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.