CHAPTER XXIV.
“WHAT’S SHE WORRIED ABOUT?”
“And now,” was Wolkenberg’s one tormenting thought, as he plodded on towards Radegund’s house, “what is to be the outcome of it all?”
He had some half-defined purpose in going to her. He thought the brother and sister might have heard some tidings of that lost letter; and besides, Bruno was thoroughly unhappy, and he shivered at the prospect of going to sit down all alone with his thoughts in his gloomy laboratory. He would seek the dreary consolation he sometimes permitted himself, of feasting his eyes upon the woman he loved, and of breathing the same air with her.
On aught beyond this, Bruno could never reckon, for the moody Radegund’s receptions were as variable for him as they were for others, perhaps more so; but the surgeon was no fair-weather swain. Not the brave steed of that brave old legend Bruno loved perhaps above all other romance lore, waited more patiently at the wayside chapel door for the praying knight his master, than Bruno Wolkenberg waited upon and bore with Radegund’s every caprice. And he would sooner have thought of turning pagan, than of swerving by one hairsbreadth from his allegiance, because she chanced to frown when he would have given a decade of his natural life to see her smile.
To-night, however, Radegund’s welcome was unwontedly gracious. Never, her lover thought, had he seen her look so brilliantly handsome. It may be that very force of contrast heightened this effect, and some dim remembrance of that pale saddened face in the Munster-gasse haunted him still; but he was not conscious of any secondary impression whatsoever, as he sat in the dazzling glory of her presence, and gazed at the beautiful face lit up with a soft crimson glow, and the glamorous light in the dark eyes. She had smiled on Bruno as he entered, and stretching her white hand towards him, motioned him to a seat beside her; and, chatting over anything and everything with her and Otto, who lay his length, enjoying his accustomed evening dolce far niente in the firelight, the surgeon lost sight of other people’s cares in the delirious joy of being with her, and listening to the rich, somewhat deep tones of her beautiful voice, whose accents, for all she spoke in her homely German tongue, fell with some strange passionate echo of that fair Tuscan city where she had dwelt so long, and whose very stones she loved.
To-night she was solicitous even about Bruno.
“You look so tired, Dr. Bruno,” she said, filling a goblet with strong Rhenish, and herself handing it to him.
“I—have had a trying day,” answered Wolkenberg, his heart leaping at the sound of her softened, almost caressing, tones.
“Is there much sickness about then?” she asked.
“Now what a question,” grunted Otto, “in weather like this. Such cursed east winds. Eh, Wolkenberg?”
“There!” smiled Bruno. “That is what everybody is saying. Only half-an-hour ago, Burgomaster von Steinbach——”
“You have been to the Munster-gasse?” interrupted Radegund.
“Yes, I supped there.”
“Ah!” said Radegund, a faint gasp escaping her. “And they—are all well?”
“Middling.”
“There—yes—well, middling of course you know,” hurriedly interjected Otto. “This weather——”
“And little Sabina?” enquired Radegund. “As usual, I suppose. Blithe as a bird.”
“No,” said Bruno, almost curtly. “And I suppose even birds are not always blithe. She seemed very middling; and Burgomaster von Steinbach wished me to see what I could do for her, but she won’t have any of my doctoring, and insists she is very well, and very happy and——”
“And all that sort of thing,” interrupted Otto, getting to his feet with a yawn. “Only these confounded east winds. You prescribed a linctus, I suppose, Dr. Bruno?”
“No, I didn’t,” snapped Bruno. “I did nothing of the kind. A linctus won’t cure worry, will it?”
“But what——” began Otto.
“What’s she worried about?” said Radegund. “Now that’s a man all over! As if that great house and servants were not enough to plague a little creature just home from school, out of her senses! I do think my uncle ought to be told it is too much for her.”
“I don’t think it is,” said Bruno. “She seems a capital little housewife, and makes no bother about it.”
“No,” said Otto. “That’s why I do like—what’s the joke, Radegund? If I choose to say I—I like Sabina,” he went on, flushing furiously, “I—I’ve got a right to say it, haven’t I. Have a game, Wolkenberg?” and drawing a pack of cards from his pocket, Otto flung them noisily down on the table.
The surgeon consented, but he played like a man whose thoughts were gone a wool-gathering; and his eyes wandered hopelessly from the spades and diamonds to the Queen of his heart, where she, in the half shadows, sat silent and relapsed into thought. Notwithstanding he won the game. “Yet I played so badly,” he said.
“You got all the trumps, you know,” grumbled Otto. “It’s just my luck. There’s a sort of favour and prejudice in cards, just as there is in everything else that ever I have to do with,” and he rose sulkily from his seat.
“Don’t be cross, Otto dear,” smiled Radegund, rousing up. “Unlucky at cards, a handsome wife, you know. Come, cheer up.”
But he seemed by no means disposed to fall in with her raillery, and took up his night lamp.
“By the way,” said Bruno, as if the thought had suddenly struck him, “has anything been heard of that letter, do you know?”
“What letter?” said Radegund carelessly. “Ah, Conrad Dasipodius’ letter that was dropped in the studio a day or two ago. Some one said it was last seen in your hands, Otto, and I thought——”
“Some one was a fool,” said Otto, dragging a blazing bit of stick from the fire to light his lamp with.
“But——”
“What the devil should I know about the thing?” he interrupted savagely, and with cheeks aflame, from the blaze no doubt. “How could I help it all? I suppose they’ll be saying next that I—I——”
“You’ll set your sleeve on fire if you don’t mind, Otto,” said Radegund, looking sternly at him. “Hold the lamp steady.”
“But I heard,” persistently continued Bruno, turning to address Otto, and finding only empty space. “I heard——” he reiterated to Radegund in default of Otto’s presence.
“You should not have alluded to that before him,” she said calmly. “You must have known it wouldn’t be a pleasant subject.”
“Yes,” answered he. “I suppose I do know that; but it’s unpleasant to—others too, and must be sifted.”
“Nothing of the kind,” answered Radegund. “The less said about it the better.”
“But that is not like you, Radegund; to speak so, when we know that by now the whole city is talking about it.”
“The thing is done, and can’t be undone,” she said.
“Who did it, Radegund?” asked Bruno gravely.
“Now it is you, Bruno Wolkenberg, who are talking nonsense! Did not that child, Sabina, do it?”
“But I can’t understand. I would have staked my life she was true to the core.”
“Of course you would. Men are all alike. Always to be hoodwinked and cheated by the first woman whose purpose it may be to make tools of them. But really,” she went on with a careless laugh, “what this girl has about her that she can turn people round her little finger like this, I cannot understand. A timid, moon-faced, yellow-haired little thing, with hardly two grains of sense in her composition.”
“But no. There you mistake, Radegund,” stoutly contested Bruno. “You do indeed.”
“Of course I do,” she laughed mockingly. “Why, Dr. Wolkenberg, is she dragging you at her triumphal car, as she is trying to do Conrad Dasipodius?”
“Trying!” echoed Bruno. “There is no need for that in his case,” groaned Bruno.
“Do you mean to tell me,” cried Radegund, turning fiercely on him, “that you actually believe Dasipodius loves this child?”
“Assuredly I do.”
A bitter laugh was the artist’s comment.
“Since you are so infatuated, you should have finished your evening in this paragon of a girl’s society,” she said scornfully.
“Oh Radegund, you are hard, unjust. You who are always so noble and generous. I came here to ask—to implore you to do something for this poor child. She is so lonely—things are going so cross with her——”
“Can I help that?”
“She has no mother—no woman friend——”
“She has her male friends in any case,” said Radegund with curling lip.
“And you,” persevered Bruno, “who are so much older.”
Ah, Bruno Wolkenberg, wretchedly bungling advocate, how came you to damage your pleading so? Radegund’s face grew white with anger.
“Yes, yes,” she cried. “I see it now. I see it! It is these fragile little buds, with their poor pale beauty, who are the mode now-a-days! And the world may be turned upside down for them, while——” and her voice dropped into soft wistful cadence, “while the rich flowers are left to wither unsought—neglected.”
Who ever loved legend and symbol as did Bruno? and Radegund, when it suited her, would indulge him in such conceits; and tenderly lifting the thread of her little metaphor, he said, “The pale Lily flower has no charms for me, Radegund. It is the glorious red Rose I would take to my breast, and wear till I die.”
And coming near, he bent over her, and pressed his lips on her dark hair, and there came no flash of anger into her eyes at his bold daring. On the contrary, they softened, and she took his hand in hers. “Bruno,” she said, “what a faithful, good old friend you are to me! I wonder,” she went on dreamily, “will it be so to the end?”
“Do you doubt it?” said Bruno. “I swear——”
“No,” she said, “there’s no need. I believe in you, Bruno Wolkenberg, as I never believed in man, or woman either,” and she stroked his hand with a gentle caressing thoughtfulness. “Poor Bruno!”
“Oh Radegund!” cried he, feeling himself less to be compassionated than ever he had been in his whole existence, “Radegund! my——”
“And you think,” she interrupted, still stroking his hand, “that after all, he, Conrad Dasipodius, does not so much care for Sabina?”
“I think,” said Bruno, starting with a sigh from his Euthanasia, “that he loves her as I love you, Radegund, my——”
“What nonsense you always do talk, Bruno Wolkenberg!” she cried, fiercely flinging away his hand. “There never is any common sense in you for five minutes together!”
“But——”
“I will have no buts. At this hour too! As if this gossip-mongering place did not play too free with my name already! Hark! Striking nine. Go, I say. You call yourself my true friend! Go then—for pity’s sake—go.”
And he went, and when he found himself in the laboratory again, he cast himself upon his hard little bed and dreamed sublime dreams which now and then lapsed into almost the ridiculous; for it seemed to him that all the chairs of those silent rooms above stairs, started clean out of their cere-cloths and danced for joy, because they were going to be sat in at last. And the tables shouted, “Ho, bring venison, and wine, and good things all, and heap us high with them! for the wedding guests are coming, coming. Don’t you hear the bells?” And all the hearthplaces shone with merry dancing flames, and then—then seated there, spinning in their light, sits a gracious woman, with a grave sweet smile making her face radiant in its beauty; and over all floats a low glad harmony as of children’s voices, and—— Dream on, Bruno Wolkenberg!
But where the real woman of Bruno’s dreaming sits, there is no fire. Only a heap of grey dull ashes, and the woman is crouching over them, staring with dry hollow eyes at a piece of crumpled paper, bearing the signature of a faint, tremulous little cross; and far on, while Bruno dreams, she sits in the same unchanging attitude through the dark night hours, brooding—brooding.