“MOTIVE POWER.”
The sacristan’s fat fingers closed upon the bribe; and without more
ado, he conducted the Anabaptist into the nave of the Cathedral,
preceding him in the direction of the Chapel of St. Thomas.
Within a few yards of it, Prudentius, turning to address his companion,
observed that his hat still decorated his head. Irritated out of his
ordinary serenity by the irreverence, the sacristan assisted in its
removal by a light but vigorous upward tip. “You’ve forgot your hat,
friend,” he said, and the thing fell, and rolled forward some distance.
Nettled by the practical reproof, Tobias stooped to recover his
property; but blinded by angry haste, his foot came in contact with
the broad low step of an old monumental tomb, and tripping up, he fell
sprawling his length against its painted alabaster cornice work, whose
once glowing gold and crimson colour was dulled now by age. Some jagged
marks and indentations in the tomb’s surface indicated that it had at
some time borne an effigy of its dead resting below; but at the present
moment only a sculptured cushion lay at its upper end.
“The foul fiend seize you!” snarled Tobias, glaring at the tomb, and
rubbing his bruised shins, “for the popish whited sepulchre you are!
Breaking honest folks bones like that!”
“Hush! sh—sh!” whispered Prudentius in awe-stricken tones. “For blessed
Mary’s sake, mind what you’re saying—hereabouts! ’Tis the tomb of
Mistress Sabina von Steinbach that—the saints help us! what are you
staring at?—her I mean that was old Erwin the architect’s daughter; not
our little Lily, God bless her, and long days to her.”
“Ah, the dead Mistress Sabina von Steinbach.”
“Ay, if so be that she is honestly dead. But I don’t know, I don’t
know. She walks, Master Syndic, she _walks_!” and though it was broad
July daylight, the sacristan glanced cautiously over his shoulder.
“Walks!” echoed Tobias.
“Yes, yes; gets up when the clock strikes midnight, and goes rambling
all over the place. You don’t know where you mayn’t come upon her.
There’s not a hole nor a corner you’re safe from her in, after dark.
It’s awful. ’Tis said she does no more than just sit up a bit and turn
this stone pillow here,” and Prudentius laid his hand gingerly on the
cushion with its delicately sculptured broidered passementerie, “and go
to sleep again; but those who say that haven’t got to be all alone in
this great place at all hours; and I should hope I may be allowed to
know best.”
“My good friend, this is sheer superstition on your part, believe me,”
said Tobias, shifting his ground a pace or two further from the tomb.
“Lamentable superstition.”
“Is it?” said Prudentius. “Is it? I’d just like you to be in my frock.
Ay, you may well shudder and turn up your eyes—in my frock, one of
these fine nights; a moonlight one’s the time for it—and you’d soon
see.”
The Syndic smiled an indulgent smile.
“Oh, grin, grin, as much as you please,” said Prudentius, wagging his
head indignantly. “Any ape can do that. But it’s as true as the Holy
Gospels; and it’s been worse, mind you, ever since the Horologe has
been adoing; and we’ve had Mistress Radegund von Steinbach about the
place.”
“And how,” said Hackernagel, not without interest, “do you account for
that?”
“Eh? easy enough. She’s of the same sort, don’t you see,” explained
Prudentius in confidential _sotto voce_; “and when she dies, it’s my
belief there’ll be two of ’em. Oh—hu! I wouldn’t be sacristan here
if anything was to happen to Mistress Radegund von Steinbach, for my
weight in gold. It’s too awful to think of even,” and there were tears
in the sacristan’s voice. “I’ve begged my lord times out of number to
lay the poor thing——”
“Mistress Radegund?”
“No, her—her that _was_ Mistress Sabina, with bell, book and candle;
and what does he do but pats me on the back, and say it’s all nonsense?
But you see, my lord isn’t in here shutting up after dark like me.”
“But where,” asked the Syndic, eyeing the tomb’s surface with
increasing curiosity, “may she be now? Not walking at this time of
day?”
“Don’t jest, Master Tobias,” shudderingly pleaded Prudentius. “No,
heaven forbid! they’re mending her, that’s all. Her nose was completely
worn out, and both her two poor arms were broken, and you couldn’t
see her neck for cracks; and they were going to patch her up here on
the spot, but my lord said she’d best be taken away bodily, and made
a good job of first as last, and so there she is in Master Rudel the
sculptor’s studio; and to-morrow the painted and gold work here’s to be
touched up; and it’s all to be spick and span by Saint Laurence’s if
possible; but Master Rudel won’t promise; she wants such a deal doing
to.”
“And does Mistress Sabina ‘walk’ now her graven image is not here?”
enquired the Syndic with pardonable curiosity.
“Not to my knowledge. No, I fancy not. Ever since they’ve had her at
the studio, there’s been more peace and quietness here than I’ve known
for many a day; but then Mistress Radegund von Steinbach took herself
off a week or two back. She finished her painting work then; and rare
and beautiful it is,” continued Prudentius, passing under the screening
canvas and setting his companion at a standpoint for viewing the whole
thing to the best advantage. “Oh, I’d give the archfiend his due; rare
and beautiful it is. Say if it isn’t.”
To the sacristan’s sore disappointment and indignation, Hackernagel
hardly vouchsafed even a superficial glance at the Clock’s external
glories, excepting indeed to glower at the cock atop of the pinnacle;
and looking towards the rear of the case, carelessly observed that it
was all a piece of vanity, whose worth had better have been given to
the poor.
“Maybe it finds more favour in the Lord’s eyes than in yours, Master
Tobias,” returned the offended Prudentius, “like a certain box of
spikenard we know of, did. If you don’t like it, why——”
“My friend,” interrupted Tobias, hastening to repair the breach, “you
misapprehend me.”
“Ah well,” magnanimously replied Prudentius, “that’s an old bone to
pick over; but while the good God’s made the sort of creatures of us we
are, it’s one, I take it, we Catholics have got the fleshy end of.”
“I beg your pardon, spiritual——”
“Ah, leave it alone, man, leave it alone,” hurriedly cried the
sacristan, not ambitious of being discovered by any stray member of
the Cathedral Chapter engaged in polemical disputation, or indeed in
any _tête-à-tête_ whatsoever with the Anabaptist; and he hastened to
conduct Hackernagel round to the back of the huge case. “Maybe you’re
like my lord, and have a turn for insides. Mind! mind! mind!” he added
in sudden affright, for scarcely had he opened the small door shutting
in the dark chamber, with all its vast network of chains and wheels and
pulleys, than half the Syndic’s body was thrust inside. “Oh, thou dear
Heaven!” he groaned, tugging vigorously at the tail of Hackernagel’s
gown; “and his nose such a long one too!”
“My good friend,” reassuringly smiled Tobias, forced for his raiment’s
sake to yield, “I can take care of myself. I should have come to no
harm.”
“Ay, ay, but the Horologe might,” said Prudentius with a sigh of
relief; “and then what would become of me?”
“What do you mean—to insinuate?” demanded the Syndic, paling to
greenish white.
“Oh, no offence, Master Hackernagel, none in the world; but for my
part, I hardly dare so much as look at it; it does put me in such a
twitter always for fear the whole thing should go off in a whirr—r—r—.
Mind, now do, Master Tobias,” implored Prudentius, for once more the
Syndic’s head was inside the case.
“I presume,” he said with a leisurely air, “that all this marvellously
interesting mechanism is mere chaos to you?”
“Oh dear yes,” replied Prudentius, who interpreted this term with
which he now for the first time made acquaintance, into a convertible
expression for child’s play; “I’ve got it all at my fingers’ ends as
one may say.”
“Indeed?” said Tobias. “Really so?”
“Dear me, yes,” and the sacristan’s air was a faultless reproduction of
Tobias’ own. “I could tell you the primary wheels, and the secondary
wheels; I can indicate to you the links connecting the inferior with
the superior mechanism; I can explain the superficies——”
“Can you now?”
“Yes,” chatted on the sacristan; “but it’s nothing, Master Syndic,
nothing but what a man enjoying the opportunities I have, ought to
be able to do. I have, I hope, picked up my poor crumb or two of
scientific knowledge. Only last week, for example, I had the privilege
of shedding light on the Professor Dasipodius’ explanations of all
these different interior pieces to my Lord Bishop.”
“Shedding light?”
“Yes, I held the candle, while Master Dasipodius pointed them out to my
lord.”
“Ah! that was excessively interesting. Now this great chain for
example, that passes down from the top there, and coils round this
windlass I have my hand on——”
“And if you’ll be so good as take it off I should be glad,” said the
sacristan. “If you’ll only keep your distance, I’ll explain what you
please.”
With smiling alacrity the Syndic obeyed.
“You see,” went on Prudentius, “that’s not what you fancy, Master
Hackernagel.”
“Not what I fancy?” loftily demanded Tobias.
“No, you flatter yourself you’ve hit the mark there. You think you’ve
got the right pig by the ear, because it’s the biggest thing you can
see. That’s a general error with the vulgar.”
“What!” fumed Tobias.
“I say that’s a sort of notion of the uninitiated,” said Prudentius,
gliding as well as his pursy little physique permitted, into the calm
deliberate manner of Dasipodius; “but this windlass here has next to no
connection with the main artery—as one may term it—of the Horologe.
If, let us say, for sake of argument, you were to be having a fancy for
cutting this chain——”
“Heaven forbid!” shudderingly ejaculated Tobias; “but as you say,
friend, for the sake of argument?”
“Why then, as sure as you stand there, the whole concern would come
down with a rattling clatter, and dash your brains out; but it wouldn’t
do any mischief worth speaking of. No, no, Master Hackernagel,
here’d be your spot for that. See;” and with intense circumspection,
Prudentius pointed towards a disk of burnished metal, pierced in its
centre by a grooved cylinder, round which was coiled a chain of such
fine delicately-fashioned links, that in the semi-darkness of the case,
it was only visible on near examination.
“I see something,” began Hackernagel, peering close.
“Mind how you look,” cautioned the sacristan. “Well, Syndic
Hackernagel, that something as you express it is called by
a—ahem—a—technical expression, which you would not understand if I were
to say it,” hurried on Prudentius, whose memory ran short of the big
word characterising it. “No matter, you see the chain?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Now, carry your eye upward, good. You follow it?”
“Not far,” said Tobias, straining his pale little eyes to agonized
intentness.
“That doesn’t matter, it’s there all the same; and it goes up and up,
and in and out, that fine dear little chain, through all these great
lumbering cogs and weights and levers and things, till at last it comes
to the wheel that is fixed just behind the crown wheel, at the back
of the hour dial; and there you observe a tiny metal cylinder catches
it, and assists it to pass on to—h’m—h’m—the Saints know where, and
you’d never follow me, if I were to explain all night—touching in its
progress a certain vertical axis, which in its turn meets a second
upright spindle.”
“How excessively interesting!”
“Yes, oh I could tell you a great deal; if I had leisure.”
“I’m sure you could; but as you were observing, if——”
“Ah yes, if you wanted to be playing the devil with it all——”
“My friend! my friend!” remonstrated the Syndic, “you employ such
strong terms!”
“Science does,” said Prudentius, elbowing the Syndic aside, and
banging to the door of the case. “She calls a spade a spade; and if my
technical mode of expression is over your head, why, I can’t help that,
Syndic. I suppose nobody will pick a crow with you, because you don’t
know everything.”
“Oh but I do, I did—I followed every syllable of your explanation. It
was most lucid; and as to that exquisite little chain, you mean to
say——”
“I mean to say, Master Hackernagel,” said Prudentius in mollified, but
solemn accents, “cut that little chain, and good-bye to the Horologe.”
“You don’t say so,” gasped Tobias. “It is past my comprehension!”
“Ay, like enough; but it’s as true as it is that the breath would be
out of your body if the hangman were to wring your neck. Didn’t I hear
the Professor Dasipodius making it all clear as ink the other day to
my lord? ‘The whole organism, my lord,’ says he, ‘would be totally
destroyed.’ ’Twouldn’t run far short of murder itself so to speak,
would it, Syndic?”
“Murder!” said the Syndic, “murder! the silencing of a stock and stone
like that?”
“’Twould go near to being the death of the Professor Dasipodius, I
take it; and, let alone any damage to this,” went on the sacristan,
striking his fist affectionately on the clock’s panels, “he’d be a bold
coward who’d show himself in Strassburg streets after he’d offered a
hair’s-breadth of vexation to our professor—now.”
“You’d better put him in a glass case at once,” sneered the Syndic.