“SO NEAR, AND YET SO FAR AWAY.”
Since the stirring times when John of Manderscheid was Prince Bishop of
Strassburg, the old city has seen curious changes; and her cathedral
has shared largely in her vicissitudes. The Reign of Terror turned the
holy place into a “Temple of Reason,” and celebrated its maniacal rites
at the altar, where for centuries the Host had lain enshrined; but ever
and again since Luther’s time, iconoclastic fury has done its worst
there, wrenching down, and with axe and hammer despoiling it of every
vestige of ornament which could be bartered for a doit of lucre, and
even the exterior of the Horologe has suffered, if some tales be true,
and only the paint and lacquer stuff, such as the soul of the reformed
delighteth to set in the temples to Him from whom all beautiful and
perfect things do come, stands in the place of the fair and costly
work which Master Niklaus von Steinbach and his apprentices originally
turned out for it.
“Yes, it looks well. I wish you could see it, Master Dasipodius,”
said the goldsmith, as he conducted his visitor into his workshop. “I
think you’d say ’tis bravely done. Here,” continued Niklaus, opening a
massive iron chest, and taking from it a disk of brass repoussé work,
“is the face of the chronometer dial,” and he handed it to Dasipodius,
“centred with——”
“Enamel cloisonné,” said the mathematician, passing his finger lightly
over the surface, “and of what colour?”
“Crimson and purple translucent, as a stormy sunset. And here in the
outer rim, opaque azure starred with golden.”
“And between?”
“Crystal facets and four rubies to mark the quarters. And here you have
the astrological dial, turquoise blue translucent——”
“And cloisonné also, with serpentine golden?”
“Yes, on a shiny ground, silver touched. Our best piece of all, to my
thinking; turned out by a young fellow, a Frenchman from the studio
of Maître Léonard Limousin. We shall have to make a master of him for
his piece of handiwork. Not the faintest fly-speck of a flaw in it.
Somehow we German double-thumbs can’t hold a candle to these frogs of
Frenchmen, where it’s a matter of grace or ingenuity.”
“But your circle here, you haven’t got it perfect,” said the
mathematician, passing his fingers rapidly round the disk.
“Exactness itself.”
“Nay, by your leave,” and taking from his pocket a small ivory rule,
Dasipodius laying it across and across, proved his case by nearly half
the sixteenth of an inch; “it’s out.”
“Bless my soul!” said Niklaus, examining the measurement, “so it is.”
“That must be seen to,” said Dasipodius, “or it will offend the eye.”
“Naturally,” acquiesced Niklaus, with a secret malediction, “it’s odd
enough how it escaped mine.”
Then, possibly to avoid any more hypercriticism, the goldsmith hurried
the enamels back into their cotton-wool casings.
“The other rims,” he said, “you had best take with you, and turn over
at your leisure. Will you come across now, and eat a morsel of supper
with us?”
“If you will excuse me,” began Dasipodius; “my time just now is hardly
my own.”
“Then steal a bit. Nay, Master Dasipodius, if you refuse, I think my
little girl will be taking it unkindly of you.”
“I would not have her suppose—” began Dasipodius.
“No, no, of course you wouldn’t, I know,” hurriedly assured Niklaus.
“I comprehend perfectly. One doesn’t want to be hard with these queer
creatures; and, _Donnerwetter!_—of all the dear Heaven’s creations,
they are the queerest; oh, I grant you that, are women. But my girl’s a
good girl—in the main, Master Dasipodius, and has a warm heart in spite
of—that stone post! mind it, professor. Phew! what a sultry night.
We’re having a hot time of it this summer, hey? I hope you won’t be
sighing for the green trees you’ve left behind you at Schaffhausen.
Well, one can’t have everything in this world, can one? and if one has
one thing, one must give up t’other, and as fast as one thing goes
right, t’other goes wrong, and one can but make the best of things, eh,
professor? and the hobby-horse never will gee all four legs the same
way.”
This volley of more true than original philosophy, the Burgomaster
fired off as the two crossed the quadrangle, under pressure of the
consciousness, which had suddenly forced itself upon him, that there
undoubtedly was just the least bit of awkwardness in this meeting
which he had insisted on bringing about; and feeling that the sheerest
nonsense which came into his head was just then preferable to silence,
he contrived to string it out, until they were both well into the
dining hall, where Sabina sat working, constant as Penelope, in the
deep bay of the painted glass window.
A fair picture this Lily, with her golden glory of hair, and the
dark-green square-cut bodice, with its soft cambric ruff about her
rounded white neck. Only one spark of animation in her eyes, one touch
of colour in her cheeks, lacked to render the picture faultless. Out of
all nature it seemed that so youthful a face should be as bloodless as
a ghost’s, or to touch realities, as the face of their guest. Had each
found Medusa in the other, that he and she stand like stone statues?
and only when at last she lays her cold hand in the one he holds
stretched towards her, comes a reaction; and simultaneously the hot
blood rushes over cheek and brow of both.
But next instant the crimsons fade, and the flash of life chills
down to deadly commonplace, which Sabina, having rehearsed the whole
livelong day, expresses to perfection.
“We are very glad to see you back in Strassburg—Master Dasipodius.”
“Thanks—Mistress Sabina.”
“Supper is quite ready, father. Shall it be served?”
“Ay, surely. Come, Master Dasipodius, make yourself at home again,”
said the hospitable Niklaus. “Where will you sit? In the old place?”
and he set a chair in Sabina’s neighbourhood.
“Nay, father,” objected she, “the sun glares right into one’s face so
there. Master Dasipodius will find it pleasanter beside you.”
“As Master Dasipodius pleases,” cheerily said Niklaus, fast recovering
his ease, and beginning to dissect the sturgeon in his best style, “so
long as we’re all comfortable.”
“As you please, Mistress Sabina,” bowed Dasipodius, and he went and sat
afar off.
“Mind the bones—Sabina,” cautioned Niklaus, directing apprehensive
glances at the plate of his guest. The difficulties in the way of blind
folks getting comfortably through life, were beginning to occur to
him very forcibly, but the blind man who could discover the hoop that
looked as round as round to be awry, was hardly like to run in much
peril of fish bones; not to speak of the warning being superfluous from
the fact that neither the Burgomaster’s daughter nor the Burgomaster’s
guest had the appetite of a fly.
“You’re eating nothing, Master Dasipodius,” said Niklaus, preparing for
a second onslaught.
“It’s delicious,” said Dasipodius.
“Ay; its her doing,” proudly returned his host, “the stuffing.”
“Mistress Sabina’s housewifery is a proverb,” bowed the mathematician.
“Eh, well, you certainly might have a worse little woman to manage your
domestic arrangements for you, than my——”
“Master Dasipodius has no wine, father,” interrupted the house mistress.
“A thousand pardons! Well, not a bit more fish? Then I hope you’re
saving yourself for this roedeer. Heh! how do you find it? Done to a
turn. Ha! professor, you’re a clever man, but not all your science can
reach to such work as this. It’s the women who rule the roast after
all, ha! ha! ha! But you haven’t set lips yet to my Burgundy, and I
want your opinion on it. Three years’ vintage. Just in its perfection
to my thinking. Hold it to the light. Clear as rubies, eh? and I’ll
warrant you’ll say you never saw——”
“Father!” murmured Sabina in distressful reproach.
“Bless my soul!” mumbled Niklaus, administering castigation to his
own head with the knuckles of his clenched hand. “I say I’ll warrant
you wouldn’t taste finer Burgundy if you were to sup with the Emperor
himself. Come, drink, professor, drink! I don’t hold far with Master
Luther and his fid-fads; but where he hangs on fast by the good old
doctrines, he has a trick of putting them well. Dost remember——
“‘May you have wine and——’
How does it go, child?”
“I—forget,” fibbed Sabina, blushing rosy red; “and it is a silly rhyme,
and Master Luther was a heretic.”
“Ay, but he could bellow well, could that Wittenberg bull,” persisted
Niklaus, “and—and—what the plague comes next?”
“‘Maiden’s kiss,’” prompted Dasipodius.
“Ay, ay, to be sure.
“‘May you have wine and maiden’s kiss;
And your good nag, I wish him this
Of corn, an endless litter,
Who loves not women, wine, and song——’”
trolled on the Burgomaster, making up the deficiencies which for the
third or fourth time had occurred in his own glass, and replenishing
his guest’s—
“‘——Wine and song;
That man’s a fool his whole life long,
Says Doctor Martin Luther.’
Come, Sabina, little one, mind the advice of this doctor for once,
double-dyed king of the pestilent heretics though he was; and if you
won’t eat—is it the heat I wonder has stolen your appetite? For the
life of me, I can’t find it touches mine. I’m as hungry as that good
hunter must have been who brought down this roe deer. Sometimes I do
think, Master Dasipodius, that my girl’s appetite must have been made
over to me to take care of for her. She doesn’t eat enough to keep up
a sparrow’s strength; and something or other’s played the mischief——”
“Father!”
“The very mischief with her pink roses. Doesn’t it strike you——”
“Father!” pleaded the girl in an agonized whisper.
“Since last you saw her——”
“It is my misfortune,” coldly interrupted his guest, “to be unable to
judge of these things.”
“And,” murmured Sabina, “all that can be of no consequence to Master
Dasipodius.”
“I ask your pardon, Mistress von Steinbach; I am very sorry if anything
ails you,” said he.
“Nothing ails me, Master Dasipodius, and my father is mistaken—quite. I
was never better in my life. To-night is—a little—a little oppressive,
that’s all,” and rising abruptly from her seat, she went to the window,
and threw the pane wide open, then half seated, half leaning on its
broad oaken sill, she gazed down with eyes that saw as little as those
of the man near her, into the courtyard.
“Ay, do you mark now, professor?” said Niklaus with a half smile.
“Weather, weather, it’s always the weather with the women. Never was
such a scapegoat as your clerk of the weather. Your east winds and west
winds never come to them right, come how they may; and whether it’s a
woman’s dress don’t sit trim enough to her waist, or the pasty’s turned
out heavy, or her sweetheart’s changed his mind——”
“Father!”
“Or what not, it’s always the same tale. Ha! ha! there, never mind,
little maid, never mind, let your old father have his joke out,” and
seating himself in his arm-chair beside her, Niklaus took the girl’s
little clenched hand and stroked and patted it. “Ah well, well,” he
added, turning with a mock groan on his guest, “the best way’s never to
turn paterfamilias, Master Dasipodius, and then you’ll never——”
“Mistress von Steinbach,” interrupted Dasipodius, “promised to give us
some music.”
“Ay, so she did. Do you hear, Sabina? Sing, dear child, and let it
be that pretty little song I heard you humming to yourself all alone
last night in the twilight; only I chanced to be at the open casement
yonder. Shall it be that one, yes?”
“N—not that one, Väterle,” objected Sabina.
“Why not?” demanded Niklaus. “It was the daintiest ditty I think I
ever heard, though I don’t say I haven’t heard many a merrier one; but
there, sing it, child, I’ve taken a fancy for it. Come.”
She rose, and with tremulous hands took the virginal, a gorgeous
instrument resplendent with gilding and garnets and onyx stones; but
alas! it was shamefully dusty. “Half an inch thick,” as the Burgomaster
said, flecking and polishing it with his soft silk handkerchief.
“Tell’s a tale of not having been played upon, the saints know for how
long! So, that’s right. Now,” and settling himself comfortably, Niklaus
sat proudly watching the little fingers as they touched the low sad
prelude to her song. “How did it begin?”
“It didn’t begin, Väterle; and it didn’t end,” she said, faintly
smiling. “It’s only a scrap.”
“Begin in the middle then,” laughed Niklaus. “Something about a tear, I
recall that.”
“And yet I know——”
sang she:
“And yet I know one word of thine;
One simple heart-warm tear of mine,
Might bring us both the bliss divine.”
“Ay, ay, that’s it,” said Niklaus softly. “‘Bliss divine.’ Go on.”
“That simple word can ne’er be said;
That priceless tear may not be shed.
Must two hearts die down chill and dead?
Up through this keen fierce trial fire!
Thine abnegation bears thee higher,
Towards the height of thy desire.
Oh love so lost and so profaned,
Oh love through mightier love attained
Pure love, true love, for ever gained!”
“A bit doleful, eh, professor?” said the Burgomaster; “but a brave
ditty too, to my thinking. And—what now, Hans?” he demanded of a
servant who just then entered.
“Two persons desiring to speak a word with you, Burgomaster, I was
bidden to say,” explained Hans.