CHAPTER LI.
“SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY.”
“Some sheep-heads from the Chancellery, I’ll dare swear, whose business would have been the better for sleeping on,” testily said Niklaus, as he rose and went out.
Sabina laid aside the virginal and crossed to her old seat in the window.
“It is very sultry to-night,” she said.
“Very,” assented the mathematician.
“Do you think there is a storm brewing, Master Dasipodius?”
“I think it is possible, Mistress von Steinbach.”
“It quite looks like it.”
“It feels like it.”
“Everything is so still.”
“Death still.”
“Not a leaf stirring.”
“No, apparently.”
“And a good shower would be a great relief.”
“An infinite one.”
“It would——” remarked the hostess after another prolonged pause, “it would clear the air so.”
“Yes.”
“I fancied I heard thunder just now.”
“I am sure of it.”
How long was the Burgomaster going to be? What a shame of people to come worrying about stupid business things after sundown—Midsummer sundown! That suggested another original observation.
“To-morrow will be the longest day,” she said.
“Yes. The twenty-first of June.”
“Yes. They are delightful, these long evenings.”
“Well, yes, in the country perhaps.”
“Ah, of course in the country, that’s what I mean.”
“In town, I fancy, winter is preferable.”
“Oh very, very much better,” acquiesced Sabina, letting her eyes travel sadly round the room, while memory called back one winter’s night when its polished wainscoted walls had shone in the ruddy fire glow; and bitter cold as it had been without, how warm were hearts which now seemed chill as moss that grows on dead men’s graves. “Very much better. Summer in cities is so—so melancholy somehow.”
“You find it so?”
“Oh dear no. I thought you—oh no, not in the least.”
“You are too well occupied for that sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?” she said vaguely.
“To be dull, or sad.”
“Oh yes.”
When would these Chancellery people take themselves off? She could hear them chattering across at the open window there, fast as mill-clappers.
“You have your wheel and your tapestry,” continued Dasipodius.
“Oh yes. My wheel and my tapestry.”
“And you find it sufficient. Yes?”
“Oh quite.”
“And then your music?”
“Ah, of course my music,” animatedly assented the proprietress of the dusty virginal.
“By the way, that song you sang just now, it is very sweet. Who is the composer?”
“Master Dachstein.”
“Our Cathedral Orpheus. I guessed as much. There is no man living can touch these wild sad harmonies like he. And the words, Mistress Sabina, who wrote those?”
“They are Doctor Bruno Wolkenberg’s.”
“Ah, Doctor Wolkenberg’s. And he gave them to you?” enquired Dasipodius in tones as chilly and as measured as though that little foot measure he carried in his pocket had ruled them.
“No,” answered Sabina, with the faintest perceptible smile. “He gave them to my Cousin Radegund, just as he often does; but she, just as she generally does, crumpled them up in her way—you know her way, Master Dasipodius, and throwing them aside, said they were rubbish.”
“And you?”
“I—well I—thought they were nice. And I picked them up, and asked if I might have them. What was left, that is; for they were dreadfully torn about and crumpled. And Radegund said why of course I might; and—I can’t read writing much, but when one has taken a liking for anything, one seems to grow—quite clever, as one may say,” she added with a little laugh, “and I spelt it out, and learned it by heart. It’s a great shame though!” she went on, some sudden wave of indignation sweeping away her constraint.
“What is, Mistress Sabina?”
“That Radegund,” sturdily began she, “should—should,” she added, faltering a little, “behave so.”
“And why?” as stoutly challenged he.
“Well, because—because it is.”
“Quite so. You mean that you think Wolkenberg loves your cousin?”
“Of course he does. Why, if it were needed, he would die for her.”
“It is well, is it not, to be loved so?”
But there was no answer. Only Mitte’s loud contented purring where she lay curled up on the red cushion of the Burgomaster’s chair in the last lingering sunrays, and the old clock’s wait-tic wait-tac broke the stillness.
“You are silent, mistress?” continued Dasipodius. “You do not agree that love unto death is a good thing?”
“I think there can be no other,” she murmured.
“No other kind of love?”
“No, if it will not stretch to that——”
“To death.”
“Ay, it is not worth the keeping.”
“Perhaps you are right—child.”
The girl’s heart bounded, and her cheek flushed at the old familiar endearing term, sweet to her as yonder star just glimmering out among the fretted gables.
“At least,” added Dasipodius, “you are consistent,” and if now his tones had grown hard and metallic, still she found her comfort in his words. She liked, for example, to be called consistent, and by him. It would be something that, to tell Cousin Radegund, who was eternally calling her the most ridiculously inconsistent atomy on the face of the earth, that somebody—somebody who had sense and logic, and logarithms, and cubes and squares, and all the rest of it at his fingers’ ends, had judged her differently. The words which in all bitterness had emanated from her old lover’s heart, carried to her ears no ring of their sarcasm, bore no deeper significance than in so far as they regarded Cousin Radegund and her mad folly in trifling away that deep, almost idolatrous love of Bruno Wolkenberg’s.
“And so you think Mistress Radegund is wrong in despising Bruno’s devotion,” challenged Dasipodius in tones of one who means to be answered.
“If she—loves no one better, surely I do,” said the girl in a low steady voice, and lifting her eyes to the blind attent ones near her. “Yes, it is a great gift.”
“Dr. Bruno’s love?”
“Nay; I mean any real true love,” blushed she.
“Your theories are excellent, Mistress Sabina,” he said with cold contempt.
“I am not sure,” contended Sabina, not ill-pleased, “that I quite know what theories are.”
“Do you ever read the Scriptures?”
“Of course I do,” she answered, bridling a little under the implied doubt. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“Maybe they do; as parrots talk. There is in the Gospels, do you remember, the story of a man who bade his son go do a certain thing, and he said, ‘I go, sir,’ and went not? You remember, mistress?”
“Of course I do,” she answered; “and the other, he didn’t want to go—at least he said, ‘I go not,’ and still he went, and did what he had been told.”
“Ay.”
“It is a nice story. Our Lord Christ’s always were, but——”
“Well?”
“I don’t quite see—what—it has to do with Cousin Radegund.”
“Nothing at all. But clearly that man, that first man had his theories. You see now what they mean?”
“You explain things so beautifully clearly always, Master Dasipodius,” said she almost happy.
“It is as wide apart from practice——”
“Of course. Oh yes,” acquiesced she, twiddling the tips of Mitte’s ears. “I know that. Ever so wide.”
“And yet—oh Sabina—child——”
Again! No bitterness now; no echo of sarcasm in that cry; only a world of longing, a burst of passionate entreaty, from the heart yearning to gather to itself that lily flower.
And she? Her eyes attently upturned to the deep translucent sky, seemed to be reflecting all its glad starlit glory; and her mobile lips, half open, quivering for the sudden joy broken in on all her weary desolation.
“Sabina! my——!”
“Nay, come in, niece, come in,” and lifting the arras, and stepping in to one side, Burgomaster Niklaus entered, ushering in Radegund von Steinbach and Otto. “What, all in the dark, child? Shoemaker’s holiday? You should have had lights.”
“We,” stammered the young hostess, “we—were admiring the stars, and—and forgot——”
“Forgot!” hissed Radegund in her ear, as she swept past her to a seat, and under cover of some voluble observations from Otto. “Forgot of course how many eyes there might be to see them! Always true to your nature, selfish, cruel girl!”
“Oh Radegund!” cried Sabina in a voice wrung with the sharpness of some sudden agony; and indeed Radegund as she spoke, had gripped with savage force into her arm.
“An enjoyable occupation for your companion, star-gazing!” she added with a scornful laugh; “and a whole half-hour too,” she continued, while in the light of the now kindled lamp, her dark eyes scrutinized the faces of Sabina and Dasipodius, “a whole half-hour of it!”
“Oh no, indeed,” pleaded Sabina, “my father hasn’t been gone ten minutes.”
“We came in,” returned the relentless Radegund, “as the clocks were striking eight; and look now what your own says.”
“Twenty minutes to nine,” said Niklaus, glancing proudly at his quaint timekeeper with its ever-goggling eyes and monotonous tic-tac, “by the honestest clock in Strassburg; not forgetting your own that is to be, Master Dasipodius.”
Can it be possible that Sabina, poor child, has all this time been reckoning by Cupid’s chronometer, whose hours are seconds? “Well, well, what does it matter o’ summer nights like these? Sit you down, niece, and rest a bit; and Sabina here will sing us the song she was over when you came.”
“Did we interrupt your music, child?” asked Radegund; “what was it?”
“Just a little love ditty, niece, nothing more; but as pretty a trifle——”
“Then begin it again,” said Radegund.
“Yes, do, Cousin Sabina,” yawned Otto; “there’s a dear child.”
“No, I can’t; no, Otto, not to-night,” pleaded the girl in low wearied tones; and Niklaus, looking at the face grown so pale and lifeless again, urged her no more.
“Oh but I say, Sabina,” persisted Otto, whom his sister, on the plea of having business with the goldsmith concerning some elaborate inlaid framework for her new picture, had dragged out, just as he was going to bed, “do; we want waking up a bit.”
“No, Otto.”
“Leave her alone,” said Niklaus, “you can’t make little birds sing that won’t; you ought to know that by this time.”
This jeu d’esprit of the Burgomaster’s seemed, hopelessly to quench the smouldering conversation; and Radegund rose to go. “Come,” she said, shaking the semi-somnolent Otto by the arm, “let us go home.”
“We go the same way,” said Dasipodius, who had also risen.
“Nay,” remonstrated Niklaus; “so early yet! The sparrows are hardly abed.”
“I have to be up as soon as they, Burgomaster,” replied the mathematician. “The Horologe——”
“Oh, ay, the Horologe, the Horologe, as you please then, Herr Professor,” laughed Niklaus, giving him a gentle push; “if every swain was as true to his mistress as you are to the Horologe, the ladies would have nothing to complain of. The body of you may be here, but heart and soul of you’s in a certain pitch-dark wooden case we wot of. Come, dear child, bid the professor good-night, and let him go.”
The girl silently laid her cold hand in the departing guest’s, so chill it was that it sent a shiver through him for all that summer night heat. “Farewell, Mistress Sabina,” he said.
“Auf wiedersehn. Till we meet again. Good night, niece, sleep well, nephew”; and patting the blinking, yawning Otto on the back, the Burgomaster accompanied the trio to the postern; then carefully bolting it, he proceeded to take his nightly patrol of the premises. That done, he returned to the dining hall.
Elbows resting on the table, her chin in the palms of her hands, Sabina sat, gazing into the lamp’s dull flame. One by one the big tears were coursing unheeded down her cheeks, and fell heavily on the dark polished oak table. In spite of her bravest efforts, they had welled up as the comparison forced itself upon her, between that January night, when the snow had lain half a yard deep outside, and within the fire had crackled and danced so cheerily there upon the hearth, all dark and sepulchral-looking now, with its brass dogs idly grinning. Each incident of that time, and of this just past, her memory recalled. How different! Such difference they had, as life and death can show. Then, the transfiguring light of love overspreading that face, which she never knew whether to call more grand, or beautiful; only this she remembered of it now, how earnestly, how solicitously it had bent over her, and ah, sweet angels! the caress of those hands that would not let hers go! To-night that face, grand and beautiful indeed, nay, if it could be so, nobler still; but alas, so cold, and chill as hewn marble itself! like some sculptured monumental crusader away there in the cathedral shadows; and though once again they had been face to face, had spoken together, and he? well, kindly and gently enough, what hollow empty words! More than half of them a mere waste, such as two people will interchange who have nothing in common.
It was strange too, marvellously strange, how unlike in their unlikeness were those two evenings of her young life. Each time, for example, Dasipodius had had his little story to tell her; but that one he had told to-night, although, heaven forgive her, it was the dear Christ’s own, was, though she could not tell why, harsh and bitter sounding; while that story of the little mouse—and the saints only know where he had got it from!—was a nice odd fairy-tale sort of thing; and though indeed she had pouted and demurred to its pointless ending, it had flowed so sweetly and softly from his lips, that she had felt herself in a veritable dreamland of all that was brightest and gladdest and best. And—and then she shivered, and her eyes stared fixedly into the flame of the lamp—then the appearance of Radegund upon the scene! Well, but what of that? Who more welcome in her uncle’s house, when she chose to come, than Radegund; but of course Radegund being so clever, and she herself just the most ordinarily gifted little woman from an intellectual point of view, there could be no close friendship between them, still she had always striven to make things pleasant for her cousin, when she did vouchsafe her presence there. All the same, it did seem hard, that just to-night of all nights—ah heaven! as she had stood upon the threshold there, not half-an-hour since, what sweet word was that which had passed his lips. His! Something in his utterance of it had brought all the memory of his old infinite tenderness to her sore heart, and then—Cousin Radegund had looked in! and tenfold more cruelly than before had fallen the old darkness and desolation, because she misdoubted her own perceptions; and whether it was not the fainting fevered longing for one such kind poor echo of all those sweet endearing epithets he used to lavish upon her, which had not created a delirium, and deceived her own sense of hearing? Ay, yes, it was all a dream, a blessed, cruel, sweet, deluding dream, and—
“Come, dear child! cheer thee!” So spoke Niklaus, returning from seeing his guests depart. “’Tis all over now, and tell me, was it not best so? Oh, ah, trust old fathers for seeing how best to steer the ship. Say, need there be any more breaking of my little bird’s heart over scattered crumbs? Now you’ve seen for yourself that Master Dasipodius has forgot all about it, hey? and hasn’t half a thought to spare for you, or any other fair maid, from that wooden sweetheart of his. See now, see these foolish tears have wept the lamp out; and we should be all in the dark, if it weren’t for the stars. Are they to be my little lady’s candles, yes? Good-night then, dear love, good-night. Sweet dreams!”
Meanwhile the Burgomaster’s trio of guests turned homewards together. At the corner of the Domplatz, the mathematician, pausing, bade the other two good-night.
“My blind eyes,” he added, “make me a poor squire, Mistress von Steinbach; and Otto is with you. Don’t be late in the morning,” he continued, turning to him. “Those bells are not fixed yet, recollect.”
“I say, Radegund,” said Otto, as they crossed the Platz together alone, “he’s put out about something. What is it?”
“Am I his conscience keeper?” she asked in chilly tones.
“Now, now, you’re always so confoundedly heavy down upon a fellow directly he makes a little remark. I’m not his confessor any more than you are, my dear, but I think I know what vexed him.”
“Well?”
“You.”
“I?”
“Yes,” and Otto nodded sapiently. “I don’t think he wanted you—us round there; and I don’t think Cousin Sabina did neither, for the matter of that.”
“Nor Uncle von Steinbach neither, eh?” mimicked Radegund. “Speak for yourself, dear brother, and remember that ladies are always welcome everywhere and anywhere.”
“Oh, are they!” grunted the gallant creature. “It’s the fashion to say so; but nine times out of ten they’re just a nuisance.”
“Supposing now,” continued his sister, “that it was your company, my dear, which could have been spared?”
“Well,” sparred he, “whose fault was it, I’d like to know, that I went?”
“The Horologe must be attended to.”
“Oh, hang it!” groaned Otto. “As if I didn’t know that! But to go bothering about it just as one’s had one’s supper. If you want to bring on indigestion, that’s the way to do it; and you know what Wolkenberg said about me. Oh you may laugh, but if I’d been Dasipodius——”
“Was it my fault, pray, that he was there?”
“No,” said Otto. “I didn’t say it was, Radegund, and——”
“Well?”
“I don’t think it was.”
“Wasn’t it the Burgomaster I went to see?” she challenged, stamping her foot with impatience. “Speak.”
“Oh, ah, well you know,” yawned he.
“Then don’t talk nonsense; and go to bed, for pity’s sake. Perhaps you’ll find your wits there. When you’re sleepy, an idiot’s nothing to you!”