CHAPTER LXX.
“FINIS CORONAT.”
Not a cloud as big as a man’s hand dimmed the glory of that blue sky shining over the old city on Saint Laurence’s day. The storm of the past night had cleared the air of all the foul vapours and heaviness loading it for weeks past; and a light cool breeze fluttered the flags, and toyed with the garlands festooned about window, and sign, and balcony of the Platz, until their wet leaves glistened again in the morning sunbeams.
In and out about the Cathedral’s rugged walls the birds darted merrily, chirrupping in the highest spirits, and perking and pluming with uncommon care, as though they fully recognized the duty incumbent on them, as part and parcel of the place, to be spick and span on this notable occasion. Citizens and citizenesses, maids and matrons, gallants and prentices, all pranked in their best, thronged the streets; while farmers and rich peasantry, from many a Vosges village and hamlet, kept flocking in towards the centre of attraction, and were packed in the Cathedral aisles, until there was not room left for a pin to drop between them. Veritably it seemed, as they said, as if the good God had answered the prayer of many an expectant heart, and made a day on purpose, so bright and fair it was.
Yet one thing lacked. What was it? Strangers had not set foot five minutes within the city gates, before they asked themselves this question, vaguely conscious that in some strange manner all the spirit and life of a great general holiday were wanting. First and foremost, what had become of the music? Not so much as a drum-beat’s echo, or the faintest squeak of a fife! Feast, holiday, forsooth! Better have stopped at home and listened to the cat purring! And then those knots of folks, with mazed, awe-stricken faces, interchanging low hurried words, more for all the world as if everybody had come together for a funeral than for a merry-making. Hush! hush! Yes, death, indeed, hovers low over Burgomaster von Steinbach’s roof-tree, stretching out his hand for the Lily, where she lies broken and bleeding, with only a faint fluttering pulsation at her brave heart to tell that life is still there.
And then from mouth to mouth flies the strange story, until by eight o’clock every mother’s son and daughter has at fingers’ ends, with all the ad libitum variations of each individual fancy, how Syndic Tobias Hackernagel, miserable villainous wolf in the dark that he was, broke last night into the Cathedral to destroy the Horologe; and how—there is the marvellous part of it—how little Mistress Sabina von Steinbach, Burgomaster Niklaus’ daughter, was beforehand with him and saved it; and how it chanced she had saved Master Dasipodius too, when the wretched scoundrel would have murdered him, and the knife struck her instead, somewhere in the shoulder, for she threw herself upon the blind man and hung there like a shield; and there she lies—a-dying? Ah Heaven! canst thou be so bitter cruel as that? And then for the woe that has stricken their good honest Burgomaster, not alone women’s tears fall fast, but men’s eyes glisten, now sad, now ragefully; and with low passionate clamourings, they demand if the prison walls hold fast that would-be assassin?
Ay, ay, safe enough, safe enough, so much is certain. They had him down and bound in an eye’s twinkling; but for the rest, all is a riddle, and threatens to remain so for some time to come; since from the moment of his arrest, Hackernagel, man of law that he is, has not uttered a syllable, saving all his eloquence for the defence he is no doubt busy concocting, and Tobias is as dumb as lead.
Inside the Cathedral, things are terribly at sixes and sevens. There seems to be not a creature about to marshal the crowd, or to tell people their assigned places. Barriers are disregarded, and individuals squeeze into nooks where they have no more business than bulls have in china shops. City magnates puff and purple with indignation; while fine ladies, who have fondly looked to being the observed of all observers, are shunted and hustled every bit as much as the commonest clay there. Disgusting! and to-morrow the managing committee shall know what they think about it. Where, in the name of decency and order, is Prudentius the sacristan, that he permits all this lamentable confusion?
Prudentius the sacristan, with a racking headache, and excruciating pains in his limbs, and a conscience sorer than all, lies in durance vile, some few hundred yards off, safe in his own bed, whither he has been transported from a spot not far outside the city gates, where he was found lying in the morning’s small hours, drenched through and through, and altogether incapable of standing upon his legs, or of lucidly accounting for his deplorable plight. The burden of certain feeble and disjointed maunderings which escaped him, touching some woman—“Yes, a woman, I tell you, a woman,” in no way influenced my Lord Bishop to regard the unfortunate lay-brother’s misdemeanour in a more favourable light; but at present Bishop John has little leisure to bestow on the sinner and his enigmatical falling away. A whirl of thoughts is perplexing his brain. Like some great actor, distracted from his rôle by the painful realities of his actual life, the Bishop wonders how he is to go through with his very prominent part in the ecclesiastical pageant which, shorn indeed of many of its most imposing adjuncts, is still ordained to take place.
The very bells which were to have rung out such a merry peal, are silent lest they should disturb the unconscious girl; and it is certain that more than one gap will be left upon yonder crimson dais.
Burgomaster von Steinbach’s genial face must assuredly be missing; as also, from circumstances over which he has no control, the countenance of Syndic Hackernagel will be conspicuously absent. In yonder gallery of fair dames, the sweetest flower among them all will not be seen. And concerning Mistress Radegund, whose beauty some reckon more peerless than even her cousin’s—just as some care more for roses than for lilies—much speculation is rife, whether or no she will grace the little band of horologists on the dais. Whether, circumstances considered, she will hold it becoming—but there, it is worse than idle to be hazarding conclusions over what Radegund will elect to regard as becoming or unbecoming. And it must be conceded that there are two sides to this case in point; and stop away or come, she will inevitably shock some one’s sense of the proprieties, according to the respective ratios at which they fix private and professional claims. Only on one point all are assured, that Mistress von Steinbach will do as she chooses, utterly uninfluenced by any second opinion.
Soon the question settles itself; she is there. If that woman on the Horologist’s dais in the magnificent robe of purple velvet, slashed with cloth of gold, be indeed Radegund von Steinbach? If those stern-set features and hollow eyes, encircled with dark rings, making her look more like a galvanized corpse than living woman, can be the brilliant artist. No glimmer of a smile relaxed the drawn pale lips, as she turned to acknowledge the murmur of applause greeting her appearance; and not a word has she for those about her. With a glance, half careless, half curious, she looks round. In search perhaps of Bruno Wolkenberg. But Bruno is not there. This moment of Radegund’s triumph his soul has so long thirsted for, has come, and does not find him there to see; for Doctor Wolkenberg is busy, duty has called him elsewhere, and he sits watching in that darkened chamber in the Munster-gasse. Yet he has found time to implore Radegund to renounce her intention of going to the Cathedral. “Will my not going give the child back her life?” she said hardly. “Is the world to come to an end because she——”
“Nay,” interrupted Bruno, jarred in spite of himself by her tones. “If not for that, then for your own life’s sake.” And then, with all the eloquence his wrung heart could muster, he pleaded the consequences of such a heavy tax on her own frame, weakened by the previous night’s cruel attack upon it; that sickness to which the skilful master of cause and effect could find no clue, or if he did, shrank from following up. “You need rest; absolute rest.”
“Ay,” fiercely assented she. “Yes; and that one finds best in the grave.”
“Radegund—why,” he said brokenly, “why will you speak like this to me—to me—Radegund?”
“Because—psha! Bruno, tell me now, am not I indeed fit, as you call it, to go? Will you really not answer for my life if I go?”
He turned from her with a moaning sigh.
“Answer me, Bruno. Why, come now. Come, Doctor Bruno Wolkenberg! Am I a patient to be fooled and put off with some puling lie? Tell me true—Bruno, dear Bruno, then, dear kind friend—Bruno,” and the hot hands sought his. “Tell me, is my life come indeed to be so weak a thing, that I might forfeit it just by only crossing over into yonder church?”
“I tell you—yes,” he said.
“Then it is hardly worth trying to keep,” she returned contemptuously. “One had better break than bend, I take it. Now go—where they want you, Doctor Wolkenberg.” And with the abrupt dismissal, she rose and left him; and summoning her servant, she, with many a pause for battling with the deadly faintness oppressing her, stood dressed at last, and refusing all aid but Otto’s arm, found herself in the seat reserved for her on the Professor Dasipodius’ right hand.
The hem of her rich raiment straying across his footstool, first tells him of her presence; but sparing her no syllable of greeting, he turns to exchange a word or two with Isaac Habrecht on his left. From the building’s furthermost recesses the mathematician’s appearance has been greeted with applause, prolonged and deep, but not loud. The enthusiasm which the sacredness of the place would hardly have restrained, was chastened down into something of awe at the aspect of the blind man, on whom every eye was fixed. There were few in that vast concourse unacquainted in more or less garbled fashion with the events of the past night, and few consequently who were not able in some degree to participate in the feelings which must be ruling him at that moment; and sympathy with these increased tenfold, when all notwithstanding, the people found he had kept faith with them, and the acclamations they would fain have offered him, spent themselves in a hushed respectful murmur.
One of rumour’s tongues said Dasipodius had been wounded; others said no such thing; but all could see in his face that some mental wound, sharper than keenest sword-thrust, agonized him; that he had passed, nay, was passing through some ordeal too terrible for words. Radegund von Steinbach, looking upon him now, was not the only one recalling more strongly than ever the picture over yonder in the Saint Laurence Chapel. A solemn, mysterious beauty rested upon the features composed into such stern endurance, lending them a softness which rendered them not all stern; and about the temples, grown somewhat worn and shadowy, and over the resolute mouth, shone a tender light, repressed and dimmed for many a month past, but now infinitely sweet in its sadness. Standing there, in the presence of that vast crowd, the observed of all, seeing no ray of earth’s light, his spiritual beauty spoke silently eloquent, drawing, as it ever did, men, women, and little children, and all God’s creatures to love and trust him.
Master Dachstein’s music is gloriously beautiful; as it peals forth its pæan, the long train of richly-vested ecclesiastics and white-robed choristers winds with cross and banner, gleaming amid fragrant incense clouds, towards the high altar, bathed in the sunlight streaming down through the painted choir windows.
A few years more and the old Faith is to lie trampled to the dust within those walls, crying: Ichabod! Ichabod! but to-day the glory of her glows out unshadowed by any threatening darkness of desolation; grand in her ceremonial as ever she has been, since the days when good King Pepin set the corner-stone of the venerable shrine. And yet, the rich colour, the sweet triumph song, seem to jar upon the senses. The very Horologe itself, the fulcrum and motor of all this concourse of humanity, is being regarded with something very near to a secondary interest. Only at last, when Bishop John bestows with uplifted hand his benediction on the all sorts and conditions of assembled Christians, and from the lips, which for the nonce have laid aside their differences, responds one deep Amen, and midday is upon the stroke, attention undivided and absorbed is devoted to the Horologe, while the eyes of him who, yet seeing nothing, has been the work’s creator, are fixed attent, till the first burr, and a succession of clicks and snappings and whirrs, proclaim all to be in motion. Then breaks forth from thousands of lips a rapturous murmur, and upon those upturned faces one simultaneous grin of delight, as one after the other of the automata go through their evolutions in just the very self-same, confident, dogged, wooden way that they do now.
To descant upon the satisfaction of that moment is, however, a superfluity, since who that runs may not still read? “The famous clock remains uninjured,” reported the war correspondents, when bullets and cannon balls were riddling the brave old city not so many years ago. Uninjured in spite of all! And tourist pilgrims may still enjoy for themselves any day of the week the wonderful clock’s performance; for, guide-book in hand, before Master Dasipodius’ Horologe, still gathers daily a motley group, native and alien, and if no cruel wars come, are likely to do for as long as any youth lingers in this old planet. Providence be praised, it is not all beaten out of her yet; and royal princes, gaitered bishops, gaping country folks, dreamy poets, beauty, intellect, aristocrats, socialists, Philistines, philosophers, old men and maidens, and matrons, make a point of seeing the Horologe in all its glory of full working power when they pass through Strassburg city. Of course, with human ingratitude they smile when the performance is over, and pooh-pooh the Horologe for a clumsy piece of absurdity; but the real test is the rapt attention it earns while it is in motion. And like a clever actor, only wider fame accrues to it by criticism.
Now too, as then, the crowing cock wins special appreciation. “And his wings, Kaspar?” asks the mathematician, laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder, with a faint enquiring smile, as the wooden chanticleer’s whoopy screech strikes his ear. “They flap well—yes?”
“Perfectly, master,” answers the young woodcarver, a transient smile of pleasure lighting up the face which has hitherto mirrored the sadness of Dasipodius. And he flushes with pride, for does he not hear his name whispered from mouth to mouth in the crowd below?
“Splendidly!” ejaculates Otto von Steinbach, sinking down with a gasp of satisfaction, whose intensity is only known to himself. “Perfectly, by Jove! and never a jerk. Scoundrel!” but though his eyes are fixed fiercely on the wooden lord of the farm-yard, his animadversion is not addressed to it, but at some absent object, vividly evolving in his imagination.
The ex-chief horologist does not share prominently in the day’s proceedings; does not desire to do so, perhaps, but modestly remains as much as possible in the background, and that even when his name is signalized with those of his brother horologists.
Nevertheless Otto has his consolations.
So for the first time the Horologe plays its part, and a brilliant success it is.
And the price of it?