebodings, however, that Strassburg will throw off her
homely Teutonic garb, and find herself a lily-garlanded _belle-dame_,
will not be realized till he and his gossip have long lain sleeping
their last sleep. That notion of his is the one sole disturber of his
latter years. Far behind now, all his griefs lie, in memory’s dimming
distance; while across the Bourne, whither he is gently wending, the
fair form of her who went so long before, beckons him a welcome that
will rob death when it comes of all its bitterness. The blow which sent
him staggering, when first the knowledge of his son’s affliction burst
upon him, is now but an abiding pain he can bravely endure. Can he do
otherwise, when the blind man himself makes so light of it? Never the
faintest suspicion has Christian that his frank, truth-loving son can
so artfully play the hypocrite, and assume in his father’s presence a
lightheartedness he does not always feel.

When Bishop John was called to his rest, if there were many who
rejoiced, out of hope that, his mild rule removed, Protestantism
would find more breathing room in that divided city, there were many
who sorrowed deeply for his loss. Under a stately marble tomb they
reverently laid all of him that was mortal, “and his works do follow
him”. One more star faded from about Bruno Wolkenberg’s shadowy path,
when death took this man who had understood and so highly prized the
genius of his dead love. To him he had dared recall her memory; with
him he had taken counsel how best to expend that wealth the artist had
left in his stewardship for the good of her native city. There had been
no home claims upon her generosity; for besides Otto’s modest entail,
it had happened that the ancient aunt, on whose obliging departure
from this world he had for some time counted, died, and placed at his
disposal all her vast possessions; and if Otto had his faults, greed
was not one of them; and he was content, and proud to see the riches
his sister’s toil had garnered in go to bringing back sunshine to
poverty, and helping poor student artists to start fair on the road to
fame.

But the goodliest memorial of her was of Surgeon Wolkenberg’s creating
out of his own crushed hopes. He wandered through his desolate
chambers, conjuring up visions of sweet impossible joys, until
reason well-nigh forsaking him, he sat down beside their cheerless
hearthplaces, seeing there the pale ashes of his ill-starred love. The
terrible silence was eloquent of those low earnest tones—sweeter to him
than sweetest music, which never again in this world would gladden his
soul. Not to drown those echoes—ah! Heaven!—no! How rather to hold
them there for ever. How to make memory a consoling angel instead of
the haunting fiend it was. And, tested to the quick, there gleamed out
the true metal of Bruno’s heart. Misery’s verjuice could not corrode
its generosity, and dull out all sense of this world’s suffering except
his own. It rather quickened within him a project he had long nursed,
of transforming his goodly house into a home for those who had none,
and a refuge for the sick poor of the great city. A modest institution,
Doctor Wolkenberg’s hospital, uncommemorated by any foundation formulæ,
dedicated in no canonized saint’s name, but only to the memory of an
erring woman he loved.

That haven in the storm to many a shipwrecked soul and battered
body, the tide of change swept away generations ago, but in its day
it bravely achieved its manifold mission of healing; and from his
shadowy laboratory Bruno ruled his little colony, toiling from dawn to
midnight—ay, and often from midnight to dawn—onward, patiently till the
end might come, with a light in his face, which only grew the sweeter
as the years gathered.

Many a woman’s heart would turn from the gallantest gentleman’s wooing,
to yield homage to this man with the grizzled locks and care-lined lips
and brow; but Bruno heeded no such tender lures. Alone he bided his
Master’s bidding, come when it should. No visits, save to sick folks’
houses, the doctor ever paid—always excepting indeed one house, where,
in a quiet shadowy corner of the professor’s sitting-room, is a nook
family tradition calls “Doctor Bruno’s corner”. In the brief intervals
of leisure he sometimes allows himself towards evening, Doctor Bruno
will come and take up his place in the happy circle. It is hard to say
which of the three generations it embraces, loves best to hear the
surgeon’s step upon the threshold; not excepting Grandfather Niklaus,
who will romp with you as merrily as heart can desire, nor Grandfather
Christian, who will take you where sweetest violets grow, and find the
biggest nuts anybody ever saw, is more dearly loved than Doctor Bruno,
with his store of strange beautiful stories. Glorious they are;—such as
never the like were heard of. Giants and pigmies, knights and ladies,
demons and dragons, kelpies and castles, all spring into being at this
mighty magician’s bidding. His store is utterly inexhaustible. To
pronounce any preference where all is so enchanting would be almost
impossible. And yet—one sweet, sweet story there is. “That one of the
brave Crusader Knight, you know, Väterle,” says a little wistful voice.

“Ritter Toggenburg,” says the Professor, who has just come in from his
University lecture, and has seated himself beside the house-mother,
with her crown of golden hair, and the sleeping babe nestled to her
bosom, a picture as fair—if, alas! the sightless eyes could recall the
old comparison—as the gentle Madonna in the Cathedral choir. “It is
Ritter Toggenburg he means, isn’t it, Mütterle?” smiles Conrad, lifting
the youngster on to his knee.

“No, no, father; not Ritter Toggenburg. This knight I mean had a horse.”

“Surely. Du junger, Kerl, Du,” laughs Burgomaster Niklaus, pinching the
boy’s ear. “As all brave knights should have, shouldn’t they?”

“And a lady love,” adds Christian.

“Perhaps,” carelessly assents the eager little voice; “but the
horse—the dear, good, faithful horse——”

“Ay,” says Sabina. “Now I know what he means. It is the brave knight,
Conrad, who rode on, and on, and on——”

“Yes, yes,” cries the boy, clapping his hands.

“All alone, through a great wide wilderness——”

“Yes, until, you know, he came to a fair chapel, mother dear.”

“And there he got down, for his heart was sad and sore; and he wanted
to pray, and——”

“But tell it in the verses, Mütterle.”

“Nay. I cannot remember them. Can you, father, dear?” asks Sabina.

And the great mathematical professor cudgels his brain, but flounders
and bungles so deeply over it, that at last Mistress Dasipodius bids
him give over.

“Your stories,” she says, “never did have any more head nor tail to
them than——”

“A circle,” suggests the unabashed Conrad.

“And your poetry is fifty times worse than even your prose; when it’s a
question of fairy tales.”

“He doesn’t describe such whimsies so neatly as he does his
parallelograms, eh?” laughs Niklaus. “And we shall have to wait till
the doctor comes after all.”

“And—hey, presto!—here he is,” says the blind man, whose quick ear has
first caught Bruno’s footstep. “Our Necromancer-in-chief. Come now, Sir
Paladin, sit you down and square our difficulty for us. Our rhymes want
your surgery:

    “Count Turneck, after a toilsome ride,
    By night in a chapel desired to bide.”

“How does it go?”

    “The chapel stood in a greenwood deep—
    ‘Yes, here,’ thought the Count, ‘I may safely sleep.’

    “The Count he sprang from his horse on the plain—
    ‘Graze here,’ he said, ‘till——’”

                        “‘Till I come again,’”

prompted the doctor.

“Yes—that’s it!” cried the child, clapping his hands—“‘till I come
again’. Go on, dear Uncle Bruno. Quick.”

    “The portal oped with a gnarring sound;
    Deep stillness reigned in the vault around,”

goes on Bruno, thus adjured.

    “‘Here by the Dead may the Living be borne;
    I will rest me here till the break of morn.’

    “The sun came over the mountains red;
    The Count came never—the Count was dead.

    “Three hundred years have rolled, and more;
    Still tarries the steed before the door.

    “The chapel is hasting to swift decay,
    The steed grazes yet in the moon’s blue ray,”

concludes Bruno, standing in their midst, the waning golden of the
sunset transfiguring his face with a mysterious beauty.

“True to the end,” dreamily murmurs the little voice. “True to the end,
wasn’t he, father?”

“Ay, lad,” says the blind man, as his hand seeks Bruno’s, and clasps it
with a gentle pressure. “True to the End.”


FINIS.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Transcriber’s note—the following changes have been made to this text.

Page 17: look to looked—“looked puzzled.”

Page 18: churchmen to churchman—“groaned the churchman”.

Page 28: faaher’s to father’s—“causes of her father’s”.

Page 31: se to si—“_e pur si muove_”.

Page 33: Maitre to Maître—“Maître Léonard”.

Page 116: moated to moted—“whose moted haze”.

Page 138: abstracedly to abstractedly—“abstractedly—abstractedly”.

Page 172: Munster-strasse to Munster-gasse—“visit at the Munster-gasse”.

Page 190: Dasipodious to Dasipodius—“Conr—the Professor Dasipodius”.

Page 203: Rumpelpuppelschnarchentein to
Rumpelpuppelschnarchenstein—“Countess of Rumpelpuppelschnarchenstein”.

Page 287: celdre to celare—“_Ars celare Artem_”.

Page 303: wern’t to weren’t—“weren’t we, till”.

Page 335: repeated word “outside” removed—“outside the city gates”.

Page 361: Krauken-haus to Kranken-haus—“_Kranken-haus_”.

Page 408: “llevo il incommodo” to “levo l’incomodo”.]



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76372 ***