CHAPTER XXVI.
“MERE HEARSAY.”
The wound from which Dasipodius was suffering proved more troublesome than he had at first anticipated; and for the next day or two he found himself unable to return to his work. Isaac Habrecht had called more than once to enquire after him; but during the few minutes he had stayed, was not communicative, beyond the assurance that things were going on straight. Otherwise Dasipodius had had no communication with the outside world.
Poor Christian, sorely distressed by the pain and unrest from which his son was suffering, was anxious to summon Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg; but Conrad peremptorily forbade any such thing. “Bruno,” he said, “had something better to do, than to go about doctoring scratches.”
Christian, however, continued to gaze ruefully at the pale face, and the once busy hands, now folded in sheer nerveless apathy, with something like despair in their convulsive twitching.
“You may call it a scratch,” said Christian, “but I call it a wound, and an uncommonly bad one too; and I wonder Dr Bruno has not looked in of himself——”
“Does not that prove my case?” said Dasipodius with a faint smile of reassurance. “Bruno would have been here no doubt, had he thought it necessary. Come now, leave Bruno alone; I shall do well enough—and sit down here beside me and be content. Your cool hand here in mine does me more good than an army of surgeons. See,” he went on, “in the lattice there, lies that Book of the Gospels Father Chretei gave me. Bring it here, and read to me a bit. Yes?”
Christian brought the book and began to turn its thick, richly illuminated vellum pages with a pre-occupied air.
“Nay,” said Conrad. “Just read where it opens first, Väterle. It cannot but be good hearing. What have you before you now?”
“And they bring a blind man unto Him,” read Christian.
“Ay, that will do—well enough. Read on, Väterle.”
And Christian obeyed, until he came to the words: “I see men as trees walking”.
“Yes,” dreamily interrupted Conrad. “‘Men as trees walking.’ That is well described. Excellently well. All blurred and indistinct, I know——I understand.”
Christian gazed up a little wonderingly into his son’s face.
“But,” continued Conrad, “it would be horrible now, to live on and on, in a haze like that. Wouldn’t it, Väterle? It would drive a man mad.”
“Yes,” answered Christian; “I do think I’d rather be quite right down blind at once.”
“Ay; and that would I, a thousand times.”
“But we won’t talk about such dreadful things. Let’s go on and see what our Lord Christ did for the poor fellow,” and Christian read on to the wondrous story’s end.
“If the Lord Christ walked the earth now-a-days, would He still do such gracious deeds, think you?” said Conrad wistfully.
“Well,” replied Christian, “that is what nobody can tell, can they? But Holy Church teaches, you know, that miraculous power has been handed down. Oh, you shake your head; but it is quite certain that a pilgrimage to St. Ottilie’s holy well, near Schlettstadt, is said to work wonderful cures on blind eyes, and even weak ones——”
“Ay, ay,” said Conrad. “Cold water does do great things. It’s a pity people don’t make more use of it.”
“Yes, and then special devotion to Our Lady of Alt Nöttingen is even——”
“Nay,” interrupted Conrad with an actual laugh. “That hideous black doll work divine deeds? No, no, Bruno Wolkenberg against Our Lady of Alt Nöttingen any day.”
“What odd notions you have, Conrad!” said the old man with a half-scandalised air. “But thank heaven, all that concerns us little enough, does it?”
“Read on, father,” said Conrad wearily.
And for a short while longer Christian read on, until they were interrupted by the announcement that three gentlemen from the Chancellery desired an audience of the Professor Dasipodius.
“I expected this,” he said, rising from his half-reclining position. “Bid them come in.”
“But,” interposed Christian, “you are not fit——”
“Hush, father. It must be. Lend me your arm,” and he rose to receive his visitors.
If those delegates had enjoyed their little dream of brief authority by anticipation, the pleasure ended rather abruptly for all, not excepting Master Hackernagel himself, who had volunteered to be spokesman, so that as he said, he might mercifully break the intelligence. They shuffled and hummed, and exchanged perturbed glances in that calm stately presence, until Dasipodius, wondering at the silence, said, “Well, gentlemen?”
Then the syndic recovered himself, and clearing his throat, and sounding to the attack after his own approved fashion, unrolled the parchment he carried. “Whereas,” he began in his best official voice, never too musical, “whereas—I—I crave pardon,” he interrupted himself. “I have in the first place and preliminarily to observe——”
“Certainly,” said Dasipodius, “say all you want to say, Master Hackernagel, when you have discharged your duty; but you have something to read there first?”
“Whereas,” resumed Tobias, after having stolen a glance at the mathematician’s face, “whereas certain rumours—ahem! Mere hearsay you observe, Professor,” he said, lifting his lynx-like eyes to Dasipodius.
“Just so. Mere hearsay,” cheerfully echoed the supernumeraries.
“Go on, Master Hackernagel,” said the mathematician in tones which effectually did away with further parenthetical observation on the syndic’s part.
Although thanks to Niklaus von Steinbach the document had the virtue of brevity, it was with the utmost difficulty that Conrad succeeded in imposing silence on Christian till its reading was ended. The old man’s arm on which he leaned, quivered and vibrated with suppressed agitation, and barely had the final syllable passed Hackernagel’s lips, than Christian burst angrily into speech. “What fooling is this?” he demanded. “Speak to these idiots, Conrad, and send them packing!”
“Master Christian!” wrathfully screeched the insulted dignitary, turning on Christian; but the old man had neither eyes nor ears for him, he was staring with bewildered entreaty in his son’s face. “Speak to them. Do you hear?” he gasped.
“You had something to observe, Master Hackernagel,” calmly said Dasipodius, lifting his hand to command silence.
“I—Professor? Ha—yes—precisely—h’m, h’m—I was simply about to remark that—h’m—rumour—many-tongued rumour——”
“Just so—yes,” endorsed his coadjutors. “Many-tongued rumour—exactly——”
“Is false—proverbially false. Hem!” and again for an instant Hackernagel’s small sharp orbits were fixed on the grand sightless ones, but once more fell shiftily. It seemed to him that they returned his glance with such calm, deep-seeing self-possession. “Proverbially false.”
“Proverbially false,” assented his satellites like a Greek chorus; but Dasipodius was silent.
“Conrad!” entreated Christian, “why will you not speak—why?——”
“Hush, father—hush! hush!” he said soothingly. “Gentlemen,” he continued, addressing his visitors, “I will attend at the appointed time. Have you anything further to communicate?”
“Hem! hem!” coughed Tobias. “We—I—should have been glad to hear—for certain——”
“That I am blind—assuredly. I should have known you would. This then for your contentment. Gentlemen,” and Dasipodius fixed his eyes on all three, till they writhed with discomposure; and even Tobias’ pink lids fell. “I am blind—stone-blind.”
“Oh! ha! h’m! Really I assure you, Herr Professor,” began one of the party, but Dasipodius paid him no heed. His whole being seemed absorbed in the endeavours he was making to comfort Christian.
“So—so, Väterle! Be brave now—brave; strong for my sake,” he said, gathering the trembling old man into his arms.
A vague sympathetic murmur thrilled the syndic’s companions, and they began to stammer out some well-meaning word or two.
“Nay, gentlemen,” interrupted Dasipodius, making a gesture of dismissal. “You have kind hearts. They will tell you we would be alone just now,” and with not so much as a word of farewell, the delegates departed, never exchanging a syllable until they had turned the corner of the street, where the syndic began roundly reproaching them for not having backed him up in a manner befitting the dignity of the occasion.
“If I had not been equal to my duty,” he said, “where would you all three have been, I should like to know?”
“Well,” said one, “but he’s got such a way with him always, has Dasipodius. Oh, hang it! No; I’d sooner stand to witness the headsman finish off half-a-dozen, than go through such a scene as that again. Poor old Christian! Did you mark the tears in his eyes, Master Tobias?” asked the speaker, dashing one or two suspicious drops away from his own.
“I marked nothing,” said Hackernagel sulkily, “but that all three of you let it be seen plainly enough, that you sympathised with the accused; and I should like to know what that is, if it isn’t being accessary—winking at crime. Holding a candle to—— Never mind, it is of no consequence. I feel at least I have performed my duty,” and the Incorruptible strode away, to spend the next three days in drawing up with infinitesimal care and patience, notes of all he intended to say, when Dasipodius should appear to give an account of himself.
And still in the chamber they had left, Christian lay upon his son’s breast, with his arms clasped convulsively round the blind man’s neck. “Tell them to go, Conrad. They are liars I say,” he wailed again and again. “Can’t they see for themselves that it’s all a lie? Blind! ha! ha! ha!” and Christian burst into a wild laugh. “Why! with such eyes as these? Your mother’s eyes—shining down on me—now; do I not see them? Clear and beautiful, like the moon through a night-cloud! Blind forsooth!—blind!” and again he broke into hysterical laughter.
“Hush, father,” said Dasipodius—“be a man. Bear it for me now, as I have borne it alone for long long weeks past. Those men did but speak the truth. I am blind.”
Christian groaned heavily.
“You see my eyes. They are wide open, you say: but your eyes I cannot see. No: nor the tears that I know they are wet with,” went on Dasipodius brokenly: “nor all the grief that is in them; nor the pardon for having hidden my affliction from you. That is there too, father? The forgiveness?”
“Oh my son! my son!” sobbed Christian, tightening his clasp round Conrad’s neck.
“So—that is well. I did it for the best. I was mad enough to think I could have kept it to myself. Well, I have been outwitted,” he continued with a sudden access of bitterness; “and there is no more to be said. Understand, father: no more to be said.”
“But——” began the bewildered Christian.
“Not now, Väterle; for my sake. We will talk of other things.”
“But tell me only this,” entreated Christian, “does Sabina—your little Sabina——”
“Hush! Not my Sabina—now. Sabina von Steinbach knows all; yes. God forgive her!” said Dasipodius in a hollow changed voice. “Speak no more about her, father. Come! come!” he added, making an effort at gaiety, “cheer thee—cheer thee now! Why surely, when the blind man himself breaks down, ’twill be time enough to spend tears on him! Look up—smile. Nay, but you are not smiling! Oh trust me, I can tell whether you are sad or merry, every whit as well as if I were made of eyes. So then—cheerily—cheerily—for my sake.”
And so it was the blind man strove to comfort his father, and gradually succeeded in bringing him to dwell calmly on their trouble. Notwithstanding, the mathematician’s own heart was heavy with forebodings. “Yet, it is wicked to meet troubles half way! It was she who said that once. Oh Sabina! Sabina! is it any wonder that I took you for true gold!”