“LADY’S LEAP CORNER.”
“Sabina!”
Some one whispered her name? Nay, how foolish! What was it but the
rustling of the leaves against the open casement panes? Pray Heaven
this threatening storm——
“Sabina von Steinbach!”
Hush! a voice, and unmistakably a human one; a woman’s whispering
voice! The girl’s heart stood still, and lifting her head from her
pillowing arms, she listened.
“Sabina! child, speak. Are you there?”
Chilled with terror, Sabina rose to her feet. The quick, impatient
utterance so vividly recalled to her that other summons which had
dispelled her brief dream of love. And as once again this one is
repeated, through the open window there fell upon the trailing skirts
of her dress a little shower of pebbles and dry leaves, and then a
face, with tangled hair and gleaming, eager eyes, stared in upon her
through the parted tendrils.
A sigh of relief escaped the startled girl. Not this time the dusky
tresses and great dark eyes of Cousin Radegund, but the red locks and
pale, half-scared glances of Syndic Hackernagel’s daughter!
“Gretchen!” cried Sabina, flying to the window, and affrightedly
grasping the wrists of the two slender hands clutching at the sill,
“for Heaven’s sake—you’ll fall!”
“Nay,” hurriedly answered the girl, “my feet touch firmly enough on the
coping here.”
“Wait an instant,” returned the amazed Sabina, still retaining a tight
grip with one hand on one of her strange visitor’s, while with the
other she reached up to unclasp the oriel’s entire division, “and I
will help you to pull yourself in.”
“Have you the courage,” challenged the other with a low hysterical
laugh, “to pull yourself out?”
“Nay now, for shame,” rebuked the mistress of the house, unconsciously
relaxing her hold. “Are you mad? why should I do such a thing?”
“Well,” gaspingly returned Gretchen, tightening her grip, “as you will.
Only, if you love him, as I think——”
“Him?”
“Ay, Conrad Dasipodius.”
“Gretchen?”
“Do you love him? Do you indeed?” and keenly and scrutinizingly
Gretchen’s eyes peered up into those gazing down all bewildered into
hers. “Swear it. Ay?”
“Heaven knows I do.”
“As I know now, Sabina dear,” returned Gretchen, with a smile and a
sigh of deep, unalloyed content, as though the result of her scrutiny
had brought her all, or even more than she sought. “So, listen then:
there is mischief hatching against him. Do you understand?” she panted
on; “mischief—murder—I know not what.”
“Murder!” gasped the girl.
“Ay, perhaps. Some foul play in any case. And he—my father—oh Sabina!”
“Your father?”
“Hush—sh! If he knew I was here now, he’d kill me. Child—hush—I
dare not stay; I must get home—home before he comes, to find
out——Listen, he, this man,” she hurried on in hoarse rapid whispers,
“has—stolen—from Prudentius the sacristan, the key—of the—Saint
Thomas Chapel. I saw him do it—Hush then—to do what? I don’t know.
Only for some treachery it must be, and—can let himself—don’t you
understand?—let himself in by the postern—just whenever it suits him.
And so, too, can I. See here, my—my girl—so can I! See here!”
And with a low stifled sob of laughter, clinging on by elbows and left
hand to the ledge, she contrived to pluck from her bosom a small brass
key, and flung it at Sabina’s feet; “and so may you. That opens it too.
A duplicate key.”
“But—” began the amazed Sabina, picking it up.
“Ah! does it matter how I’ve come by it. Honestly though, let me
tell you, honestly. Take it, child—take it, and—use it, as—you will.
I—I thought I would rather have died than parted with it; but your
need—and—and his, it is so great. And Sabina—child—you have been
good—to me; and—ah Heaven! the lightning!—and your heart is true,
I—I think; and there is not an instant—not one, to lose. Heaven help
you—I—I can—do no more.”
The bleeding fingers relax, leaving, as they slip away, an ugly smear
on the stone ledge. A destructive creaking and crashing among the
vine trails, a crunching rattle of loosened mortar, a brief silence,
then a thud on the path below, a broken bough or two, a dark, shadowy
figure rushing with noiseless, stumbling haste along the silent street,
a long low thunder-growl, and then is all as still as becomes the
Burgomaster’s excellently guarded habitation.
Only the brazen key in Sabina’s hand, only the blood marks of the
hand upon the window-sill, left to tell her the whole thing is not a
delusion of her brain; nothing besides, save the remembrance of the
earnestness of that white, scared face.
“Not an instant to lose! oh, Heaven! Dear father! and you not here—not
here to help me!” cried the girl, wringing her hands. “Not an instant
to lose if—now,” and flinging herself on her knees upon the Prie-Dieu;
“God help me then, and He alone, for I go!”
Not staying to lay aside her rich dress, never a thought of her
sparkling head gear, one instant for dragging down a large fur-lined,
cloth mantle, a comfortable providing of Niklaus for her against rainy
days, and carefully letting it fall from the window on to the wall
below; then springing lightly to the broad window seat, she gathered
her trailing skirts close round her, and prepared to descend.
In after days people would gaze curiously up at that window; and the
angle of the wall it overhung was for many a generation after called
“Lady’s Leap Corner”. It was held to be a miracle how Sabina came,
as she did, with never so much as a bruise to the ground. Gretchen
Hackernagel, who did the feat before her, halted, poor thing, like
a lame hen for weeks after; but the slender fragile lily came off
scatheless. Some romantic folks were fond of saying that it was because
love, who laughs at locksmiths, lent her feet wings; but natural
evolutionary law was less outraged than may at first sight appear,
inasmuch as Sabina was acquainted with every corner and curve of
her beautiful window; and times out of number, when little, naughty
daughter of Eve that she was, she had slipped down on to the wall after
the rosy apples bobbing so seductively almost within arm’s length. Here
it was that poor Gretchen had come to grief; but Sabina boldly trusting
herself to the old apple tree’s firm friendly arms, comes safely up on
the topmost zig-zag of the wall’s cornice, and so to the broader one
below; now only one more, and she is landed firm between the tall prick
ears of the great stone lion’s head glaring out of his circular niche,
barely four feet from the ground. Letting the faithful apple branches
fly upward now, and gripping with both hands the leonine ears, she
swings down to terra firma. Now for the cloak—ay, wrap it well round,
child, gather close under it the sheeny dress, for the perils of the
way are but beginning!
With ears strung to catching the echo of a fly’s footsteps she stands
to listen.
Not a sound. Strassburg, for its silence, might be a city of the dead.
Holy Virgin! What lightning flashes! Think of the storm that must be
rending the mountains now; and the thunder so near; kind angels, so
near it must be—hush! all still again, and dark. Now. And fleet and
light as a doe she speeds down the street.
What about Hunx? Grandly the lofty silhouette of the cathedral’s
façade rises before her through the shadows cast by the huge lanterns
swinging in mid street from their ropes. How near and yet so far lies
her goal; and involuntarily her hold fastens tighter and tighter
about the precious key as she nears Hunx’s hateful watchbox; and what
a joy to catch, when still she is some yards from it, the rhythmical
proclamation of his profound somnolency!
With cat-like tread she prepares to steal past, but hark! hark! Voices!
Gracious powers protect her! Her very heart throbs loud enough to
betray her. Like a creature at bay, she turns, seeking refuge, and
there is none, save only the shelter of the space between the wall and
Hunx’s watchbox. Almost better face the worst than such a perilous
sanctuary! but danger threatens yonder for the man she loves; and—and
“there is not an instant to lose”. Not an instant—hush—help her now,
thou dear, dear Heaven! Thou— Clit-clat over the stones, and her
father’s cheery voice, harmonising its deep basso with the clear gentle
accents of Bruno Wolkenberg.
Friends! Friends if ever friends were, and her first impulse is to
spring forward, but the second chains her fast; for a confusion of
footsteps tells her they are not alone; and to blazen out the secret
of her mission so might be death to the man she is flying to save. In
a minute they will all be past; and with stifled breath she crouches
shrinking in her hiding-place.
“And for my part,” Niklaus is saying, as foremost of the little group
he nears the street corner, “for my part—Bless my soul! what sort of
a guardian now of the city’s safety do you call that?” he demands,
veering sharp round, half-vexedly, half good-humouredly, and pointing
with his stick at the slumbering Hunx. “Before he’d waken we might all
be burned in our beds! Well, well; but as I was saying, Dr. Bruno,
I can’t say I see anything so surprising in it myself. Such a rare
willing horse as Dasipodius is, you know. He’s done up. That’s the long
and short of it. He’ll be better to-morrow after a night’s rest. And he
didn’t downright complain of anything, did he?”
“I suppose he’d die before he’d ever do that,” answered Wolkenberg.
“It’s the last straw that breaks the camel’s back,” growled the voice
of Isaac Habrecht.
“Yes,” said the Burgomaster, “and that confounded Horologe——”
“I cannot think it had anything to do with the Horologe,” said Bruno
in musing tones. “Don’t you know not half-an-hour before he had been
saying so cheerily that the thing was ready as a bride on her marriage
morning; and that there was nothing to do now but to step in first
thing just before the doors were opened to-morrow, and set it ready for
going.”
“Ay, truly. So he did,” said a voice which was strange to Sabina. “And
we were all as comfortable as could be, weren’t we, till”—the speaker
hemmed and hesitated—“till——”
“Till—out with it, man. Don’t mind me,” said Niklaus, “till that
kill-joy niece of mine spoiled the sport with her messages. What the
mischief could she be wanting with him at such an unconscionable
time? Never look to Mistress Radegund von Steinbach for teaching the
proprieties. Oh, no offence, Dr. Bruno; not a bit of it. Only women
are such deucedly queer creatures. Aren’t they? Such odd contrasts, as
one may say. When I think now of that little girl of mine, safe and
snug—God bless her—in her bed, hours upon hours ago, and then—By Jove!
how his face haunts me! I can’t get it out of my mind. Like a ghost’s,
wasn’t it?”
“So pale and weary,” sighed Kaspar Habrecht’s clear young voice.
“Bidding us good-night like a man in a dream.”
“I never saw him so strangely moved,” murmured Bruno.
“Ay, once he was near to it,” said Isaac. “Don’t you remember, Dr.
Wolkenberg, when they wanted to steal his plans, after that piece of
devilry—Hark! Some one is calling.”
“Otto von Steinbach!” cried Bruno in a startled voice, and the group
turned enquiringly on the wild hatless figure flying towards them.
“Bruno! dear Bruno!” gasped he. “Quick! quick! for God’s sake!
Radegund, my sister——”
“What now?” irascibly demanded the Burgomaster, bringing his stick down
heavily on the stones. “What now?”
“Oh! I don’t know! I don’t know!” distractedly sobbed the young man.
“We have just found her stretched like dead!”
“Dead!”
“No—no, God forbid! She is breathing. Oh, Bruno——”
But already Bruno Wolkenberg is disappearing through the wide open
flung door of the artist’s house, where lights are flitting to and fro,
and signs of sudden confusion are manifesting.
“Positively!” ejaculated the Burgomaster, gazing after his nephew, who
has followed close on Bruno’s wake. “And past eleven o’clock! What
the hangman does she mean by it? Ill is she? If she’d gone to bed and
got her rest like other decent maidens, it wouldn’t have happened, I
suppose.” And bidding the others good-night, Niklaus turned, and at a
more leisurely pace crossed the Platz to learn how it fared with his
niece.