CHAPTER LXVIII.
A VIGIL.
The last clit-clat of the Burgomaster’s stick on the threshold of the artist’s house, left the Platz once more in silence; but Sabina’s heart sank within her, for the scene, which had taken place under the watchman’s very nose, had disturbed his slumbers, and he stirred and grunted, but it was only with a view to settling himself more comfortably; and after a few seconds—or was it an eternity?—the snoring recommences with at least undiminished vigour, and Sabina ventures to peer forth from her refuge.
By the almost unceasing lightning flashes, she can clearly discern the little door of the Saint Thomas’ Chapel. Once across the open space before her, and it will be gained.
In the next interval of darkness the courage of desperation seizes her, and darting from her hiding-place, she speeds like the wind across the Platz. Then on, round under the south-western wall, till, like some hunted creature in sanctuary at last, she finds herself in the deep sheltering arch of the chapel door. With hands which, for all they tremble like storm-shaken aspen striplings, are still sure and apt, she fits the key into its lock. Easily and noiselessly the thing does its work, and stepping across the threshold, she carefully closes the door behind her, and stands in the Cathedral—alone.
Alone! So her wordless prayer was that she might be. And yet at the thought a mortal terror thrilled her. The world is so wise now-a-days, so scientific, so intellectual, so reasonable, so positive in the classifying and labelling of nature’s every secret, that nobody worth the name of anybody would ever fall into the mistake of trembling and turning pale if chance did bring them into such a situation; but with Sabina, whose mind was a clear page in regard to every ology, but brimful of saints and angels, and spirits good and evil, and well attuned with that of the princely student’s, who said: “There are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,”—with her it was a vastly different thing. Standing there, in the pitchy darkness, for she had neither thought, nor would have dared to bring a light, only the fitful moonbeams to guide her, and the forked steel-blue lightning illumining the vast edifice from end to end, and from roof to the marble monuments, where many an effigy lay stretched grim and rigid above the corpses resting below.
Not recklessly, not fearlessly the girl had come there. For her mind, the supernatural with its awfulness, its alluring sweetness, was as real—more real than the palpable conditions of her daily life. Had it been foretold to her that she should ever do this that she was doing now, she would have shudderingly declared death to have been preferable; but there was that ruling her—ruling all her strength, all her weakness, which made her whole being subserve its will, and clad her heart in panoply strong as steel.
Brainsick and giddy, her limbs half paralysed with terror, Sabina groped her way to the Horologe, and grasping its fluted columns, stood and listened.
No sound but her own panting breaths—Ah! what long low rumbling is that beneath her feet, shaking the Horologe to its base? Twelve! The first stroke of midnight booming out from the belfry overhead. Midnight and alone. Midnight and the strange weird deeds beginning then within those walls! In her mind’s eye, but there only, for the temporary gold and crimson arras draping the arch of the Saint Thomas Chapel hid the tomb, which otherwise would have been visible from where she stood,—in her imagination, Sabina could see the awesome effigy of her namesake, the sculptress Sabina von Steinbach, rising from her marble couch, and, with white waving arms, and sad distraught eyes, pass gliding amid the aisles of the mighty church.
But was the figure there? After all that was a question. Only the day previously, Doctor Wolkenberg, looking in at the Burgomaster’s, had happened to remark that Master Rudel had grumbled loudly at being hurried over his work of renovation, and said the fault would not lie at his door if it was made a bungle of in consequence; and that if it was not for the sake of Professor Dasipodius, he would not attempt it. This jeremiad reaching the Professor Dasipodius’ ears, he had begged the sculptor on no account to vex himself by hurrying over it, for a thing not thoroughly done was infinitely worse than not done at all; and Sabina, whose mind was a storehouse of every syllable that people ever said the Professor Dasipodius had said, naturally recalled this little circumstance; and so, after all, was the figure there?
At intervals, which each time grow longer, and fainter and still fainter, the moonbeams stream in through the windows far overhead on to the Horologe; and Sabina’s eyes, lifted in trembling curiosity, can see now Kaspar Habrecht’s exquisite carved work crowning its lofty central apex, now the brilliant colouring of Radegund’s pictures round the cornice, fair and soft in the silvery shimmering haze. Poor girl, what ailed her to-night? But only a passing thought for Radegund now. Sabina’s very terrors hushed at the sight of the gigantic wondrous thing. She was striving to realize that it was indeed, as her touch left no room to doubt, the solid structure, and not the mere baseless fabric of those sad dreams for ever haunting her, sleeping and waking, when Dasipodius had thrust her from him; and she had staggered, blinded with misery and tears, against its panels, and the lustre of her love had all faded out.
Almost on that spot itself, but a little to leftwards of it, she stood now, gathering, as the moments passed, calmness to reflect over what she has done—is doing, and asking herself, if in absolute truth and fact she is standing alone in that vast silent Cathedral at dead of night. All dark, utterly dark, but for the one gleam of light shining like a star in extremest distance yonder before the high altar. If that symbol of the Abiding Presence had always been a joy to her in broad daylight, amid the stir of human life around, what was its companionship now in this fearsome loneliness, when though outside the earth might be fainting and groaning for heat, here all was still as the very grave; and shiveringly she drew her long cloak closer about her and listened. Not a sound besides the ever-rolling thunder, and presently the rain falling heavily against the windows. The rush of it was welcome to her, coming like some old familiar acquaintance out of the ordinary work-a-day world, and nerving her to stand up on her feet, and advance to the arras. If those were but lifted—and with a desperate courage she laid hands on them—why then, yonder tomb—One! The low, solemn clang arrested her hand; and long after its last wave of sound had died away among the arches of the choir, she still stood with the arras in her hands, not daring to stir.
Flash after flash of lurid light break over her, sheeting clear as day legended window and lofty pillar. Thunderous peal upon peal burst, as though the crack of doom were falling; but the awe she was wont to feel at such stormful terrors plays a mere secondary part to that nameless dread possessing her, of the dead sculptress’s monumental tomb. Supposing that there in some way the hidden danger she has come to grapple with should lie, and she—oh, coward little heart!—hangs trembling on these curtains!
With a desperate courage she lifted them, and forced her scared eyes to confront the dreaded thing as the next lightning flash fell.
Not there! Only the bare shining surface with its crimson cushion at the upper end, of cunningly simulated crimson broidered velvet, just as she had been used to see it all for these weeks past. And now in the soul, where many and many a gentle tourney had been tilted between Imagination and Reason, rose up a sore conflict touching the whereabouts of that stately marble lady with her lovely still face, whose faint tints on eyelids and lips did always but render its corpselike aspect the more real; and her dress all gem-bordered—painted gems indeed, yet faceted and polished so craftily, that they looked as real as those upon her own gown. How strangely, the little woman thought, with the feminine instinct faithful to her at even such a time, fashion does repeat itself! To think that the dead Sabina von Steinbach, dead two long hundred years, had worn such garments as would pass muster in the fashionable world now! A little difference in detail possibly, a degree less exuberance of ruff and furbelow, a trifle less stiffness, a shade more of graciousness; but the girl, with her abhorrence of modish extremes, always ordered all such uglinesses to be toned down in her own dress, as far as the code permitted, and the result was that the mediæval Sabina might have stood beside the Sabina of the new era, and seemed no anachronism.
But what an appalling conclusion! Holy Virgin! It chilled her almost to the petrifaction of the stone she had schooled herself to approach and look upon. Almost she feels the dead woman’s hand upon her shoulder; and, overpowered by her terror, she sinks down on the tomb’s broad steps, sobbing and shrieking aloud, till the place echoes with her hysterical cries. But no human help or harm comes to bid her cease. All silent still, when at last the paroxysm subsides. It has brought her overcharged spirit relief, saved her perhaps from losing sanity itself; and rising from her lowly seat, she dares to stand leaning against the tomb’s alabaster cornice. How stiflingly hot it has grown! So it seems to her, out of the fevered heat supervening upon those chill damps of an hour ago; and she gaspingly unclasps the cloak from about her neck! Ah! what an idiot to cry and shriek out so; as if somebody—something had—oh, for shame—for shame! Fine courage that! A little child put to bed in the dark would not have been so foolish! What was there to be afraid of? Here in a church, a sweet, lovely, beautiful church of churches, protected, too, by God’s own dear Mother! Shame to dream of being afraid! How many and many a time had good Bishop John, standing in the pulpit yonder, told how this was none other than the house of God, where day and night holy angels kept guard. Could she look yonder, where the perpetual light gleamed, and be afraid, though all the sheeted dead around her rose from their graves? Why, think of it only! Outside in the dark world, how the storm was raging, and hearts were quailing at its fury. Hark how the rain deluged and drove, and the deafening thunder rolled, yet here, against God’s house, how calm and still! How impotently the rage of the elements spends itself! The very Ark, resting calm amid the seething waters, is this old Cathedral, and——Two!
Night wearing away, and with it the storm. Each lightning flash less vivid, and the thunder sulkily rolling farther and farther in distance. A little while, and the rain ceases, and bright through the clerestory windows a star or two shines down from the deep cleared sky, and still, her vigil undisturbed! but never for one instant the thought of Gretchen’s warning sleeps. Like the burden of some antique song, she murmurs again and again! Danger to him—to the Horologe! Danger! that is her watchword—Danger!
Three!
And now at last is the time at hand? Is it the storm which has delayed, or perhaps destroyed, this that was to have happened? Soon it will be daybreak. Two hours more, and the whole city must be astir, and then—Listen! No! not a sound; and though dawn is so near at hand, all black as midnight still. No ghastly lightning even to guide her now! and not daring to stir, half sitting, drooping with her weary vigil, she waits on, eagerly watching for the first ray of dawn which shall help her to some pillar, some refuge where she can hide and watch. Would the arras be safe? or below here, upon the tomb’s broad foot paces, hidden under her cloak’s ample folds, or perhaps the shadows of the Horologe itself, the Horologe, the Horo——Four!