“THERE COULD NOT BE GREATER LOVE THAN THIS.”
It is towards evening. Such poor show of merrymaking as has been
attempted throughout the day has dwindled into silence. There is to
be no banqueting, no dancing, no fireworks. With one consent all such
junketings have been set aside. People wending homewards through the
Munster-gasse step softly, casting, as they go, mute enquiring glances
up at the windows of Burgomaster Niklaus’ house, fearfully asking each
other what news? and go their ways with the scanty consolation that it
is only not the worst.
Consciousness, but not speech, has returned; and for days to come
life and death must hang in the balance. Such is Surgeon Wolkenberg’s
bulletin; and to those who hold her life dearer than their own, he
can offer no more comfort than that the knife has not touched a
vital part. The wound is a flesh wound only; but the end of all its
supervening fever and weakness “who can foretell?” says the truthful
Bruno, feeling that any false gloss would be worse than mockery. Then
having said his worst, he speaks of the hope that lies in her healthy
young life.
In across the old dining-hall the setting sun casts long shadows,
firing to dazzling red the needleful of golden thread Sabina left
half-stitched into her tapestry work last night. A score of suchlike
trifles speak of her. The open virginal, the hooded scarf thrown across
a chairback, the smart ribbon round Mitte’s neck, tied on last night in
anticipation of this day. A little bedraggled and out of gear is that
ribbon now, with the poor creature’s wanderings to and fro in search
of her lost mistress; and her dismal mewings and the clock ticking up
in its dark corner are the only sounds which have broken the silence
for hours past. Their ceaseless monotony has grown unendurable to the
Burgomaster, where like one gradually wakening from some fearful dream
he sits waiting; and with a sudden impetuous start he rises from his
chair, and, crossing the floor, lifts his arms to arrest the hands of
the clock. But some sudden thought, call it a memory rather, checks
him; a memory of how, so many a time, when she was no more than a
toddling baby, he had lifted her up in his arms to see the great,
quaint, friendly eyes goggling in their sockets, and how proud he
always was to think she was not afraid, but delighted hugely in the
broad, round, brazen face; and so the thing had come to be a sort of
companion to her young life’s many lonely hours. “‘Wait-tic, wait-tac,’
it always says, Väterle, when you are away you know;” she would often
say; “it preaches one patience better than fifty sermons. Dear old
thing! do you hear it?—‘Wait-tic, wait-tac,’ ever so plain!”
Of all inanimate things, if inanimate it could be called, Sabina best
loved that clock.
And to stay it now would be like sacrilege. Moreover, some vague
superstitious dread of doing so comes flashing across Niklaus’ mind,
and the respited clock burrs on—Wait-tic, wait-tac.
The despotic Bruno has banished Niklaus from the sick chamber, where
he has so piteously pleaded for leave to remain. It is best, the
surgeon says, since any excitement of recognition which would come
with restored consciousness might prove fatal; and Niklaus, sadly
acquiescing, thinks of the girl’s dead mother, and how only hired women
servants tend his darling now. Well, well, hired though they be, could
mother or sisters more entirely love the little housemistress than they
do? And when his sister Ottilie, for whom a messenger has been sent in
hot haste, arrives from her Freiburg convent, it is only because the
good nun’s nursing skill is perfection itself that she can be preferred
to those already watching.
Niklaus’ banishment increases his anguish tenfold; but the terrible
time is not passed solitarily. Hours ago there came to his gates one
with the agony of living death upon his face craving a moment’s speech
with Dr. Wolkenberg; and Niklaus, hearing his voice, has gone out, and,
silently taking the speaker by the hand, has led him into the house,
and there, falling upon his breast, has wept out tears which, till
that moment, had seemed ice-bound; but no tears come to relieve the
mortal suffering of the blind man; and Dasipodius’ clear, calm tones
are barely recognisable in that hollow, broken voice, when at last he
essays to speak.
“I would have given my life for her,” he says.
“Ay, ay,” sobs the Burgomaster; “do I not know it?”
“And she—she”—but utterance fails him, and for a while there is
silence, save for the convulsive sobbings of the old man. At last,
gently raising Niklaus’ head, Dasipodius disengages himself from him.
“The sight of me must be hateful to you,” he says, and turns to go; but
the other, looking up, bids him stay.
“She loves you so well,” he said wistfully.
“God forgive me,” groaned Dasipodius; “that I did not——”
“Ay, I know; you need not tell me. There has been some mistake—yes?”
“No mistake, Burgomaster,” sternly replied Dasipodius.
“No?” said Niklaus, gazing with dreamy intentness at his companion.
“Good then. That is well. At least that is well. Because she must love
you so truly, must she not? There could not be greater love than this
that my little child has shown for you. Such sort it was as our Lord
Christ’s love for us all. Ay, sure I am now that she must love you very
dearly, Conrad Dasipodius.”
A tearless sob is the blind man’s only response.
“Surely she does,” meditatively continues Niklaus, “though I—she—— See,
now then, for her sake you will stay. Will you stay, Master Dasipodius?”
And Dasipodius stayed. It seemed to Bruno Wolkenberg, when first he
came upon them thus together, a strange thing that Niklaus appeared to
be finding some sort of comfort in the silent companionship of the very
man who, however innocently, was the source of his unspeakable misery;
but in a vague way he understood it all, and from the depths of his
desolate heart he envied them.
A long interval passed before either spoke again; but at last Niklaus,
lifting his face from where it lay buried in his arms, suddenly
besought of Dasipodius some elucidation of the events they had that
morning lived through. “Tell me,” he said; “I think I could understand
now. I think I might bear it better if I might understand.”
But it was little Dasipodius was able to tell. He knew scarcely more
than those who were hazarding all sort of conjecture outside in the
streets. The only two who were apparently capable of shedding any light
upon the matter were the wretched culprit and his victim, one of whom
lay bereft of speech, while the other seemingly could only be brought
to display any remnant of his marvellous faculty under the persuasive
influence of boot or thumbscrew.
The mathematician could tell no more than that some time between
four or five o’clock in the morning, and soon after the rain had
quite ceased, he had risen with the intention of stepping across to
the cathedral, in order to assure himself that everything about the
Horologe was in perfect train, and to apply a touch of oil to the lower
dial, which, he fancied, did not work quite smoothly.
He had started with the intention of going round to get the key of the
St. Thomas’ Chapel from the Sacristan’s apartments; but reflecting
that Prudentius would, in every probability, be already astir over
his finishing touches inside the cathedral, had concluded that to do
so would be unnecessary, and had therefore made straight for the St.
Thomas’ Chapel, expecting to find its postern open, or, at all events,
unlocked. Close by the chapel’s threshold, Dasipodius had come upon the
two Habrechts, who were on their way to his house, thinking that he
might be wanting their assistance. Having tried the door and found it
locked, the mathematician’s quick ear caught a slight sound within; and
although his two companions, also listening, declared he must mistake,
he had insisted that he did not; and that Prudentius and his assistants
must therefore be already at their work, having entered probably by the
western door. Passing round to the main entrance, they had come upon
Burgomaster von Steinbach returning home from his niece’s house, where
he had been detained, first by anxiety on her account, and subsequently
by the fury of the storm. The Burgomaster had strolled the few steps
back with them, and the little party, on reaching the door, had come up
with Bishop Johan and his chaplain, Master Gottlieb, and an attendant
or two, my lord being in the very act of entering to ascertain whether
Prudentius was yet stirring there; and, if not, as he had a little
anxiously remarked to Gottlieb, “why not?”
No sooner were the heavy doors open than those piercing cries, mingled
with imprecations, appalled their ears, and in a body all had hurried
up the nave in the direction of the Horologe, whence the sounds seemed
to proceed. “And the rest,” concluded Dasipodius, “you know, saw. My
God, which was crueller? To see, or to be as I was then, knowing all,
and helpless—helpless as a child; though her life’s blood was ebbing
away.”
“Do you know, Bruno Wolkenberg,” shivered Niklaus, “that that gown your
scissors have cut strip by strip from my darling is the gala one she
should have worn this morning? That seems to me so strange!”
“Strange indeed,” sadly acquiesced the surgeon. “I too have wondered at
it. How she should—that is, what—what freak, so to say——”
“Freak!” exclaimed Niklaus, with a touch of his wonted fire. “Do you
dare breathe suspicion of my child?”
“Great heavens!” returned Bruno. “Who talked of it? I meant no such
thing.”
“Then choose your words better, Bruno Wolkenberg,” said Dasipodius.
“If I knew how,” stammered the unfortunate surgeon. “I only meant to
say that since women do—take such—such—extraordinary ideas——”
“Some women,” frowned Niklaus. “If my niece, Radegund, now had been
found masquerading—— No, no; I don’t mean that precisely——”
“I trust not, Burgomaster von Steinbach,” interrupted the surgeon,
flushing crimson. “There are some to whom Mistress Radegund’s honour is
very dear.”
“I think my brain is going,” sobbingly broke forth Niklaus. “Did I say
something—something? Ask him to forgive me, Conrad.”
But Bruno gently laid his hand on the old man’s shoulder as he passed
out to return to his watch. Nevertheless those few speculative words he
had let slip did but express the thoughts of the two men keeping their
silent companionship together. It could only be so. How came she there?
How came she there? could but be the refrain of their sad musings.
What concurrence of circumstance had brought her face to face, alone,
at early dawning with Tobias Hackernagel? Such a possibility, however
remote, might still be conceivable of any woman in the city save and
excepting this one—this girl, who always shrank instinctively at the
bare mention of his very name. Yet speculation could but be utter
mockery; and in all the city there did not appear to be a creature able
to afford the faintest clue to the mystery. So with never an answer to
their heart’s unspoken appeal, daylight had faded, and the shadows were
falling apace; and it must have been towards eight in the evening when
a message was brought the Burgomaster that Gretchen Hackernagel desired
to speak with him.
Niklaus looked up frowningly at the sound of the name grown so hateful
to him, and was about emphatically to deny himself to her. “She comes,”
he said, “with some whining plea about that loathsome reptile she calls
father. Her time is ill-chosen,” he added, after a pause, spent in
curbing down some violent emotion—“ill-chosen, tell her.”
“Mistress Hackernagel,” continued the servant, with timorous
pertinacity, “further enquired whether the Professor Dasipodius were
still with you, Burgomaster?”
“Now,” sharply demanded Niklaus, “does she imagine he is likely to push
her suit for her? Bid her pack and begone, for the devil’s baggage she
is.”
“Nay,” interposed the mathematician, “you are wrong, Burgomaster,
Gretchen Hackernagel is a good woman. Many a time I have heard my poor
girl say that of her.”
“Wholesome fruit of a poisonous branch!” harshly returned the
Burgomaster. “No, no, we don’t have miracles now-a-days.”
“At least her trouble is bitter.”
“Can it be like mine—yours?”
“Ay, worse.”
Niklaus lifted his heavy, tear-dimmed eyes, fixing them with puzzled
inquiry on Dasipodius, and as he did so, all their angry glitter died
out. “Bid her come in,” he said. “Now, Mistress,” he continued, when
Gretchen, with pale, scared face, entered, but halting just within the
threshold, not daring to advance, and casting shrinking glances from
one to the other of the two men. “Come, your errand.”
“Will you prefer to be alone, Mistress?” asked Dasipodius, who had
risen on her entrance.
“As you will, Master Dasipodius,” replied she, gathering a little
courage from the gentleness of his tones; “what I have to say is
something—touching her. You best know how far that concerns you;”
and she bent a keen, scrutinising look on the blind man. The faint
flush suffusing his wan cheek appeared to afford her satisfaction and
the encouragement to proceed which she had vainly sought in Niklaus’
face. The characteristics of the two seemed absolutely to have
interchanged: all the Burgomaster’s natural geniality had chilled down
under the weight of his calamity into a stern, sullen gloom, while
the calm, even dignity of the mathematician had acquired a certain
softness, dispelling the sense of awe which, her admiration of him
notwithstanding, Gretchen generally could not help feeling in his
presence. At a less agitated moment Gretchen’s penetration might have
accounted for the anomaly by calling to mind how by one fell blow
Niklaus had been driven and stunned out of all his life’s sunshine;
while in the very valley of the Shadow of Death Dasipodius had come
again upon the treasure which he had believed neither this life nor
any future one could restore to him; and amid all the day’s torture,
that one sweet, bright assurance had spread itself out in his heart,
blessedly as warm sunshine upon frozen deeps, and softening it to
compassion, and even sympathy, for such sort of suffering as the
miserable Gretchen’s. And so gathering courage, simply and clearly as
tears would let her, she told her story, taking to herself neither
blame nor credit for the part she had borne in it. Once only she was
interrupted by Dasipodius demanding why, instead of secretly warning
one poor weak woman, she had not given alarm to the authorities. “What
alarm?” she asked. “What should I have said? What did I know? Think if
I had done that, and after all he—he——”
“Your father?”
She nodded and shivered. “After all he had intended no harm?”
“A man does not steal keys for good,” said Niklaus.
“And—was he not—my father?” she faltered.
“Du Herrgott, Du! Listen to her. Well placed sentiment that, truly!”
scoffed Niklaus. “Because he is the author of Mistress Gretchen
Hackernagel’s being, his devil’s deeds are to be condoned!”
“Nay, Burgomaster,” expostulated Dasipodius.
“Hush!” said Gretchen, turning grateful eyes on him. “Let him
misconstrue me—if he pleases, Master Dasipodius. Perhaps it is more
seemly that he should.”
“Untruth can never be seemly, Mistress Hackernagel,” returned the
mathematician. “Be frank.”
“If your father’s child can be,” frowned Niklaus.
“Oh! if I had never been born! If I had never been born!” wailed she.
“Speak! Your reasons!” thundered the Burgomaster. “Can you not speak?”
“Because I feared him then. From my soul I feared him,” she cried,
wringing her hands. “Because if he had come to know how I stole out
last night and watched him, he would have murdered me where I stood.
Would to God he had! Oh, would that he had! What is my life to me?
Who cares? Oh! would to God I lay where she does now. Where she does
now!” and in an agony of grief the girl fell prone at Niklaus’ feet. He
turned stonily away.
“Will you go home?” said Dasipodius, approaching and gently raising her.
“Home?” echoed she, wildly pressing her trembling fingers against her
dazed eyes. “Is that what you call home? Home, where Otto, he who was
mine once, said he would never enter again? Home,” and bursting into a
fit of hysterical laughter, she started to her feet. “Oh, but I know
a better! An ever so much better one! The green grass waves there,
and it shines clear, and soft, and beautiful, and bright. Oh, yes,
yes. Water is cold.” And she stared down shudderingly at the stained
and bedraggled garments she still wore. “Cruel cold! death cold. But
once—long ago—or was it the other day? No; long ago—years it must have
been—he spoke so kindly to me there. ‘You’re a good girl, Gretchen,’ he
said; and if—if— Ah! home! Yes, yes, let me go—home, Master Dasipodius!”
But Dasipodius held her fast by the wrists, and after a faint,
ineffectual resistance, she let them fall nervelessly. “And it was of
her he talked,” she went on in rapid tones, “and how she—yes, I would
have died to do her ever so little a service, I thought, and I— Oh,
God! See what’s come of it! See what’s come of it! If they break me on
the wheel, ’twill be too good for the wretch I am!” And she sank upon
her knees. “And yet—oh, let me speak. Conrad Dasipodius—Burgomaster, if
your hearts have any grain of pity, let me—if I—if I— Do you know why
I have come here?” she cried, clutching Dasipodius by the arm. “Do you
know what mad thought brings me? Do you know?”
“Have you not said?”
“No, no. Not that. Not that. It was because—because— Listen what a
mad, mad hope it was. I thought they might let me be with her. Do you
understand? I would dress and tend that cruel wound so skilfully. Oh,
but I could. Ask Dr. Bruno if I could not. Dr. Bruno knows what I can
do. Many a time he has praised my skill at the _Kranken-haus_, where
they brought the wounded soldiers last year, and said my hands put his
to shame. Master Dasipodius, she should not die, if I might be with
her. I would not let her. Do you hear what I say? I would not let her
die.”
And with clasped hands, she turned from one to the other; but Niklaus
stood as though he neither heard nor saw her; and Dasipodius shook his
head, and said: “My poor child, it cannot be”.
She turned from him despairing, and dragged herself to the
Burgomaster’s side, pleading there, as if she were pleading for her own
doom’s respite, but he shook her coldly off. “Go, go,” he said. “The
very sight of you is poison.”
“They told me,” said Bruno Wolkenberg, putting his head in at the door,
“that Gretchen Hackernagel was here.”
“Ay, ay,” cried she, starting up, a ray of hope breaking across her
face.
“Who wants her?” sternly demanded Niklaus.
“Your daughter, Master von Steinbach.”
“Great Heaven!” groaned the Burgomaster. “If only this awful delirium
might cease! If only she might be conscious.”
“She is so, Burgomaster,” said the Surgeon cheerily. “Has been in her
right mind this half-hour past. And ‘Where’s Gretchen? Gretchen? How
long will Gretchen be?’ she keeps asking unceasingly.”
“Will you go to my little girl, Gretchen Hackernagel?” pleaded the
Burgomaster.