CHAPTER XXI.
A CHILLY GREETING.
Meantime Dasipodius and his young companion had almost reached their destination.
It had been a very silent walk, for the mathematician was lost in a maze of thought; while Kaspar felt that he dared not give utterance to the distress surging in his own young heart.
Once or twice it did seem to him that he must break forth, and tell his master of all the love and pity that he was feeling for him; but then, lifting his own sympathetic eyes to those grand sightless ones, an awesome dread restrained him.
Kaspar Habrecht’s was one of those natures folks even commonly observant are apt to denounce as cold and undemonstrative. It is true that his eyes were quick to glisten up with tears at a tale of suffering, or his clear cheek to glow at the relation of some deed of heroism, or his countenance to grow bright with animation, when he could stand by, and hear some learned question of art or science discussed; but the boy’s sympathies had to be truly fathomed ere they would respond; and few would have guessed at the world of chivalrous romance underlying his calm even demeanour and outspoken common sense. Where many would have fallen down and adored loudly, Kaspar stood afar off, and offered heartfelt, silent worship.
Such sort of honour and love as this it was that he had for Dasipodius; but the mathematician himself did not guess at the place he had won in this boy’s heart, as much at first, perhaps, by those little sentences of approbation and encouragement which he would bestow, and which Kaspar treasured up and made sustenance of for renewed efforts. Often too, when Conrad had been consulting with Isaac about the Horologe work, he would lay his hand on the boy’s head and say, “And what think’st thou, my Kaspar?” And in this way the great mathematical professor had come to be idolized by the young artist.
There could, of course, be no Orestes and Pylades element in this spiritual link between the master and his pupil. Its conditions were too unequal for friendship, but call it love, call it—as Otto did—infatuation, or by any other name whatsoever, the affinity drawing Kaspar’s young spirit to the kindred spirit of Dasipodius, made him feel acutely for the grief which had befallen him.
“Had it been me now whom the great God had afflicted like this,” he kept mentally saying again and again, as the two plodded onward, “I might have more understood it. But for him—him to be blind! To think that he cannot see the merry sparkles all over yonder snow-heap, nor those splendid red apples on Mother Hedwig’s stall. Donnerwetter! they make one’s mouth water”—(Kaspar was after all but a boy) “nor what a witch the old frau across the street there has made of herself with her new vertugadins. Not an inch of room to get past her—waddling old goose!” and as he turned to look after the fashionable dame, a smile flickered on the boy’s rosy lips, to die out again, as he remembered his master could see none of these things.
“Ah! and now if there isn’t old Burgomaster Niklaus, with Mistress Sabina, coming along,” he went on dismayedly. “A plague on them both! just when my master’s hardly able to walk—much less to stand chattering in the cold all about nothing! People always talk such nonsense when they meet in the streets.”
And Kaspar began to consider the feasibility of dragging his companion aside, and letting the two pass unnoticed, but tall folks are not so easily lost in a crowd, and before Kaspar could effect his purpose, Niklaus, with Sabina on his arm, came to a halt in front of them.
“Give you good morning, Master Dasipodius,” said the Burgomaster. “And were you going to pass old friends in the street like that—eh? But isn’t it a strange time of day for you to be gadding about? A thousand thunders man! what have you been doing to yourself, with that great gaping slash across your forehead? And as pale too as the moon! If it were not you now, professor, but some hectoring jackanapes or other, one would ask if you’d been at fisticuffs, hey?”
And the Burgomaster stared up in Dasipodius’ face with wide open puzzled eyes, while Kaspar stood fidgeting by, turning hot and cold with vexation.
“An accident, Burgomaster,” answered Dasipodius, “a trifling blow I gave myself just now. It was very stupid.”
“Well,” nodded the Burgomaster acquiescingly, “didn’t you see where you were going?”
“No.”
“But, upon my word, it hardly looks so trifling as you call it,” more seriously continued Niklaus. “It isn’t a very long cut certainly, but it’s an ugly one to fall just there, and has damaged your brave looks for many a day to come anyhow. Hasn’t it, Sabina? Bless thee, little heart! how pale the cold has made thee! I say these trifling blows are not becoming, are they?”
But the shrinking, tearful-eyed girl only stands mutely clinging and plucking at her father’s arm, while Dasipodius, discovering who the Burgomaster has for his companion, flushes crimson, and with a smile quite lacking the old gladness which had made it Sabina’s own heart’s sunshine, turns and lifts his cap. Oh me! and had it come to this? Yes, it is all clear enough and quite quite true, then, what Radegund has told her! True that he has no real love for her. Of course by this time her letter has reached him. Oh! how glad she is she has sent it. No real love for her. What need of further witness? Is not this enough, to see him standing there, bowing to her gravely and distantly? He, Conrad, who three little days ago had called her his life and his soul’s joy, and had held her with enfolding arms clasped to his breast, covering her rosy lips—ay, rosy then—how ashen pale and quivering now!—with warm kisses—and worse than that! oh so far far worse!—whom she had kissed! Think of it. There, close where now the blood still slowly oozes and trickles from the cruel wound. Ay, and would she not give her own heart’s blood to do it again? To take that dear head for a minute—oh! pitying Mother Mary! only for one gracious minute, and lay it on her own breast, and staunch the ugly stream, and kiss and comfort away the smarting dreadful pain? But he wanted nothing of all that. Has not she seen him lift his cap, and bow distantly, gravely to her, as to any grand haughty lady, and not the shivering, heart-broken Sabina, clenching her fingers into her father’s ample sleeve, so that she may not cry aloud in her great agony. “Come away, Väterle, come away!” she gasps under her breath to Niklaus;—and dunder-headed old father,—as indeed what better had he confessed himself to be? he sees no more through her piteous perplexity, than he sees through the flint wall opposite, and is just the least trifle in the world tetchy at not being allowed to be neighbourly.
“Well, well, child—a moment then, a moment,” he said. “Ah—bless my soul! Never you have a daughter, friend—an only daughter. They’re as full of whimsies as eggs are full of meat; that let me tell you. See now, I’m not even to be permitted to exchange a passing word with you, because Master Jack Frost happens to be nipping my little maid’s roses away, and making her shiver and shake like a leaf in a hurricane. Well, it is cold—decidedly cold—so come.”
And with a cheery “God-speed and have a care of yourself,” the Burgomaster tucked his daughter’s trembling little hand tighter under his arm, and passed on.
“Cold! cold!—ay, bitter cold!” murmured the mathematician, recalling to himself how no word had passed Sabina’s lips, save that reiterated pleading to go away. To escape his presence, it was so obviously her meaning. “Come away! come away!” How chill and harsh and loveless those words had sounded in the ears, unassisted by any sense of interpreting sight. And the mortal chill fallen on his love, fell then on his ambition too, or at least on ambition’s nobler part. “Cold! cold!” he shivered. “Yes—death cold!”
Kaspar glanced up at him with wistful doglike solicitude in his brown eyes.
“The cold is paining your wound, master?” he asked.
“Ay,” said Dasipodius, deadly pale, and leaning heavily on the boy’s shoulder, “and my heart, too, I think, Kaspar.”
“Yes,” answered Kaspar. “Such a wound as yours is enough to make the whole body sick. Cold does cut into wounds so sharp.”
“Like a knife,” said Dasipodius faintly.
“But we are close now to Dr. Bruno’s; so courage, master,” said Kaspar anxiously.
“I doubt if he can do much for me.”
“Not do——”
“Nay. Never mind—any way I have a question to ask him; and do you meanwhile go back, there’s a good lad, and see about that letter you were reading out to me, and bring it to me here.”