ST. STEPHEN’S TOWER.
When Otto von Steinbach reached the St. Stephen’s Tower, he found
his Ariadne gone. Calmly consoling himself with the reflection that
to-morrow would do just as well, he went home again; and after
some little beating about the bush, informed his sister that he
had determined on mending the breach between himself and Gretchen
Hackernagel; at the first blush of which piece of intelligence,
Radegund was inclined to be angry; but the natural generosity of her
soon asserted itself, whispering that the course was the only right
one, and “at least, poor child,” as she said, “there will be one heart
with a little peace in it again.” Otto, however, said he didn’t know
so much about that, and that, turn it how you might, right it would
never be. How was it possible, for example, that Tobias Hackernagel
would tolerate a son-in-law who refused to enter his house; and enter
it, the young man swore to himself, no powers natural or supernatural,
nor the two combined, should induce him. Their meetings would, as a
consequence, have to be _sub rosâ_ ones; and altogether, take it at its
best, it was an awful nuisance; but then he had promised Sabina, and
come what may, a fellow must stick to his promise.
On being pressed by Radegund touching his suddenly conceived abhorrence
of Tobias Hackernagel, Otto first grew furious, and then falling fathom
deep into sulky silence, he finally betook himself to bed, where
only he felt secure from further cross-questioning. Next morning,
being the Saturday preceding the all-important Tuesday, he, fearing
to be importuned afresh, made a desperate attempt to get out of the
house before his sister showed herself; but she detecting him in very
_flagrante delicto_, dragged him back into the hall, and placing in
his hand a key, desired him to carry it across, and deliver it to the
Bishop, “and to my lord himself mind; and no one else,” adjured she.
“He has just sent for it.”
“If it is so particular,” crossly returned Otto, “why on earth don’t
you do it yourself?”
“Because,” returned she, “it is impossible for me to leave the house
just now. The Countess of Rumpelpuppelschnarchenstein is waiting in my
studio to begin a sitting, and she’s frowning thunderbolts already,
because I begged her to excuse me for an instant. So run now, Otto,
there’s a dear boy.”
But Otto did not run; he dawdled at snail’s pace across the Platz,
keeping up a grumbling commentary as he went. “I don’t half like the
job,” he soliloquized, “and what’s more, I shan’t do it. That place,”
and he glowered up at the massive stone walls of the Episcopal Palace,
“always gives one the notion of a prison; as if one mightn’t get out
again if one once got in. And then, my lord—well, Radegund may admire
him, but he’s got such a deuce of a way of looking one through and
through, as if—no, thank you. Besides, it’s not at all the proper sort
of way of giving up such an important trust. It’s informal, unbusiness
like, wretchedly unbusiness like. These women never do have any head
for that kind of thing. Wasn’t it my lord himself who delivered it
into her hands? and isn’t it she who ought to give it him back, her
own self? Of course, of course. It’s only my duty to point out to her
that it is her clear duty; hers and nobody else’s, certainly nobody
else’s. And as to his wanting it in such a hurry, that’s absurd.” And
Otto glanced towards the wide-open cathedral doors. “He can get in half
a dozen ways if he wants. And anyhow, when I come back will be time
enough, and to spare. No.”
And the ultimatum arrived at, Otto slipping the key into the breast
pocket of his doublet, walked on with the speed of a tortoise in the
direction of the river.
To-day crowned his quest, and he found Gretchen at the very spot
Sabina had indicated. The delicate mission he came on he accomplished
entirely to his own satisfaction, and with an ease that astonished even
himself. That Gretchen would refuse to receive him back into her good
graces, had not crossed his calculations for an instant; on that point
he was confident favour and prejudice would for once be on his side.
His great anxiety was that Gretchen should feel herself through and
through impressed and suffocatingly impregnated with the magnitude of
the sacrifice he was making. The selfishness which is part and parcel
of vacillating natures was Otto’s in abundance. He had, for example,
thought little of playing that sorry trick on his blind chief, which
had brought about such an evil, and involved himself so unpleasantly,
all because he happened to be annoyed at a few rebukeful words which,
after all, he richly deserved for his negligence. His careless head had
never calculated consequences, or indeed troubled itself to imagine
there could be any; but from a deliberately mean act, such as Tobias
Hackernagel had laid bare as the matured growth of his miserable little
soul, the young man’s nature instinctively shrank; and to shake off
everlastingly the poor scape-goat Gretchen, and wipe the dust of the
house of Hackernagel from his feet, had been not his first impulse
only, but the course he would have clung to and persisted in, had he
been left to his own devices. Against it had of course arisen that
difficulty of carrying his defection off bravely before the world. He
had been yesterday very near to making a clean breast of his whole
dilemma to Sabina; but for once he had held firm to his resolve, and
contrived to keep his own secret; not assuredly out of any compassion
for Hackernagel, but, though he hardly guessed it himself, from some
latent feeling of pity for the fair fame of Hackernagel’s daughters,
and especially for her whom he had at least distinguished by asking to
be his wife, dimly cognizant of the unpleasant truth that a stigma upon
her would in some sort besmirch himself. Understanding so thoroughly as
he did the conditions of Gretchen’s life, he was not disturbed by the
least fear that, all woman though she was, she would breathe a syllable
of that disgraceful encounter of which she had made herself witness.
And now, being driven into patching up a peace with Gretchen, there
was, as he affectionately remarked to her during their stolen meeting,
nothing left but to “make the best of it; and you are a good girl,
Gretchen, I do believe that, though you—oh come, don’t keep on crying
so, you know, don’t, I say.”
The poor girl’s happy tears, however, would rain so thick and fast,
that the breast of his brand new dove-coloured doublet got all wetted
and stained with them, and was obliged to be sent to the tailor’s next
day to get a fresh piece let in.
“You are a good girl,” he said, dragging from his breast pocket the end
of a wisp of gossamer he called his pocket handkerchief, and rubbing at
the marks. “A very good girl, and not a bit your rascally old father’s
daughter. And your mother must have been a good woman, and was, I
know, of high and gentle blood; else, my dear, Otto von Steinbach would
never have had anything more to say to you, be sure of it. No, not for
fifty Sabinas.”
“Sabina?” echoed Gretchen, looking up with suspicious eyes through her
tears into her lover’s face. “And what has she——”
“Oh, ah! h’m—yes,” said he, pulling the ends of his moustache with his
disengaged hand. “I—don’t you see—I happened to meet her yesterday
morning when—when I was hunting about after you, Gretchen; and we
just exchanged a word or two, she and I; and among other trifles she
happened to say she had seen you, Gretchen.”
“Yes, yes?”
“Ah well, and she’s an odd sort of girl, very odd, Sabina von
Steinbach. I’ve always told you she is; and—and pretty, eh? Yes?”
“That’s a matter of taste. Handsome is as handsome does,” tartly
enunciated his sweetheart.
“Then,” blurted Otto, “by that rule you should think her beautiful as
an angel, my dear; for if she had not told me you were breaking your
heart because—well, because you had not happened to have seen me this
last day or two, I was quite of two minds whether I should have come
looking you up just to-day. Quite of two minds.”
“I was as happy as a queen without you,” fibbed Gretchen. “Sabina
von Steinbach knew nothing at all about it; and I took pretty good
care to tell her she didn’t,” she pouted on with a toss of her head.
“What should she understand, I should like to know, about true love? A
coquette of a thing like her! playing fast and loose as she does with a
gentleman of Master Dasipodius’ sort.”
“Nay, now, Gretchen——”
“Oh, don’t tell me, sir. You’re as bad as all the rest of them, making
such a ridiculous fuss about her. Oh, yes of course, she’s a saint, an
angel, isn’t she? She can’t do wrong, no. Not even when she plays the
jilt and——”
“Be silent, Gretchen!” sternly commanded Otto; “you know nothing about
that. I do perhaps.”
“Oh, of course you do,” retorted the jealous Gretchen. “Anyhow you
think you do.”
“Just that,” nodded he. “I’ve got my reasons, and I don’t mind telling
you I think what I think,” and Sir Oracle looked volumes.
“Oh,” said Gretchen, pursing her lips.
“And I think,” blundered on the provoked lover, “that Sabina von
Steinbach loves Conrad Dasipodius every bit as dearly as—well—as you
love me, Gretchen.”
And to shield himself from any awkward consequences of the frankly
expressed opinion, Otto bent his head and imprinted a kiss on the lips
that were near; and though they flouted and pouted terrifically, they
made not the faintest effort to elude the salute.
“That won’t reach far then,” purred she with a smile that made her
ordinary face beautiful; and then shyly stealing a glance at her
handsome lover, she gazed up into the sailing sun-gilded clouds
overhead, and silently wondered what the dear Heaven itself could offer
her half so sweet as that moment. “No distance at all.”
“Only somewhere as far as death itself, Gretchen,” said the presuming
creature; “and as much beyond as may be needful, eh, my girl?”
“Do you think that?” demanded she, rousing from her blissful dream and
looking fixedly and thoughtfully into Otto’s face, as if some new light
had suddenly broken in upon her. “Do you think that, indeed, indeed?”
“By my honour I do,” he said earnestly.
“But can you swear to it?”
“I tell you I think. Isn’t that enough? And by the Mass! something
too much. So keep a silent tongue in that head of yours, do you hear,
Gretchen? I won’t have tittle-tattle. Do you hear, I say?”
She nodded.
“So, and now good-bye, child. Goodness knows when I shall see you
again. One of these fine days, I daresay. There now, there”—for still
she clung to him fast—“I must go, I must indeed. What if your father
should find us here! I say, you know, Gretchen!” remonstrated he.
“I shouldn’t care,” she smiled rapturously.
“Oh, but I should just. Come,” and he wrested from her fingers the
doublet they had drawn quite out of its elegant pleats, and set it in
order again, and patted down its gay passementerie. “Be a good child,
and don’t grizzle. Listen now, if you can get out without a chance of
being seen, safe and certain mind, I’ll meet you here again—let me
think—Wednesday morning. There now, what do you say to that?”
“And this Saturday!” was her slow whimpering comment.
“Well, look now, I’m so awfully busy, don’t you see. Tuesday the
Horologe day. I shall hardly have an instant to breathe till that’s
over. Dasipodius is so everlastingly wanting my opinion about this,
that, and the other; and I’m due over and over again at the Dial now.
And look, see, Gretchen, you wait here, don’t stir an inch, till you
think I’m well into town. Yes? It’ll never do for us two to be seen
anywhere near each other. I shouldn’t like it at all.”
“It’s so hard for you to be ashamed of me,” she said sadly.
“Oh, well, it—no, hang it, don’t say that, Gretchen. I’m not exactly
that. But—I might be prouder of you certainly. That is to say, of
course—well, you know, devil take it! I must be off, I must indeed.”
And breaking from her, and blowing her a kiss from his finger tips, he
was soon out of sight, whistling as he went; for he was pleased with
the noble and disinterested manner in which he had comported himself.
And she stood watching her lover’s receding figure until the windings
of the way hid him from her eyes. Then she sat down upon the bank
to revel for a few stolen moments in the ecstasy of her recovered
happiness. For her there is sunlight again now upon the river, and the
sky is translucent with Heaven’s own azure. The long grass and the
wayside flowers rustle and flutter so cheerily in the light noonday
breeze (which for the last day or two has sprung up a little stormily
perhaps), as if they were whispering all together of the tryst they
have just witnessed; and then presently the restless frolicsome
element, with a “hush! hush! yes, that’s good news,” saucily stoops
till it sweeps the very ground, parting the tall grass blades to their
stems, and next instant is out in mid stream, dancing with the river
wavelets; but it has not been quicker than Gretchen Hackernagel’s eyes,
which have caught sight of something shining in the grass under the
sunlight rays like molten gold.
“He has dropped one of his beautiful rings,” murmured Gretchen, rising
to pick the thing up. “But no, it’s too big for that. Is it perhaps his
golden crucifix?”
Neither the one nor the other. It was the key!