CHAPTER XLII.
OTTO FINDS CONSOLATION.
Excepting that the hold of his sister’s hand on his own never relaxed until he found himself safe at home, Otto knew little how he came out of that terrible ordeal, and found himself sobbing bitter tears on Radegund’s shoulder, just as he had done many a time when he was a little boy, and contemporary juvenile favour and prejudice had chanced to deal crossly with him. Now, as then, she hushed him closely to her, and parting the tear-draggled hair from his heated face, kissed it more than once, saying: “That is my own Otto, my brave Otto,” just as she would have coaxed him long ago.
In the world’s eyes, this victory he had gained might be a sorry one enough, barely if at all distinguishable from cruellest defeat; but Radegund understood its worth, and envied him—envied the courage which had led him to confess the truth. It was altogether beside the question that she had urged and argued with, and threatened him into such a course; now she only remembered results, and that he had been true to his word; and as she sat there in the shadows, feeling the beats of Otto’s sore disappointed heart against her own, she yearned for that to have been as guileless. Though the world might taunt and sneer at the dethroned horologist, it was none the less true, as she had declared, that his hour of humiliation had been the noblest his life had known. If her heart-strings had nearly cracked with wounded pride, that brother of hers should have been brought to a confession of the sort—and she could have sobbed aloud for shame and regret far deeper seated than Otto’s own,—still he had his clear conscience. A clear conscience. Ah heaven! what a thing of joy that must be! Too blessed to dare even to think of; and she turned and busied herself in soothing down his grief, until the convulsive sobbings grew fewer and farther between, and he began to be able to collect himself. The first thoroughly lucid thought dawning on him was, that it was gone! That awful thing; gone for evermore! Then came the reaction; and he sat up and petulantly thrust Radegund from him. “Get away!” he said; “you’ve ruined me. I can never never show my face out of doors again after this. You’ve ruined me,” and the tears broke forth afresh.
“Poor child, no,” she said; “I have saved you—from yourself.”
Then she flung her arms about his neck, and this time he did not repel her, but sat staring through his blurred eyes, and letting memory creep back as it listed.
“I shan’t have to turn out to that hateful hole to-morrow morning, shall I?” he said presently. “Isn’t it a den, Radegund? The idea of any fellow ever being expected to—a fellow with eyes, that is, of course. When you’re blind, why it’s all the same wherever you are; and if it’s only for that, they’d better get Dasipodius back—if they can. I say, Radegund, did he call me a fool?”
“Conrad Dasipodius?”
“Dasipodius, no,” disgustfully returned Otto. “He never did; he knew better. He wasn’t a bad sort. I wish he’d come back. Do you, Radegund? I wonder whether he will—eh? It’s my belief he’d just go anywhere after that wretched Horologe. Queer, isn’t it? Why, they might beg me back till they choked, and I wouldn’t. I say, Radegund, do you know if I’d have had the faintest notion of all that was to have come of that letter—you know what I mean—I’d have cut my fingers off before I’d have touched it with a pair of tongs. I believe the devil himself was in that letter. Radegund, I say, what have you done with it?”
“What letter?” she said with a slight start.
“Why—you know; that letter I brought you back again, that day when—look here, Radegund, I want it—to give it him, I mean. I fancy it would set things straighter if he had it. You’ve kept it, haven’t you?”
No reply.
“Oh I say, but you have,” he went on a little anxiously, “and you might give it up; it can’t be of any earthly use to you. Radegund——”
“Do you suppose I hoard up little bits of paper?” she asked contemptuously.
“No, but it was something more than a little bit of paper,” he urged.
“I never could imagine what was your fancy in bringing it back,” she said.
“Oh well, I thought—you and Dasipodius—I didn’t choose for those fellows to go picking it up and—there—I forget all about it now,” said Otto, who in view of that transfer of his affections which he had made, did not care to recall the old vague intents of making mischief between Dasipodius and Sabina, which had been the chief motor power of that morning’s work. He had indeed long since been heartily ashamed of it all. “I wish the thing had never been written. It was all Sabina’s fault. And if she’d have married me when I asked her. I shouldn’t have been exposed to all this—annoyance. It is annoying, isn’t it? But I don’t care a bit; I’m very glad,” and the last lingering sob quivered through Otto’s frame, “very glad indeed. I’ve got as good as she is any day, and better, haven’t I, Radegund? Sabina’s a stupid little highty-tighty sort of a thing after all, isn’t she? Now Gretchen’s a lump of sense, every inch of her. She worships the ground I tread on; and she’s got such perceptive powers as I never—Radegund!” and he gazed up at her face, his eyes rounding with some sudden apprehensive thought.
“Well, child.”
“Don’t call me child.”
“Well, Otto dear,” she amended with a faint smile, as she stroked his glossy black curls, “what is it?”
“You don’t think she’ll throw me over because—because——” and he coloured painfully.
“Not if she’s worth a straw.”
“Oh, she is; I know she thinks no end of me.”
“Then she’ll be true to you,” comforted Radegund. “When we love, we don’t put it on and off like a glove.”
“No,” nodded Otto, cheering up entirely; “perhaps not. And you didn’t keep that letter then, Radegund?”
“What nonsense to suppose I should.”
“Well, it’s a pity, though perhaps it would have been too late now to—I say, Radegund, when on earth will supper be ready?”
“Directly, dear.”
“I’m fainting with hunger. I haven’t eaten a morsel since dinner. They kept me in that den of an ante-room for two mortal hours; and I couldn’t get out, say what I could. That fellow with the drawn sword at the door shook his head like a bell-clapper when I asked him, and said his orders were strict. Radegund, just you go into the kitchen, there’s a dear girl, and see they put calves’ brains enough in that salad; they didn’t last time, and it’s always half the battle—the brains.”
Meanwhile, the Burgomaster, hardly knowing whether to be more glad or sorry at the settlement to which things had been brought, walked slowly home. Personally he would have relished Hackernagel’s judicial tortures as thoroughly as a Madrileño enjoys a bull fight; but on the other hand he knew well enough the law’s delays, and in the event of the Syndic being required publicly to answer for his distortions of justice, it would have delayed the recall of Dasipodius, and this taken into account, he was content to accept the decision just arrived at, and went home in such a cheerful frame of mind, that for the life of him he could not refrain from telling Sabina, “whether she liked it or not,” as he said to himself, that there was a chance of their seeing Master Dasipodius back again.
“If he’ll come, that is. But it’s not every man kicked out of office who’ll consent to be put in again.”
“He’ll come, father,” said the girl. “He loved the Horologe so dearly. Oh, I know he will,” and her pale cheek glowed.
“Yes,” returned the Burgomaster. “I think he will, my girl. He’s a man, once he puts his heart into a thing, doesn’t take it out again in a hurry.”
“No, no. Not when he really cares for it.”
Niklaus glanced furtively at his daughter. Well, well, it was good to see her cheeks had not lost their power of getting rosy, as sometimes it seemed; and he hazarded a further remark: “And old friends are best anyhow?”
“Oh yes.”
“And still you’re Conrad Dasipodius’ friend, yes?”
“Oh yes indeed.”
And the Burgomaster was satisfied.