CHAPTER XXVIII.
“AFFINITIES.”
This was a random shaft of Radegund’s, but it bore a curious significance in the mathematician’s ear. He believed, too, that it accounted for her wild words. Clearly she had grown jealous, and anything, as he told himself, uttered in the frenzies of jealousy, should have no more import attached to it than other mad utterances find. Could it be possible that this foolish woman had brought herself to fancy that Bruno Wolkenberg could swerve from his allegiance to herself? Preposterous! Such indeed was the mathematician’s first inward comment. But then—why then so preposterous? No such unreasonable supposition after all, that Bruno Wolkenberg had tired at last of this haughty, irritable woman, who must make life a burden for any man so unfortunate as to be in love with her. Surely it was no such great marvel that the surgeon should turn from her, to seek rest and consolation from the gentle Lily; and if Sabina had fled to Bruno for shelter from the storm of vexation, and the revulsion of feeling her recent discovery had roused within her, it was not after all so great a wonder. Rather his wonder was now at himself, that he should have accredited these two with being made of holier, finer stuff than ordinary men and women were; but that was his fault, not theirs. If they had been false to him, when he felt that had he been in the place of either, he should have been true, what then? These two disappointed hearts had sought each other at the rebound, and it was well, very well, for Bruno and for Sabina. The girl’s good angel had wrestled with him for her, and conquered. And for himself was left—what? That peaceful monk’s cell, the once much yearned for refuge, where he might enshrine his life’s great hope, all faded now, and give himself to the work which of late had seemed to him but part and parcel of his love, but which had grown jealous from fancied neglect, and was now taking summary and cruel vengeance.
Lightning swift these reflections coursed through the mathematicians brain. He forgot the very presence of Radegund, until having waited vainly for his response, she said, “We know that this fair cousin of mine has but to lift her little finger, for men to fall down and worship.”
“Ay,” acquiesced he, “indeed she has a most strange power.”
“And yet,” went on Radegund, “what is she after all more than a pretty doll?”
“You mis-estimate your cousin. She might, I think, prove herself to be a true noble-hearted woman one of these days.”
“As she has proved herself to you,” mocked the artist.
“I was about to say,” he answered, “true for one she truly loved.”
“And if she could not be true to you, where is the god among men to win the approbation of this most dainty lady? Pearls before swine! God in heaven! To think what she has so lightly cast away! And yet it is well. The clouds are gathering so fast about you, Conrad Dasipodius. To-morrow even they may burst, and what shelter would this pretty Sabina have been to you at such a time?”
The mathematician suppressed a bitter sigh. She would have been more than shelter, she would have been consolation, but that was no theme for discussion; and he told Radegund as much, adding, “And now to business”.
“We are coming to that,” nodded she with a curious smile. “That which she could not—cannot be to you, I can.”
Then she paused, and watched his face, hitherto pale to ghastliness under the moon’s light, but now suddenly flushed and agitated with some emotion not even her second sight could divine.
“I do not understand you, Mistress von Steinbach,” he stammered.
“No, you never do,” she answered fretfully. “I meant to say that to-morrow when they take the Horologe work from you, I will have it given back to you. You smile?”
“Pardon me, I cannot help it. This is such a very strange notion of yours. They would hardly be so——”
“So mad,” interrupted she. “So you think.”
“Truly. So I believe,” he replied, still smiling.
“Then wait till you are undeceived. And to-morrow, when these addlepates declare you unfit for your task, you will remember what I have said to-night. You will perhaps also repent having spurned my offer. Why, at your bidding, I would have defied them all—every mother’s son of them! I would have snapped my fingers in their faces. Would she do that, think you?”
“But what need,” laughed Dasipodius, “do you imagine there will be——”
“What need! what need!” she cried, angrily stamping her foot. “Wait then, only wait. Oh! how twofold is your blindness!”
“No,” contested he prosaically. “That is precisely the whole question. Never have my mind’s eyes been so true to me, as since my bodily eyes have refused to do their office.”
“And you flatter yourself these earth-clods will understand that! Oh, believe me, they will draw no such fine distinction.”
“And they need trouble themselves to draw none,” he returned. “If to the last letter I fulfil the contract, in what way can it concern them how I fulfil it?”
“It is being done by magic, the people say.”
The mathematician laughed more merrily than he had for many a day. “Say they so?” he cried. “Then by my faith am I glad my case is not at their tender mercies.”
“The town council is ruled by the mob.”
“Nay then, nay, what is to become of me?” he asked still in hugely amused tones.
“Laugh if you will,” said Radegund with stern sullenness. “I sought to stand by you in your trial-hour, Conrad Dasipodius, and you disdain my aid, and mock at me.”
“Why will you make me seem so churlish?” he said, regaining seriousness. “How would it be possible for me to disdain such generosity? But it is to myself I must stand or fall, Mistress von Steinbach. If—if I really cannot help myself, how are you to help me?”
“Many a time a woman’s word has been known to turn the balance, where a man’s best eloquence has fallen dead.”
“How often indeed!” he said, gallantly lifting his cap, and turning as if to leave her.
“Farewell then,” she said, setting her face towards the old house, where her lamp still gleamed through her studio’s curtained window. “And yet,” she murmured passionately, “I would have died to do you a service.”
“Oh Radegund!” he cried, turning back, and holding out both hands towards her, “do I not know you would. And may Heaven one day reward you for your noble heart!”
A light so radiant, so ecstatic, that it was hard to recall the vanished gloom, broke over the artist’s face, as she stretched her white arms towards him, and with a low joyous cry, laid her hands in his.
“It is but right,” she murmured tremulously, “that we artists should stand by—love each other to the death.”
“If need be,” assented he. “But go home now, Mistress von Steinbach; this will be serving you an ill turn else. Why, do you know that since I have held these two hands of yours, they have changed from ice to fire?”
Then he released them, and feeling for her mantle, wrapped it close and warm about her shoulders, and turned to accompany her to the door of her house.
Clit, clat! across the silent Platz comes the unmistakable sound of Burgomaster von Steinbach’s stick. Tempted by the beauty of the night, and because, too, he was restless with certain vexing thoughts, Niklaus has been across to spend an hour with his old chum Christian; but surely it is an evil genius which has prompted him to make his way back by the Dom Platz, instead of by the narrow cross-lane he generally affects, since for the second time in the space of a few weeks it pictures to him his niece and Dasipodius in all-absorbing tête-à-tête.
The Burgomaster came to a halt as he caught sight of them, and watched their two tall figures cross the Platz, until they reached the door of Radegund’s house. She entered it alone, while Dasipodius returning, made for the way Niklaus had just traversed; and the Burgomaster, bringing his stick down with stern emphasis, passed on his own opposite road, and when he got home, he declined to eat a scrap of any of the tempting little delicacies Sabina had ready for him. Moodily seating himself by the hearth he began, as he invariably did when his world wagged contrary, to grind the ashes to powder under his heel.
“Well, after all,” he blurted out at last, “it’s a right good riddance!”
“What is, father?” enquired Sabina, looking up from her work.
“A fine thing to have seen thee tied for life to a blind man.”
Sabina did not speak; she tried to lay in order some bright silken threads, which just persisted in twisting themselves more distractingly about for her pains. “Upon my honour, thou’rt a clever child. Worlds cleverer than thy poor old father. How didst thou find it out then, hey?”
But it seemed to Sabina that if she ventured to speak her heart must burst, and she went on tangling up her threads in silence.
“Christian says,” continued the Burgomaster, “’twas all your fault. He blames you, Sabina. Why do you shiver so?”
“I think the night is bitter cold,” said the girl, coming to her father’s side; and cowering down over the flame she contrived to say: “Did you see Con— Master Dasipodius to-night, father?”
“Hem—h’m—ay,” coughed he uneasily. “Yes I saw him.”
“And he,” she burst forth. “Oh, father! in pity tell me what did he say?”
“Nay,” said Niklaus evasively. “I did not speak with him.”
She gazed up in some perplexity. “You’re not angry with him?” she said with wistful earnestness. “No, you must not be angered with—Master Dasipodius.”
“That’s as it may be,” growled Niklaus, annihilating another piece of charred wood.
“You should have spoken with him in a neighbourly way,” she went on demurely. “Promise me that you will next time, for my sake, father. Promise.”
“What a queer child you are to be sure!” said Niklaus, gazing with puzzled eyes into her upturned face. “Well yes, then, I promise. Who said I dreamed of doing otherwise? But I had no chance of any word with him to-night. He was high busy talking with your cousin Radegund, out in the moonlight. I saw them as I came home.”
Then the Burgomaster made an effort to get a glimpse of his daughter’s face, but her head lay on his knee, and her eyes were fixed on the fire. Some pictures it made must have sorely distressed her, for presently a tear trickled all down the Burgomaster’s red hose, glistening in the dancing glow like a pearl; and then there came a sympathetic moisture into his own eyes, and he perforce too stared sorrowfully into the blaze, and thought his thoughts; more confusing ones than hers, which were not complex. She had merely sacrificed her love for the sake of him she loved. Nothing more than that. She still breathed, and walked, and talked, and ate, and slept; that is, the eating and sleeping would come by and bye; it was simply that the sunlight had all faded out from her young life, and dim and meaningless the years to come rose up before her—the years which but so lately had seemed laden with the golden grain of love and of sweet companionship. But it had been all a mistake; the love would have brought Conrad no happiness, because as Radegund had told her, there could be no true companionship between them—no affinities—(how Sabina hated that word to her life’s end)—between a soul so nobly gifted and hers, which had but its affection, and its few little feminine graces to bestow in return. Ah! and what plain common sense was that which her cousin had spoken! One day this man would meet with—not of course a kindred spirit, but still—no; Sabina would not trust herself to think of that now. She dared not so cruelly rack her heart. Yet despite her struggling to see nothing, there brooded over her blank a dim shadow which made all yet darker and more sad, until at last the fell shadow took shape, and as she knew it to be the form of Radegund, she shivered and moaned wearily: “It is so cold!—so cold!” echoing all unconsciously her lover’s very words, when at last he had come to believe his little mistress false.
But the Burgomaster found himself in a most distracting dilemma. Here, in the first place, long association had accustomed him to love and esteem the mathematician, and when the first rumour of his blindness had reached his ears, he had been first incredulous, then indignant, and finally he had striven to relieve his bewilderment by demanding from Christian Dasipodius the real facts of the case. These he had just now heard from the old man’s lips. For once the great cession question had been forgotten, and the flagon of Rhenish left to sparkle unheeded on the table, while Christian had related to his old friend the story of Conrad’s blindness, how it had stolen upon him very slowly, but so surely, that he knew it was not to be averted; and how he had set himself to grapple with the enemy, and render it impotent to spoil his life; and as Niklaus had listened, all his anger had vanished, and in spite of himself, he could only admire and think how he had triumphed over what other men would have regarded as an insuperable obstacle, and in proportion as he pondered over these things, so much his first flush of indignation at the blind man’s seeking of his child in marriage toned down.
“I don’t doubt,” argued Niklaus with himself, “he thought that if he could manage a clock without his eyes, he might manage a woman. Well! and he is clever, and has a stout heart, but I don’t know. Still that is a question I can have no concern with now,” he added with a sigh. “The little one has settled it for herself in her own way; but I’d give the best stone in my jewel drawer to be a hundred leagues away from Strassburg to-morrow. Ay, ay, ay! it was a bad day’s work when this girl of mine stole his heart,” and Niklaus pensively patted his child’s head. “But there, never fret about it,” he went on aloud. “You know best, little one, what pleases you. Besides, there are more fish for you in the water, than ever came out of it. And as to Master Dasipodius, well as far as I can see, fair ladies won’t be lacking to console him for your cruelty.”
And thus it was the Burgomaster did his best to comfort his daughter.