CHAPTER XXXVI.
“UNDER THE SHADE OF MELANCHOLY BOUGHS.”
In all the cantons of the League it would have been hard to find a kinder-hearted, more hospitable house-mother than Gridel Habrecht, the mother of Isaac and Kaspar. Eldest and youngest of their generation, there was between them a tribe of married brothers and sisters settled in Schaffhausen and its neighbourhood; and an industrious and thriving lot they were, all more or less expert in the clock and watch making craft, which has for centuries distinguished the villages of the Black Forest. Kaspar Habrecht, however, from earliest childhood had shown a talent for the wood-carving, which is another branch of its industry, and no less marked a feature of the prosperous locality where it is said beggars are unknown. The sterling and scientific horological skill of Isaac Habrecht had earned for him a high reputation, which had reached Strassburg; and when, under the auspices of Chretei Herlin, the great mechanical clock had been begun, more now than two years ago, Isaac, at the special desire of the old mathematician, accepted the post in his studio, and at the same time established himself as a clockmaker and brass-work instrument maker at the sign of the Wheel in one of the city’s chief thoroughfares. Withholding however the lad’s identity, he had submitted some specimens of his young brother’s handicraft to Herlin and Radegund von Steinbach, and other competent judges; and one and all of them had pronounced the work surpassing in beauty of design, and delicacy of touch, anything of the sort they had ever seen; and Chretei at once desired to know whether the artist’s services could be had for the new Horologe case? It was a proud moment for Isaac, as then for the first time he explained that this artist was his brother Kaspar.
“And he is but a youth, but he’ll do his best to give you and the city satisfaction, Father; I’ll answer for that.”
And so Kaspar too had taken his place in the Dial studio. His mother had found it a hard task to part with this child of her old age; but she was made of stoical stuff, and when she saw the flush of joy which lit Kaspar’s face at the unexpected distinction offered him, she did not refuse to let him go, but bidding him to be true to himself and his employers, sent him to the great city, and saved her tears till he was gone; and when they had had their way, she dried her still handsome eyes, and made herself content with the reflection that Isaac was with him, and where Isaac was no harm could come to anybody, and whatever Isaac did was right. That, however, made it none the less a joy to her, when she found that he and Kaspar were coming home for a while; and when she was further desired to prepare for the guests they should bring with them, she set to work and brought out her finest linen, and all the best her house afforded, and excellent the best was; and her man Yörgli, whose normal round of duties was confined to stable and pasture work, was bidden to come indoors and help Mariannle to move about the cumbrous handsome old chairs and tables and presses in the best bed-chamber; and Yörgli, who had an avowed admiration for Mariannle, was nothing loth; neither perhaps had Mariannle any objection, since for all she laughed and danced and flirted whenever it suited her humour, she liked Yörgli, she said, well enough; quite enough, she would own if driven very close, to marry him when a sufficient number of florins had been saved up to buy a certain charming little cottage not far off, which Yörgli had his eye upon.
In those days when pens and newspapers had not as yet come to be things of course, Frau Habrecht could have but a very scanty conception of the events which had so recently created such a stir in Strassburg, until she had her son’s vivâ voce relation of it. Isaac had indeed warned her that Dasipodius was blind; rumour moreover had already brought so much within her ken, and when she found that he was actually to be her guest, she was a little put about at the threatened responsibility which she imagined the charge of a blind person would entail upon her, and her practical mind was much exercised to conceive what Conrad Dasipodius would be finding to do with himself all day in that little village, whose busy silence was only broken by the tapping of tiny hammers and the grating of files.
The briefest acquaintance however with the blind man dispelled all her perplexities. At first, indeed, she found it difficult to persuade herself that he was blind. It was not merely that his eyes were so clear and well open, but he was so entirely able to do things for himself—and for other people, as she was not slow to remark; and when, for example, at supper-time on the evening of their arrival, Dasipodius reached a chair and placed it for her at the table, her heart was won for ever.
“He did,” she said afterwards, “what you two forgot to do with both your fine eyes, and for all you saw to the poor little old mother, she might have set her own chair. He didn’t find it too much trouble to pay an old woman attentions, such as you two, I suppose, keep all for the young ones. And,” went on she, not a little delighted at being able to reassume the old tyranny over her two favourite sons, “I’ve not grown into an imbecile since you have been away, I can tell you, and I’ve more than an idea that you’ve been playing me some trick, and that he’s not blind at all; and if you have——”
“God forbid, mother!” said Isaac gravely. “I wish we had been; but the master’s stone blind.”
And the good woman allowed herself to be convinced; but she was greatly tempted to begin to question the use of eyes at all, if one could make one’s self so pleasant and so courtly without them. And so it was that Dasipodius won himself the first place in his hostess’s esteem, and henceforth her solicitude and anxiety for his personal comfort was as unceasing as it was unobtrusive, and never a suspicion of fuss in it; for with all his gentle ways, she stood in a certain sort of awe of him.
“Poor gentleman!” she said one day to Isaac. “At all events it doesn’t need you or anybody to tell me that he and trouble are close acquaintance; but it’s a noble face, Isaac, a noble face,” and then it seemed to her that in Dasipodius she had found another son.
Neither did Christian lack her kind hospitable care; and that time he spent in the Black Forest was very pleasant to him. Many a long year had passed since last he had basked in the sunshine of a country spring-tide; and he would wander away on those bright mornings, finding a chastened pleasure in giving rein to memory, till it reached that spring-time of his early manhood when he made the journey into the Vosges Mountains and found his first last love. If now and then time hung a little heavy for him, he kept that religiously to himself, for he knew the sacrifice which had been made to afford him the benefit of this change, which of course, taking all in all, he was enjoying well enough; but Christian sorely missed Burgomaster von Steinbach looking in, and would have given all the grey hairs off his head for a little squabble about the Cession. A dozen times a day the old man would be silently considering to himself what was going on in Strassburg; and when after they had been there about a fortnight, Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg guilefully contrived to give his patients the slip, and handing them over to the tender mercies of a deputy, made his appearance along with Balder at the cottage, Christian plied him with questions about things in general, among which Otto von Steinbach was by no means forgotten.
“And how does he get on with his work?” rather drily asked Christian.
But Bruno, who had fully and satisfactorily answered all his other enquiries, frowning impatiently, ruffling up his hair with his fingers, and muttering something not too complimentary about Otto, strode silently out into the air.
“Yes, I know,” nodded Christian, looking after him, “they made a mistake when they let my boy go; there’s no doubt of that.”
When, however, the friends found themselves alone, Dasipodius asked Bruno how Radegund’s pictures round the Horologe cornice were getting on.
“They are perfection,” said Bruno; “at least things outside will all be as they ought.”
“That will rejoice the Bishop’s heart,” replied the mathematician. “Has he returned?”
“No, but Radegund is anxiously looking for his coming.”
“But her pictures are not finished yet?” said Dasipodius.
“It is not the pictures she’s thinking of, I take it,” answered Wolkenberg.
“What then?”
“Ah! who can ever guess what she has in her head? ‘I have much to speak with him about,’ that is all she condescends to inform me. She might tell you more, Conrad,” jerked out the jealous Bruno, clutching up a handful of grass, and then scattering it to the four winds.
“What is vexing her?”
“Nay, she seems to live in a world of vexation. She never smiles now, Conrad, and it used to be like a golden sunset when Radegund smiled.”
“Poor girl! what a burden she makes life to herself; and to you—you patient old bear.”
“I am not patient,” groaned Bruno, his blue eyes growing at once moist and fiery. “Oh, Conrad, it is too hard; I think it will kill me if it goes on much longer.”
“I would to heaven I could make you both happy,” said Dasipodius musingly.
“Honestly, do you wish that?” demanded Wolkenberg, in whom the old suspicion was so hard to die.
“Honestly?” echoed Dasipodius, lifting his brows surprisedly; “why, from my heart yes. And—if—nay, if I speak all I think, I will say I wish your love might find another—that is a gratefuller, kinder——”
“What is that?” cried the surgeon, starting from his place beside Dasipodius, and his handsome face kindling and bristling like any lion’s. “Do you take me for a weathercock or a windmill?”
“Not a bit of it. Sit down again now, Bruno. I was only going to say that if indeed Radegund does not return your affection, then certainly she can have no heart, and you are worlds too good for a heartless——”
“My God! Conrad,” said Bruno, and his voice trembled with suppressed agitation and anger, “though it is you who say that, I could fell you to the ground for it.”
“Then I had best say no more,” answered Dasipodius. “We will not quarrel over this—over a woman. Is she—is there one worth it? Tell me, Bruno, have you seen—Sabina, Mistress Sabina von Steinbach?”
And Dasipodius’ cheek crimsoned and paled again before the surgeon answered curtly, “Yes”.
“And—she was well?”
“Oh, as far as I know; but she hardly spoke a word to me; and, I’ll warrant you, I did not to her.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? I can’t, Conrad,—there. It’s of no use. When I look at her pretty dove-like face, and think what she can be, how false and shallow-hearted—and to you, Conrad—to you.”
“Have done, Bruno Wolkenberg!” cried Dasipodius, clutching fiercely at a tree branch within reach, and bringing himself to his feet. “One word more about Sabina von Steinbach and we are enemies for ever.”
“Mistress von Steinbach,” said Bruno, in chilly even tones, and with a contemptuous shrug of his broad shoulders, “Mistress von Steinbach shall make no quarrel between us.”
“Good. There is no need to discuss her at all. She has passed out of my life. If I could hear,” went on Dasipodius after a short pause, “that another could atone to her for all the vexation my love has caused her—that some man worthy of her——”
“Oh,” bitterly interrupted Bruno. “I am glad to think you have come to regard it in that light. Mistress Sabina never did run short of admirers; and now you are out of the winning, she may choose where she pleases, and——”
“Well?” said Dasipodius, with quick short breath. “Why do you waste words? Speak. Who is it?”
“I did not say,” stammered the inconsequential Bruno, “that it was anybody—nobody—Otto von Steinbach that is——”
“Otto von Steinbach!” gasped Dasipodius.
“He’ll do as well as another I suppose,” muttered Bruno.
“No! no! no! It cannot be! You are wrong—you——”
“May be so; but he—you know he used to be very sweet at Hackernagel’s house; now he hardly ever goes there, and spends all his evenings at the Burgomaster’s.”
“And—she?” hoarsely demanded Dasipodius.
“Ah! She—sits and spins.”
Yes, yes, of course—the old old story all through again! Just as she had sat and spun—could not the blind man see it all in his memory so plainly? Those days that were gone! Every ripple in her golden hair gleaming wherever the sunlight touched it like purest gold, every shy soft glance of her eyes, the eloquent ebb and flow of rosy colour to her soft rounded cheek. All this, and much more, passed in mocking array before him; and so, still then in that old dining-hall, that drama—what? Nay, that farce of woman’s love was playing, only with just a change of lovers; for the dainty heroine, the same woman mimed it to as great a perfection as ever no doubt. Had her new coadjutor been worthier, perhaps Dasipodius could have borne to think of it differently, but—well, the last straw had been added to the burden now!—Otto von Steinbach! Ah, great heaven! could it be, the mathematician asked himself, that he had committed some unremembered crime, for which it was doomed that this scatterbrain, unstable boy, should be the avenger, and his supplanter in all that made life worth living?
Oh, woman! woman! to the end it will be like this. For your sake Troy may burn, for you noble hearts may crack; at your feet men will chain and enslave their best ambitions, and still, calm and silent, you sit and spin, and seem to take no heed!
But Sabina’s old love only said: “If a storm came by, Otto would be no shelter for the Lily, Bruno.”
“They are well enough matched,” said Bruno, hating himself that he spoke so harshly.
“It may be so,” said Dasipodius slowly and wistfully; and in unbroken silence the two sat on, listening to the low soughing of the spring breeze among the oak boughs, and the gentle creaking of the pine branches, and the waterfall’s distant roar, and the buzzing of the insects about them, thinking the while what a fallacy it was, that notion about nature being the counterpart of man’s life. Why, here in the one case, was not all peace and brightness and content? and as the days should lengthen out, this early promise would all ripen into golden summer, and still richer autumn’s harvesting, and the happiness of all living creatures would be perfected. Only for those two, the buds of hope had been nipped by cruel frosts, and ere their manhood’s summer was reached, the wintry clouds of disappointment were heavy upon them.
So noonday waned, and never a syllable more the two interchanged, until Kaspar came in search of them. “That is you, Kaspar?” said Dasipodius, his ear first detecting the boy’s light step over the fallen stones of the mountain side. “Come here; I was thinking of you this moment, and then—I hear your footstep. That is what they say of the angels.”
“I am but a poor sort of angel,” laughingly said the boy, as he flung himself full length upon the grass at the mathematician’s feet.
“Prove yourself at least a good spirit then. For we are sorely wanting one to take us out of ourselves for a bit. Come now, have I not over and over again heard you say there is a legend attached to this lake of yours?”
“Oh, yes,” cried Bruno, “there is, I know——”
“Hold your peace,” smiled Dasipodius, lifting his finger. “Of course you know, but you have been in a brown study this hour and more past, and your version might not be so cheerful as Kaspar’s. So come now, lad, begin. Once upon a time—”
“Yes,” said Kaspar. “Once upon a time there was a brave handsome knight dwelt in yonder castle, and he was beloved by two fair ladies——”
“He loved two fair ladies, you mean,” corrected the mathematician.
“He loved one of them, yes,” gravely assented Kaspar, “and——”
“But they were not both fair,” criticised Bruno. “One was dark; that is the way at least that I’ve heard the story, with hair and eyes like the raven’s wing.”
“I should have said, of course,” said the patient Kaspar, “two beautiful ladies; one a Count Palatine’s daughter, the Lady Aldegonda, and the other a poor esquire’s child, Veronica, fair-haired and blue-eyed, and it was her the knight loved. But when Aldegonda found that out, she went to the poor maiden, and laughing her love to scorn, bade her find lowlier wooers, that falcons mated with merlins, not with tercel-hawks; and that it was at her feet the knight Hugo would fain worship. And when the poor child heard this, her heart felt near to breaking and——”
“Now, Kaspar,” interrupted the mathematician, “surely your story is simple nonsense as it stands with your telling. I suppose the knight had told her that he loved her; that would have sufficed.”
“Yes, he had told her,” answered Kaspar, “but she was a woman, very young it is true, not very wise perhaps, but old enough to know men’s hearts can be fickle; wise enough to see how gloriously beautiful the Lady Aldegonda was, and she misdoubted the power of her own pale beauty in such rivalry. Don’t you understand, master?”
“Go on,” shrugged the mathematician.
“And so, as I was telling you, the Lady Aldegonda’s words almost broke Veronica’s heart, and there seemed nothing left for her but to die. And day after day, for the knight was absent just then from his castle, she would come and sit just hereabouts where we are now, on the lake’s brink, and gaze into the deep deep, cold cold water, and then there would steal terrible thoughts into her weary desolate soul.
“One day while she was sitting so, there seemed to come a low murmur from the Kelpie’s cave here. Nearer and nearer it came; but she sighed to herself, ‘It is but the wind whispering among the ferns,’ and still nearer and nearer came these sounds. ‘It is only the wavelets,’ she sadly said, ‘stirring the long rushes.’ And truly they were; and still the murmuring came closer, closer, until she knew it to be too sweet for the whispering of the wind or the rippling of the water, too sweet for aught save Hugo’s voice. ‘My life, I love you,’ it said. ‘Nay,’ sobbed she, but yielding all the while to the strong arms folding her so fond and close, ‘but the Lady Aldegonda says——’ ‘What can the Lady Aldegonda know,’ he rejoined, with a strange stern look, which fled again as his face bent over hers, ‘of the love I bear for you, sweetheart? Come, Father Sigurd waits at the holy altar to make us one. Wilt come, dear love?’ And so from the dark weeds the maiden rose up, her white dress heavy with the waters that had near been her grave, and the little forget-me-not flowers she had gathered, for all her bride’s bravery, in her bosom, and ere the Ave Maria chimed again, she stood in the castle halls yonder, Hugo’s dear true wife, and many a long and happy year they lived. That’s all, master; it isn’t so much of a tale as some are.”
“And what there is of it you’ve half left out,” grumbled Bruno. “The Lady Aldegonda——”
“Ah,” smiled Dasipodius. “She found a suitor more sensible to her charms, depend on it.”
“No such thing,” answered Bruno. “She killed herself for love of Hugo. Eh, Kaspar, is it not so?”
“They found her dead next dawn at the foot of the crag yonder,” said Kaspar.
“A cruel end,” said the mathematician.
“She deserved no better,” grumbled Bruno.
“You are unkind, Kaspar,” smiled Dasipodius. “Did I not say I expected something cheerful of you?”
“But,” pleaded the boy earnestly, “how could I twist the ending false, and make it happy when it wasn’t?”
“Why, it is but a legend!”
“The more reason to make it seem like life.”
“Well, well—if I had tears for bygones, I think I could spare a few for the Lady Aldegonda’s love. It is—come, Bruno, leave sighing, and cudgel your invention to help my square inch brain find a simile. What is misplaced love like?”
“I cannot say,” said Bruno, “unless it be like the precious pearls that proud Queen of Egypt wasted in a cup of vinegar.”
“It will do, though it has seen some service; but sometimes it has seemed to me that there may be some bright hidden meridian towards which such seemingly aimless lines all converge. There, confess now, if my science is not a match for your romance.”