CHAPTER XXXV.
“DOLCE FAR NIENTE?”
“And now, my Kaspar, tell me what you see?”
“I see—— but first, master, come a step further. Now stoop low—lower, for here at its mouth the cave is not five feet high. So carefully. Master, I see a stone chamber—so dark in some corners one can hardly tell its size, vaulting high above our heads, and all encrusted with forms as dainty as though some cunning sculptor had carved them. On every side of us the walls sparkle with such soft light as stars and diamonds give; while here and there, where the noonday sunlight smiles down on them from above, they gleam and glisten again.”
“A beautiful place, Kaspar.”
“Ay, master, beautiful indeed. But that is not half I see, for there are other crevices all shaded and fringed about with crimson leaves and green ferns; and through them too the sunlight shadows itself down upon the fretted walls, and turns the crystal stones to ruby and emerald; and so it glints and glances down to the very sand and moss beneath our feet, until we seem to be standing on a carpet of richest green all flecked with threads of gold.”
“A palace for a fairy queen!”
“Yes,” and Kaspar lowered his voice to an awesome whisper. “The Kelpie queen has always held her court here.”
“You have seen her—yes?” Dasipodius asked gravely.
“Nay,” smiled Kaspar, “but——”
“You know the place well?”
“By heart, master; and since I could handle a tool, I have many and many a time brought my wood blocks here, and striven to copy its rare fretted work.”
“And that sound of rushing water?”
“It is the torrent hard by, foaming down among the dark pine trees from the tall precipices which shut in our little lake here, making it so gloomy with their shadows that our people call it the Lake of the Black Waters. They declare that no sunlight ever shines upon it; and indeed I have often stood to watch him steal a cloud veil from yonder crag as he goes on his way.”
“And the lake you say is very deep?”
“Deep as it is dark. Listen,” and picking up a fragment of sparry rock, Kaspar flung it into the still waters, which rippling out into great circles, closed over the stone with that awesome gurgle which seems to tell of unfathomable depths.
“And out upon the lake, is there really no gleam of sunlight at this midday hour?”
“No; ’tis all blackness and shadow.”
“A dreary spot, Kaspar?”
“Nay, master, but it is grand and beautiful. Sometimes I have thought to myself that it is like—so like——”
“Like?—well? You hesitate.”
“So like your life, master. The sun seems all gone out of that—now.”
“Not at all,” returned the blind man quickly. “Say rather that my life is like this quiet cave of yours, which has in it indeed many a sombre corner, where no sunrays ever pierce; but what of the stalactites and crystals shining upon its walls? They are like the blessed consolation of those talents which the good God has given into my keeping, and which none—man nor woman, nor pain have been able to take from me. And then those warm gentle colours, Kaspar, which you say are as beautiful as precious gems, they are like my friends, my true brave friends, Isaac and you, and——”
“And Dr. Bruno,” said the lad with a brightening face.
“And Dr. Bruno, ay”; for the mist which had passingly dimmed the friendship of these two men was all dispelled now. “And with such as these, should I not be a traitor to say no sunshine is in my life? Its light is dim, Kaspar, but it is there, it is there; and where it fails to illumine, it warms and brings my heart such comfort, that sometimes I think it is better as it is.”
But Kaspar sighed and shook his head.
“Now what are you sighing about, foolish boy.”
“I am thinking of our Horologe, master.”
And for that the mathematician had no answer. If Kaspar thought of it twenty times a day, with Dasipodius it was an ever present memory; and he yearned towards the work torn from his hands, as towards a living love which had become to him so much the dearer, since he had told himself that the love of woman was not for him. In those two affections, both now equally lost to him, there was so much analogous, that he felt neither the one nor the other could be truly replaced. Possibly indeed, as he had just now hinted to his young companion, there would be found some spot less dunderheaded than his native city, where his talent would be welcomed and estimated at something of its true worth; but to him no labour could ever again be so dear as the task bequeathed to him by Chretei Herlin.
In that first great bitterness of its being wrested from him, his fevered dreams had pictured the old monk, now looking down on him in stern reproach, now sorely weeping to see the Horologe all marred and desecrated by ignorant unloving hands, until he would waken with a cry of agony. Still, after a wretched inferior fashion, there might, and doubtless would be to him a substitute for the Horologe; for there were beginning to be folks in the world who, so long as they met with genius or superior talent, cared not whether it had the reputation of being born of heaven or of darkness, provided it bore the unmistakable stamp of excellence, and met their particular needs; but though an endless life-span should be given him, Dasipodius knew that for Sabina there could never be any substitute. The mathematician was not one of those men who, however passionately they may have loved, however grievously lost, do, although it may be after long years, find consolation in the love of other women. Dasipodius had yielded to the overmastering influence so unwillingly, with a certain ungraciousness even. Thirty years had tided past of his life, and not the most fleeting desire to change his bachelorhood for matrimonial chains had ever troubled him; and even when at last his fate overtook him, then jealous for the dominion of his intellect, he had struggled and striven to quell it; all in vain however, and his heart’s sternest bulwarks, which had yielded to no brilliant strategy of far lovelier women, capitulated to this gentle girl, whom Strassburg called its Lily, because of her fresh young beauty and gentle grace.
Yet now, what had his wooing proved to be but a beautiful dream, an episode too fair and good to last? and he had wakened from it. Her own word had severed the bond between them. At first he strove hard to cheat himself into the belief that he was thankful, that it was better that all hope of domestic happiness should be blasted for the greater health and strength’s sake of his intellectual being: but he soon gave up all such pretence of self-consolation. He knew that his affection for the Burgomaster’s daughter had been so real, so deep, had seemed so worthy of them both, that it had given him fresh ardour and nobler motive for labouring on; and so in the end, he had just brought himself to bend before the fate which had made the world sombre indeed for him and chill with its dreary shadows, but which had preserved her for some brighter lot.
“Poor little Lily!” he would murmur again and again to himself, as he wandered on these spring evenings by the Lake of the Black Waters in the silent Swiss valley. “What a mad fool I was to think your bright bloom could have flourished among the blighting shadows of my blind life! How was it I could be so selfishly cruel as to have one thought of plucking you for myself?” And then with a strange remorse, his thoughts would fly back to that last meeting of theirs in the Cathedral, and he would torture his memory to recall every word which had passed between them; but the whole of the black day lived in his mind, only as some ugly but indistinct dream. “Yet I must have been mad if indeed I said harsh things to you! Oh, my little love! My little love!”
And indeed for days after that one, he had been frequently on the confines of unreason. The calm, calculating mathematical brain had well-nigh lost its balance then; and so much the more as, after the nature of him, he had struggled to maintain an outward composure, so much the greater had been the inward conflict.
And he bore about him now traces only too evident of the ordeal. His spare but well-knit frame had grown fragile-looking, and the stately shoulders and grand head bent lower than of old, while more than one grey thread gleamed amid the dark-brown hair. Then too the healthful olive of his cheek had faded into a pallor, while lines of care and of physical suffering had gathered about his mouth and brow, and the sightless eyes were a thought sunken, and encircled with dark rings, yet their mysterious beauty had not lessened; it had rather grown the greater from their expression of patient endurance, while the old dreamy thoughtfulness had deepened into an almost unearthly glory from the increased dilation of the pupils, which, although to Bruno Wolkenberg it spoke a more utterly hopeless tale, added to their lustrous beauty. They had none of the lack lustre, nor the terrible glare disfiguring nearly all blind eyes; only if Sabina could have seen them now, she would indeed have said they looked weary—very weary.
It had been well for Dasipodius that the fret of daily life had called him to action. Had he been able to choose, he would have shut himself up in his little turret sanctum, and finding his best solace in yet more unremitting application to study, would have stayed there until he had made of himself an easy prey to fever, or some other cruel stroke of sickness; but his essentially unselfish nature prompted him to turn from his own cares, and to think of the sadness darkening his father’s days, and he decided that it would be good for him that they should leave the city for a while, and seek that change of scene and associations which is said to be the best sort of healing for such things; and then it was that Isaac Habrecht had proffered the hospitality of his own home in the little hamlet close by Schaffhausen in the Black Forest. At first the mathematician, in whose mind was passing the struggle between his inclination and what he regarded as his duty, shook his head. “I cannot leave the city yet for awhile, Isaac. It might be thought——”
But Isaac made no scruple of telling his master that such considerations were unworthy of him. “Is it of any consequence what is thought? If ever these blockheads think at all, that is. It is right for you to come away, master. There’ll be mischief else,” he added, with an anxious look at the mathematician’s haggard face.
“Is my father so much changed then?” asked Dasipodius.
“Folks can’t be vexed out of their lives without showing it,” growled Isaac. “So say you’ll come, master. Our Schaffhausen is not a grand city like Strassburg, but it’s honester, I take it, than hereabouts, and the Emperor himself couldn’t bid you more welcome than my mother will; and if Master Christian fancies to come and stay awhile with us, we shall feel proud. Shan’t we, Kaspar?”
“Yes,” cried Kaspar gleefully.
“And Rappel—he must come too. Oh! he’ll be having rare poaching bouts with Tolpatsch.”
“That’s our sheep-dog,” parenthetically explained Kaspar.
“Ay. They’ll be fine cadgers together, I’ll warrant, and we’re plain folks down there to be sure, Master Dasipodius; but there’s fresh air with us anyhow, and that’s the stuff that’s wanting to bring back the life-blood to—Master Christian’s old cheeks. Why, the very scent of the young grass, and the fresh breeze, and—Kaspar, do you tell the master,” said Isaac, floundering a little, “about the birds, and waterfalls, and things.”
But Kaspar only went softly to Dasipodius, and taking his hand, said, “You’ll come, master?”
And Dasipodius smiled and said, “Yes”. And so it was that Christian and he and Rappel left Strassburg behind them, and came to be living at the Habrechts’ cottage, within a mile of Schaffhausen.