CHAPTER XXII.
UNJUST SUSPICIONS.
Trudel being out marketing when the two reached Bruno’s house, Dasipodius fortunately escaped any of the good creature’s jeremiads over his mishap, and it was the doctor himself who opened the door.
“Can you mend a broken head, Bruno?” the mathematician asked, as he followed his friend into the laboratory. “If so, here’s a subject for you.”
“Ay,” said Bruno. “Any number of broken heads. It’s only the broken hearts our skill won’t reach to.”
A prolonged weary sigh was all the answer to Bruno’s little sally, and the surgeon, who had already begun to unroll a piece of lint, turned to look at Dasipodius, where he had sunk down on the truckle-bed, leaning forward with both hands clasped upon his stick. His eyelids drooped heavily on the ashen grey cheeks, and it seemed to Bruno that his face had suddenly aged by ten years with those weary hopeless lines which had gathered about the handsome resolute mouth.
Pouring some strong cordial into a cup, he held it to the mathematician’s pale lips. “Drink this, Conrad,” he said; “it will give you new life.”
Dasipodius obeyed mechanically, and reviving a little, he said, “To think that it should bring a man to this. Eh, Bruno! We are but poor creatures after all—the strongest among us. I should have thought I could have borne it better.”
“It’s an uncommonly ugly blow,” said Bruno, examining the wound. “How the devil did it happen?”
“Oh! this wound? Ah! yes—well, I stumbled, poor blind wretch that I am, against a chair.”
The surgeon made no reply, but went on scraping vigorously at his piece of lint, and then proceeded to dress the wound, looking all the while very grave and thoughtful. “You are so silent, doctor. Is your considering cap on this morning?” asked Dasipodius, with a faint smile.
“Yes,” said Bruno, and he said no more.
“A heller for your thoughts, my Solon.”
“I was thinking,” answered Bruno slowly, “that your blindness has served you sorry trick.”
“Not a doubt of that.”
“Had it gone a couple of hair-breadths nearer the temple, it must have killed you, Conrad.”
“Yes?”
“Why yes, yes,” answered Bruno, provoked by his patient’s coolness. “And might not another such accident befall you at any moment? And where is our Professor Dasipodius then?”
“At peace,” said the other solemnly.
“Nonsense, man. Drink some more of this, and attend to me. So. I say, where would be Strassburg’s pride, where would be Sabina’s——”
“Oh hush! hush!” cried Dasipodius. “Do not speak of her—not now—presently, presently—not yet.”
“Well, well,” said Bruno, out of his knowledge that invalids must be humoured. “What I want to say is simply, why should you strive so carefully to conceal your loss of sight?”
“Why,” asked Dasipodius, lifting his head with sudden energy from the cushion Bruno had placed beneath it,—“why do you ask me such a question as that? I could not have believed you would have wasted breath on it. Don’t you see that they would perhaps deprive me of the Horologe commission?”
“Nonsense—stuff!” said Bruno, laughing outright. “Do you think we don’t know a clever man when we’ve got him better than that? Upon my honour, Conrad, you don’t give Strassburg credit for much.”
“No,” said Dasipodius, “not much.”
“Well,” conceded Bruno, “of course it’s undeniable that the world’s fuller of blockheads than of wise ones, and you may be right, only——”
“Time will show,” interrupted the mathematician, “and quickly too; for in twenty-four hours all Strassburg will know that I am blind.”
“What!” said Wolkenberg, turning with amazed eyes on Dasipodius. “How? In Heaven’s name, how?”
“By the usual channel for all secrets, a woman’s tongue.”
“Holy Virgin!” ejaculated the surgeon, pale now as his friend. “Not Radegund? No! she has not played me so false as that?”
“Oh, yes. She did that long ago. But never fret yourself on that score, Bruno. I have pardoned your share in the matter long since. I did not mean to have spoken of—of that mistaken kindness of yours! But it was weak of you, Bruno. Forgive me, my Bear, you know I love you far better than I love your Radegund; and I could easier have borne the truth from your own lips.”
“Oh, Conrad,” moaned Bruno. “But I did not betray you.”
“I thought you did.”
“No. As heaven will judge us all, I did not.”
“I believe you, Bruno, and I am glad—very glad.”
“Listen,” said Bruno, “and I will explain—”
“No, no. I’ll have no explainings, your word is as good as a thousand of them; and besides that is all past and gone. Be content, Bruno, your Radegund has no share in the misery this time. It comes from nearer home, so near—oh my God, Bruno!” and Dasipodius clutched wildly at the surgeon’s arm. “It is Sabina—Sabina von Steinbach who has done this.”
“Curse all women and their tongues,” growled Bruno through his set white teeth, and his yellow hair bristling. “But there is some devilry at the bottom of this. Tell me more about it, Conrad.”
“There is so little to tell,” answered Dasipodius; and then in a few words he related what had taken place that morning in the studio.
“And the letter,” asked Bruno, when he had done, “was in Mistress Sabina’s own handwriting, you say?”
“How could I tell?” demanded Dasipodius reproachfully. “I have an impression she cannot write; but it is of little enough consequence whether she wrote it herself, or found a scribe; it comes to just the same thing every way.”
But Dr. Wolkenberg only rumpled up his hair still higher with his fingers, and stared thoughtfully into the fire. “You have the letter of course?” he said at last.
“No. In the confusion, I suppose, it fell on the floor. Kaspar has gone back for it now. But that will not mend the matter. The cruel words will still be there.”
“And you are sure you understood them rightly?”
“I am not apt to misapprehend,” said the learned professor of mathematics.
“Ah! I mean, you know, you are sure you heard the letter to the end?”
“I am sure of nothing. How can I be?” demanded Dasipodius in tones strangely unlike his own. “How you do worry! Must I say again that what I heard was enough. A million others could not deaden their sting. Oh Bruno! Bruno! what hard hearts these women have! I could have sworn by the Holy Rood that the child loved me.”
“So could I,” murmured the surgeon. “There—let us speak no more of her, and for the rest, who can tell? Bruno, what a strange power guides our destiny. Why, think only, it is this heart’s love of mine that I thought so priceless, and would not have bartered for the Horologe itself, no, nor a dozen Horologes—I say it is this which has ruined all my brain’s labour, and what is left—what is left?”
And then, just as on that day when his old friend Chretei was laid to his rest, the mathematician, worn out with mental and bodily pain, laid down his head, and sobbed bitterly; but this time his pillow was no chill snow clod, but his friend’s warm sympathising breast, and for a while Bruno, knowing that all his skill could devise no such real relief, let the sobs have their way, and his own blue eyes grew moist for his friend’s trouble, but as he sat there beside him, he was puzzled sorely. “Ay, ay,” he kept saying over and over again to himself, “I could have sworn she loved him.”
Soon the mathematician’s almost dauntless spirit reasserted itself, and it seemed to him a blessed thing indeed then to be able to call such a man as this Bruno Wolkenberg, friend. Can one ever be really alone in the world with one true friend? If life was to have no more sunshine for him, at least there would be the soft starlight, and he rose up and grasped the surgeon’s hand in his. “So now,” he said, “I have been miserably selfish to keep you from your crucibles all this while.”
But Bruno detained him by the hand, and would not let him go.
“Loose my hand, Bruno,” he said, with a saddening little effort to smile. “If we stand mumchance here all night, you will be able to throw no light upon this question.”
“Do you recollect,” said Bruno, desperately rushing at his subject, “do you recollect the last time you were here?”
“Surely I do,” said Dasipodius; “just five days ago it was.”
“You recollect that as I let you out, some one else came in. Yes?”
“Yes,” quickly answered the mathematician.
“Do you know who it was?”
“I had a foolish idea, and as I went home I laughed at myself for my blind fancies—shall I tell you, Bruno—can your science explain, I wonder, why I should have thought——”
“You thought right. It was Sabina von Steinbach.”
“And what did she do, poor little one, out in the cold and darkness? Tell me, Bruno, what brought her to you at such an hour? A stolen visit——”
“To ask me if you were blind.”
“A practical-minded maiden, truly,” scornfully laughed Dasipodius. “Having picked up her suspicions, heaven knows where, she came to the fountainhead, and you said yes?”
“I did.”
“God forgive you, Bruno, you served me an ill turn,” and the gloom gathered heavily on the mathematician’s brow.
“I did it for your sake—for the best——”
“Naturally. You always do,” said Dasipodius bitterly, “as you told that other woman.”
“You are unjust,” answered Wolkenberg. “If you had seen her——”
“If I had seen her! If I had seen her! Oh great heaven, how have I been betrayed by the two I loved best in all the world!”
“I say you are unjust——”
“And you are weak as water. Farewell, Bruno Wolkenberg. When Kaspar returns with that letter, be so good as to send him after me to my house.”
And turning on his heel, the blind man strode out into the street alone, more utterly alone than ever he had felt in his life. For him love was dead since Sabina was false; and friendship a mockery, now Bruno had proved himself unworthy. Only the Horologe was left. Henceforth that would be to him friend and mistress and all. He had always loved it as if it were a human thing, as men do love their brain children, and now—now that he had, as he told himself, lost all else, it would be to him a thousand times more dear. It owned now his undivided love. He was like Faust before the arch-fiend came to tempt him away from his crucibles with fair dreams, and ruin him with sweet longings worse than vain. It was with him now at last, as Heaven from the first had meant it to be, and henceforth he would be able to give himself life and soul, and heart and body to his work, just as the priests of old Greece belonged to their temples. And he had thought to subdue destiny. Fritter his God-given life away on poor, fickle, foolish, perishable human affection! Had presumed to imagine that his heritage of intellect and genius might be made to go hand in hand with it. But he saw his error now. He had come to feel how blind—how doubly blind, more densely blind mentally than ever he could be physically—he had been. Now he could see how incomparably better than all the love—love forsooth!—of a little, capricious, shallow-hearted——. Nay! No, no, but the child was right. How was it possible to love a blind man? What woman could? Heaven was just, and had interposed for her, when his selfish mad passion would have carried him astray. It had been unjustifiable, a crime in him to conceal his affliction from her; and now he was well punished. Love a blind man! “Oh Sabina, my darling, heart’s dear—only little one. And it was this love of mine for thee did thee this cruel wrong. Forgive me—thou—my own first, last, lost love——”
Some one gently touched his arm. It was Kaspar Habrecht, who said that Otto von Steinbach had returned to the studio, and indignantly denied all knowledge of the letter; and though they had searched high and low for it, it was not to be found.