CHAPTER LVI.
PLAYING WITH FIRE.
The domestic storm which had for so long been brewing in Syndic Hackernagel’s house, burst with such disastrous force after Otto von Steinbach’s recorded visit there, that it resulted in an exodus among his servants, who declared that the master’s tempers made the place unendurable; and it was only the unhappy accident of their blood connection with the head of the establishment, which militated against the young ladies emulating the wise example.
Which was the lesser evil of the two which had now to be endured, it was hard to say. Hackernagel rampant—from cellar to roof, prying into everybody and everything he could lay his lean suspicious fingers on; kicking the dog, shunting the cat from corners which by time-honoured appropriation were her own; banging the doors, leaving them open when the draught was enough to cut your head off, insisting on their being hermetically closed when everybody was gasping for air, and generally superinducing misery for all who enjoyed the privilege of making part and parcel of himself in the remotest degree.
This of course was abominable enough; but there were those who preferred it to Hackernagel couchant, and among these was Gretchen. She shrank in common with all the rest, when he vented his spleen on everything which came within bowshot of him, but she trembled with a vague awesome fear, when his mood changed to a sullen extreme, and he would sit for hours gazing before him, speaking no audible word, yet muttering to himself, with an ugly twitching of his bluish lips, and a dull baleful glitter in his pale eyes. Sulky Tobias Hackernagel was by nature, but such an abyss of gloom, for such a prolonged spell of time, he had never yet lurked in. That look in his eyes, like some savage animal’s lying in wait for its prey, haunted the girl. She knew her father not as he was known by the world, with his oily tongue, and his pinchbeck periods, but as dwellers under the same roof know each other, and the experience told her to fear the outcome of that moody silence. To her sisters, their father was “in a temper,” certainly an abnormally hideous one; something had gone wrong with him in the fishmarket, where he still retained his little vested interests; or likelier still, somebody’s words had dinned down his own in some stand-up polemical tussle, and with their normal capacity of endurance stretched to the utmost, the young ladies were waiting for him to emerge from his slough of spleen. But then they were ignorant of so much as a hint of all that Gretchen knew. The poor girl, dreading their triumphant mockery of sympathy which would be her lot directly the jealous trio should come to scent her lover’s defection, strove to guard her unhappy secret intact as long as she might, instinctively conscious that her father was not likely to blazon it abroad.
If Gretchen’s nature had inherited many of her dead mother’s virtues, it was also touched with something of her sire’s keenness and caution; and that it had been, which had prompted her to act as she had done, on the occasion of Otto’s last visit. Its stormy ending did but confirm certain surmises she had formed for some time past, and prompted her to keep a close watch over her father’s actions; a supervision which grew the more intense when he sat absorbed in those long sullen silences.
Like a nightmare that ugly speculative gaze oppressed her. What it boded she spent hours in attempting to divine. That it meant mischief was as certain as that a cobra stings; but mischief against whom? Otto of course, argued the girl, out of those thoughts which went flying fast to that which was dearest to her. First and foremost, beyond all question against Otto; for was not vindictiveness a primal attribute of Tobias Hackernagel’s? and if ever man bore grudge against another, must not he be bearing it against Otto now? and besides Otto—besides Otto—and then Gretchen Hackernagel would shudderingly live over and over again through that scene, until one day, about as many as ten afterwards, there came sore perplexity to couple with her wretchedness.
It chanced that Time’s wheel had brought round her allotted fortnight for taking the head of domestic affairs; and in her morning pilgrimages to and from market, which took her across one angle of the Cathedral Platz, she had more than once caught a glimpse of Tobias slowly parading before the façade of the Cathedral, and not content with this, exchanging (if eyes were to be trusted, and she was beyond earshot) a passing word with Prudentius the sacristan! Now, that he had been led thither by some sudden affection for Prudentius, Gretchen found inconceivable; Prudentius, of whom times out of number, she had heard her father express wholesale abhorrence, as one of Strassburg’s fellest, most practical agents in maintaining the ancient order of ecclesiastical rule; and all the more carefully to be kept at arm’s length, by reason of his subordinate position, which, as Tobias held, rendered his corrupt workings doubly insidious. A foe to be stamped out by hook or by crook, by fair means or foul, if only one could compass them. An obstinate, irreclaimable monk and door-keeper of the mighty temple of darkness in their midst!
A strange portent indeed. The cadaverous skin and bone of Tobias and the abundant rosy flesh of Prudentius did not differentiate more thoroughly than the inward men of these two Strassburgers. It would have been easier, one would have thought, to assimilate oil and water, than to bring this fanatical Anabaptist and smug Catholic to so much of speaking terms as compassed a civil good-day; and yet here was Tobias to be seen airily perigrinating to and fro in the very shadow of the Cathedral walls, and always in the neighbourhood of the sacristan’s own snug quarters adjoining the St. Laurence chapel! It is true that the Syndic took as much precaution as possible not to be seen of the men and women of his persuasion; and if any such chanced upon him there, would explain, with all the elaboration of diction for which he was so renowned, that just that corner was the most delightfully cool spot in the whole city.
“And I suppose I may walk where I please,” as he blandly observed one morning to Prudentius, who was busy with his broom about the steps.
“Certainly, Master Hackernagel, certainly,” acquiesced the sacristan, with careless good humour. “It’s God’s air.”
“Oh—yes,” assented Tobias, sniffing, however, a little dubiously at the atmosphere touched with the breath of incense wafted through the open door.
“And it’s a free city,” continued Prudentius, always ready to vary his life’s monotony with the interchange of a friendly word or two; “there’s no law against your walking your legs off hereabouts, if you please.”
“Oh, no. As you observe, my friend, quite correct, quite so. All things, as you say, are lawful——”
“And,” unctiously commented Prudentius, casting hungry glances in the direction of his private apartments, whence issued a savoury odour of something like nothing so much as fried ham, “what a blessed consoling doctrine it is, Master Hackernagel!”
“Lawful, as you remark; but all things are not expedient, friend Prudentius, hey?”
“There may be something in that,” coincided Prudentius, “something in that, I daresay.”
“It involves a hecatomb of doctrine, my good friend; simply a hecatomb.”
“Ah!” said the sacristan, suppressing a yawn, “does it now?”
“You ask me how,” continued the Syndic, lifting his hand and waving it in the direction of the Cathedral. “Take an example, a case in point; an instance that at once suggests itself to the most superficially reflective mind.”
“Just so,” said Prudentius, scenting the morning air, each instant growing heavier with luscious fragrance.
“An instance that at once presents itself for the sake of argument, simply for the sake of argument, you follow me? good. Now, abstractedly—abstractedly, mind you—it would afford me no small gratification to step inside this little door here, and take a stroll round your Cathedral.”
“By all means,” interrupted the sacristan, with a brightening face, “pray do if you want, Master Hackernagel, step in and stay as long as you like, while I——”
“Softly friend, softly. And yet, I say, and yet, I refrain from so doing.”
“But why?” urged Prudentius, turning to the door and pushing it wide open; “go in if you want; isn’t the place as free to you as it is to the best of us?”
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” cried Hackernagel, retreating in pious horror; “shall it be carried down to posterity that Tobias Hackernagel afforded such countenance to papistry’s expiring flame.”
“Nobody would ever know,” said Prudentius grumblingly. “And if they did——”
“Shall it, I say——”
“There! there!” interrupted the sacristan, “don’t waste breath on it. In with you if you want; who’s to see you?”
“Principle, my good creature, you overlook the principle involved; principle is everything. But,” continued Hackernagel, heaving a profound sigh, “you speak according to your lights. Individually, are you to blame? I trow not. Lights did I say? darknesses I should have said; for what are you but a practical illustration of the erroneous doctrine of your teachers? What do you prove but that, with those who are given to much serving, conscience is a very secondary consideration indeed.”
“Ay, by the Mass, you may say that, Master Tobias,” returned Prudentius, sighing in his turn, and folding his arms on the top of his broom. “There’s none of us is everything we ought to be, eh? and what with all my hands and legs find to do, I don’t say but that my conscience has got to look a good bit after itself. Scrub, sweep, dust—dust, sweep, scrub, year’s end to year’s end; and now, as if there hadn’t been enough, there’s the Horologe.”
“Ah! just so.”
“And the dust and grease they do make over it——”
“A fine piece of mechanism,” interjected Tobias.
“Eh?”
“I say the Horologe is a fine piece of mechanism; the happy result of—ahem—of a combination of talent.”
“Well, I don’t know,” slowly said Prudentius; “some do say that too many cooks nearly spoilt its broth; and if it hadn’t been that the Professor Dasipodius took it in hand again when he did, just in the nick of time, we shouldn’t have had it by Saint Laurence’s day.”
“The fourth of August you mean, friend.”
“I mean Saint Laurence’s day as ’tis writ down in the contract, it was to be ready by. But we’re safe to have it now, without fail.”
“Do you really think so?” smiled the Syndic.
“Think! I’m sure. The Professor Dasipodius has said it, hasn’t he?”
“I cannot conceive the possibility of its being ready,” said Tobias.
“Seeing’s believing,” grunted Prudentius.
“There’s an element of truth in your remark,” blandly returned Hackernagel. “I imagine now that if—if I did just take a stroll round, I might obtain a glimpse of it—yes?”
“No, by the Rood, that you wouldn’t,” briskly returned Prudentius; “it’s as completely hidden from vulgar observation as a twelve hour old baby in its swaddling clothes, or a bride before breakfast on her wedding morning.”
“By whose orders?” angrily demanded Tobias.
“By my lord Bishop’s; and nobody can see an inch of it, unless——”
“Unless?” asked the Syndic, carelessly jingling some loose cash in his pockets.
“Unless I or my lord please.”
“And you?” said Tobias, drawing forth a florin and displaying it in his open palm.
“It’s quite against the rules, I tell you,” said Prudentius, affectionately eyeing the piece of silver. “Though I don’t say I see there’s any harm in it myself.”
“Harm! my good friend!” protested the Syndic in wounded tones. “And every rule has its exception,” he added, as he slipped the coin into Prudentius’ hands.