A DILEMMA.
The brass key which Radegund had entrusted to him! Gretchen at once
recognized it from a description Otto had once given her of it, or
rather of its original, which hung on Prudentius’ girdle; but the
exquisite modelling and repoussé work of Master Wenzel Jamitzer’s
own hands was to her all one with the copy’s coarser lines, and she
recognized it by the _W. J._ on the neck which formed an important part
of the design.
“Now what is to be done?” cogitated she, looking at the thing as it lay
on her open palm, and mentally seeing Otto when he should discover his
loss. “He’s been having it to go in and out about the Horologe with;
and when he finds it out—perhaps he will at once—perhaps he’ll come
back.”
Enraptured at the possibility, Gretchen waited as long as she dared.
Longer. Half-an-hour was her extremest tether of time, and when at
last she reached home, she had to submit to a sound rating from Syndic
Tobias, for her loitering ways generally; and this especial hideous
wasting of precious time. Certainly her adventure did bring about
quite five minutes’ delay of dinner; and that catastrophe made the
spark, igniting the seething wrath of the head of the house into its
threatened outburst. The first rush found vent in an embargo upon
Gretchen against leaving the house for—how long he did not vouchsafe to
explain—under the awful penalty of never entering it again. “Three or
four days at least; and that reminds me,” thundered on he, having first
summoned every member of the establishment into his dread presence.
“Understand once and for all, that after the first stroke of midday on
Monday, not a creature of you all stirs from this house till Wednesday
at the same hour. I will have no precious eyes contaminated, no state
of grace under my supervision, imperilled by their vain and frivolous
vanities. Time was,” he continued, upturning his little eyes, “that I
had looked to see the Horologe inaugurated with much fasting; and that
the first duty its hands would have found to do would have been the
telling off of a delivery of a Christian-like discourse of improving
length and the spending of the previous night season in much watching
and pious contemplation; but the woman of Babylon sits once again in
the high places, and all our sackcloth and groanings are turned into
scarlet and fine linen, and fiddling. Surely I repent me sorely of
ever having put a finger to the thing,” went on the Syndic with marked
feeling; “and now it is in vain that I lift up my hands and my voice
against it, and cry Woe! woe! for they heed not. But I may restrain
my household from the paths of destruction; and therefore I say unto
you,” shrieked Tobias, bringing his clenched hand noisily down on the
chair back forming his temporary rostrum, and glowering at the scared
faces before him, “that he, or she—emphatically _she_, I repeat,” and
his piercing glance sought Gretchen, standing sullenly withdrawn into
an uttermost corner; “for is it not the poor weak female sex which is
Satan’s easiest prey in the matter of looking out of window?—he or
she who shall dare to lift a curtain, or peep through a chink of this
house’s closed shutters, after my hands have bolted them at sundown,
or sets foot after that hour outside my doors, shall never enter them
again!”
Having delivered himself of which overwhelming threat, the Syndic went
on to intimate that whatever the existing larder supply might afford,
must suffice for the garrison’s victualling till the Horological
orgies should be ended; and that indeed entire abstention from eating
and drinking would best become them all. Then before dismissing the
trembling convention, he explained that as far as he himself was
concerned, he should possibly spend all Monday night in the company
of certain Christian-minded persons, who—and then the Syndic paused
modestly. Well it was not for him to say how those hours would be
spent; it sufficed to remind them all that while half the world was
wrapped in sleep, the other half kept watch. And early on the Tuesday
morning, he trusted to return safe and refreshed to their bosoms. Upon
which aspiration, Tobias Hackernagel hung up his Damocles’ sword well
in the family sight, and the last faint hope of getting so much as a
glimpse of the show faded.
With dire dismay, Gretchen contemplated the state of siege under
which the household was about to be put; and she passed the whole
seventy-five minutes occupied by Master Peter Bakkerzeel’s discourse
next morning on the deceits of the flesh, in cudgelling her brains
for some way of restoring Otto his lost property. Ideas of disobeying
the veto on leaving the house rose to her mind only to be dismissed
as futile, and fraught with immense possibilities of mischief, even
supposing her father’s vigilance could be eluded. The only two places
where she was sure of finding Otto were the Dial and his own home; and
to seek him at the one would be to bring upon his devoted head, and
her own, a shower of witticisms from his companions of the studio,
which might jeopardize her scarcely cemented happiness past all mending
again, for Otto never was a friend to amusement initiated at his
expense. To search him out at his own house was, if possible, a worse
proceeding still; since besides that personally she stood in awe of
his imperious sister, she knew that Radegund’s power of ingress to and
egress from the Cathedral, lay in this identical key; and having a dim
and hazy perception of the real position of affairs, she dreaded any
possibility of dragging her careless Corydon into some terrible scrape
by any misplaced zeal on her part.
Turning from this Gordian tangle of difficulty, she strove to grapple
with that other problem—what could be taking her father away from his
own house on the night when, by his own showing, it behoved every
godly-minded person to be fast indoors? It was all very well for him
to proclaim pious intentions, but it seemed none the less strange to
Gretchen that he should elect to absent himself at such a time; and in
brief, knowing her father’s aptitude for fitting spiritual to temporal
needs, and his unscrupulous genius for making, when hard driven, the
former subserve the latter, vague suspicion of what he might be bent
upon was fed by the recollection of the miraculous friendliness which
he had seemed to be evincing towards Prudentius. And so, while Master
Bakkerzeel pounded away at the heads of his discourse, there came a
strange fixed thoughtfulness over the girl’s face, which deepened into
lines of strong resolution, till Otto, could he have seen her, would
barely have recognized his trembling, tearful love of yesterday; and
her hand sought that key lying against her heart with a nervous firm
clutch, as if indeed it were a treasure to love and guard to the death.
At least if the thing was actually and figuratively a weight and
a burden, yet what an untold consolation it was too, lying rigid
and hard against her heart! How lately it had lain nestled away in
Otto’s perfumed pockets! she felt a sort of fearful delight in her
acquisition, linking his fortune after a fashion, as it did, with
hers. It lightened her cruel sense of isolation; she was eternally
pressing the precious treasure closer, to make sure it had not melted
into thin air, until the amiable sisters, interchanging volleys of
significant nods and becks, affected solicitude as to whether she had
not been suddenly smitten with cardiac affection; and then took to
wondering in audible asides, what Otto von Steinbach could possibly be
doing with himself all this long while? and really for their parts, if
they had such lovers—why really! and if men made themselves so scarce
before marriage, why it was a nice prospect for afterwards—_und so
weiter_,—_und so weiter_.
* * * * *
Meantime Otto, after parting from Gretchen, had put in an appearance at
the studio, and occupied in all good earnest the whole day, remained
in happy unconsciousness of his loss. Only when rather late in the
evening he turned the corner of the episcopal palace, the remembrance
of his unfulfilled commission flashed across him; and he came to a
momentary halt before the great gates, to consider whether he should
turn in and give up the key, or carry it back to Radegund with that
piece of his fraternal counsel he had concocted so bravely in the
morning. Against this alternative was to be set the sharp reprimand
which would inevitably fall upon his feather head, when Radegund
should come to know of his neglect; while, on the other hand, as he
contemplated those hated walls from this near view, he could not
dismiss the memory of that time when they had held him in vile durance
for three good hours. So between Scylla and Charybdis he stood, with
his hands thrust into the pockets of his trunk hose, vaguely fumbling
for the key into their uttermost depths, but coming upon nothing
besides a shrivelled plum, and a sticky sprinkling of marchpane crumbs,
with a large piece of which delectable stuff the diplomatic Sabina had
on the previous morning strengthened her arguments.
Momentarily startled at finding his fingers did not come immediately
in contact with the object of his search, he quickly recovered his
composure on recollecting that it was not in those nether garments, but
in the shallow breast pocket, whence the corner of his gossamer cambric
handkerchief was wont to peep so distractingly forth, that he had put
it, but—Aller Teufel!—not the ghost of a key is to be found there now.
With a chill turning him gooseflesh from top to toe, that sultry summer
night, his trembling hands tore the pocket inside out, but to a dead
certainty it was not there.
Slapping himself all over in his forlorn hope that it had slipped
through some torn lining, and even going the length of taking off his
shoes and thrusting his fingers into their toes, Otto collapsed at last
in despair, the short curly hair of his head bristling with dismay,
and his eyes roundly staring into space in the agonized endeavour
to collect his thoughts. So absorbed was he in the magnitude of his
mishap, that only the clear gentle “By your good leave, my son,” of
Bishop John, desiring to cross his own threshold, restored the unhappy
man’s outward perceptions.
Hurriedly removing his cap as he started aside, Otto would have fled,
but my lord further remarked that it was a fine evening, and promised
well for Tuesday; and Otto stammeringly acquiesced, letting his eyes,
as he did so, wildly seek every corner of the Platz, in some vague
desperate hope of escape from the benevolent gaze fixed on him.
“Good night, my lord,” at last he said, driven to desperation.
“Good night. By the way,” called the Bishop after him, “Otto von
Steinbach.”
“Did you speak, my lord?” said the miserable creature, forced to face
round.
“Yes I did. About that key?”
“What—wh—what key, my lord?” faltered Otto.
“The postern key to the cathedral I lent your sister some time since. I
sent to her this morning to say I wanted it back. It has not reached me
yet.”
“N—no, my lord? I—I believe—I fancy—that is I think—my sister——”
“Just so. Tell her from me, will you, that on second thoughts I do not
want it”—Otto breathed again—“and that I prefer she should keep it
until after Tuesday. You understand me?”
“Oh yes, my lord.”
“She might be requiring it again in——”
“In a hurry, my lord, yes.”
“Precisely; and—here, here! are your legs made of quicksilver that
you’re in such a tremendous hurry to be off?—tell Mistress Radegund,
with my good wishes, that it will be impossible for me to come and
speak with her as we had arranged; but that Wednesday noon will be time
enough, if that will suit her. Think you it will?”
“Oh, much better, my lord,” answered the interiorally rejoicing Otto.
“I am overwhelmed for the next day or two with matters demanding my
immediate attention.”
“I am sure you are, my lord.”
“The Horologe fills all our hands for us, eh?” smiled the Bishop.
“Good-night, my son, Benedicite, and fair dreams.” Then he passed in
and shut the gate.
Bishop John’s gentle valediction was not realized for Otto; his
slumbers were haunted that night by frightful visions, amid whose
chaotic mists loomed, brazen and fiend-like, a gigantic key with a
pale face and a huge nose. Never since he had shifted the Horologe
responsibilities had he been so plagued; and at daybreak he awoke with
a shriek and a start, for somehow the thing had grown and lengthened
out into a monstrous gliding reptile, winding in and out of the
Horologe, until the whole structure fell crushed to powder in its slimy
coils. Then, hopelessly awake, he lay for hours tormenting his brain
for some clue to the manner in which he had lost his precious charge.
And long before the city was astir, he was down by the river, searching
every inch of the path between the town gate and the scene of his
rendezvous. But alas! no key was to be found. The long dewy grass waved
in the early morning breeze, the birds twittered their glad salves to
the risen sun, and the geese slowly sailing up alongside of him, making
their toilettes as they came, quacked him a placid “Good morning,
gossip,” as if in the whole wide world was no such thing as worry and
bother.
“It’s dropped in there,” groaned the wretched Otto to himself, glaring
into the amber shallows. “I remember now how I kept close alongside
here, chasing that idiot of a water-rat ever so far, and it shook out
of my pocket here; that’s about the long and short of it. And if it is
so,” he went on, combing his hair up on end with all his ten fingers,
“why then, first as last, I had as well be lying along with it.” Then
he went home to breakfast.
“You did my bidding, dear boy, about that key?” Radegund asked, as she
seated herself at the table with him; “I could not ask you last night;
I was tired out, and went to bed directly that woman had gone.”
“She’s not a beauty,” said Otto, finding in her Serenity of
Rumpelpuppenschnarchenstein a loophole for changing the conversation.
“What does she want to be painted for?”
“It’s always the ugly ones who like dabbling most in that sort of
thing. And the key, Otto, was it all right?”
First taking measures, with the assistance of the venison pasty, to put
himself beyond all power of verbal response, Otto intimated by a wag of
his head that she need not worry about that.
“You saw my lord himself?”
“Of course I did,” replied Otto, quickly disposing of his bonne bouche;
“and he told me to tell you, Radegund, that it was not a bit of use
your bothering to see him until Wednesday at the very earliest. He
hasn’t got an instant to spare, he says.”
“Very well,” acquiesced she, “that must do.”
“I say, Radegund,” said the respited sinner, and indicating with his
fork a richly embroidered purple velvet gown thrown across a couch,
“that’s never what you’re going to wear on Tuesday.”
“Why not?” she asked listlessly; “it’s good enough, isn’t it?”
“Oh hang it, trust you for that always, Radegund. But the colour, my
dear, it will make you look like a corpse. You’ve grown so pale lately,
horridly.”
“Have I?” she said, smiling a little; “certainly I never did look to
you for flattery, dear child.”
“Oh no, I never flatter. That sort of thing’s an abomination to me.
Only yesterday Gret—ahem, a friend of mine was saying that was one of
my great charms.”
“What is your great charm, dear?” asked his sister, rousing from the
reverie into which she had fallen.
“Oh, upon my honour, Radegund, you’ve grown frightfully dense lately!
I do think you must be ill or something. Nay, no—but you are not? only
bothered a little perhaps—yes?” and his tones softened into genuine
solicitude. “Is anything bothering you, dear girl?”
“What should bother me?” she said irritably. “It’s hateful to be asked
such foolish questions; mind your own concerns, child.” And while Otto
proceeded to cut himself another wedge of pasty, she rose and began to
pace the floor like some caged creature; then suddenly coming to a halt
beside him, and placing one arm about his neck, she smoothed back the
clustering curls. “Otto dear, forgive me,” she pleaded humbly.
“Oh ay, all right, Radegund,” replied he good-temperedly, and carrying
on his ravages among the edibles. “It’s all right, I understand. I
know,” he went on, as she looked into his face with startled enquiry,
“how confoundedly cross things will persist in going; and as soon as
one thing’s got a little right, another—I say, don’t cry about it
though, Radegund,” for a tear has fallen on his upturned forehead, from
the dark eyes that look too aridly brilliant for any such grateful
moisture; “don’t do that. I can’t stand any more, I say, don’t, there’s
a dear girl. I can’t bear to see a woman cry, somehow; it does worry me
so awfully; and what with Gretchen yesterday, and now——”
“Gretchen!” interrupted Radegund, brushing away her tears; “you have
been seeing her again?”
“Yes, I have,” sturdily replied he, reddening to his eartips; “and
I’ve—I’ve made it straight again with her.”
“But——”
“Now don’t begin asking me how, because I shan’t—I mean I can’t, tell
you, upon my honour I can’t. It’s all Sabina’s doing, not mine. She
would insist upon it, don’t you see; and—there, come now, Radegund,
don’t be angry, and ask me to upset it all again, because I won’t be
bothered any more about it. What’s done should never be undone; and
people may say what they like, and laugh till they split, and—and all
that sort of thing, but I mean to stick to Gretchen, there!” And he
conclusively pushed back his plate.
“I am not angry, child,” she said gently. “I am very glad. I have come
to think Gretchen Hackernagel is a good woman, and loves you truly.”
“Oh, no end.”
“And will make you an honest faithful wife.”
“Of course.”
“And be a good mother to your children.”
“Oh come! I say now, Radegund,” interrupted the blushing Otto, “how you
do go ahead to be sure, when once you begin!”
“Do I?” smiled Radegund. “Well, well, and I see her taking good care
of you, and keeping you out of mischief, Otto, I am very glad Gretchen
Hackernagel——”
“Gretchen,” interrupted Otto; “why the mischief must you always be
tacking on her hideous surname?”
“Gretchen, then, is to be your wife. And give her,” and Radegund bent
and lovingly kissed the young man’s cheek, “give her this from me. Your
lips will make it sweet to her,” she added, smiling with a wistful
unwonted tenderness, and gathering up, as she passed, the obnoxious
gala garment, she went out.