“OH DARK, DARK, DARK, WITHOUT ALL HOPE OF DAY!”
It was a sad day for the monks of Saint Thomas, when they bore their
brother to his quiet grave in the little grass-grown God’s-acre
attached to their chapel. The Bishop and his chapter had offered a
prouder resting-place, in the glorious cathedral itself, for the body
of the dead mathematician; but like Saint Swithin, Chretei Herlin had
begged that he might be laid only “where the bright dews glisten, and
the rains of heaven fall”.
When the last wreath of flowers, white as the snow which was falling,
had been reverently laid on the lowly mound, and each of all that
crowd, lately gathered about the grave, had gone down again to his
world, ecclesiastical or secular, Conrad Dasipodius lingered on there
alone. Alone! his heart yearned bitterly towards the good friend who
had gone from him—for friend, in that word’s fullest and completest
sense, the monk had always been to him. It had been he who had tended
and fostered the earliest germ of the boy’s talent, until the bright
blossom had begun to burst forth; and then he had striven to place
it before the eyes of men, that they too might look on its great
excellence, else perchance it might in its too great modesty, have
blushed on unseen amid surrounding mediocrity, and Strassburg would
have left unrecorded the mathematician’s name in her long list of
illustrious children. Still, however much disposed to admire, the world
is so utterly incapable of that sympathy, that reflection as it were
of a man’s own soul in the being of another, which goes so far towards
the perfecting of real friendship; for this, Dasipodius had been alone
able to turn to Chretei Herlin. Whenever some bold new thought had
flashed across his brain, it had not seemed to be thoroughly and truly
his own, until he had shared it with Father Chretei; and often indeed
the sunlight of the old man’s profound knowledge and long experience
had illumined and matured the conceptions of his pupil. But now Father
Chretei was dead, and all that free interchange of thought must cease
for ever; and who might replace the dead?
Moreover, Conrad’s very superiority isolated him in the midst of his
fellow craftsmen; it was declared on all sides, both by those who
understood such matters, and by those who did not, that Professor
Dasipodius was their leading mathematician, and for such an one to
betray ordinary humanity’s weakness, for such an one to appear to be
yearning for sympathy, much more for encouragement, would have been
to cast him from his reputation’s newly-earned niche for ever. No,
Conrad Dasipodius had to pay the penalty of fame; and yet he did stand
especially in need of sympathy and counsel, just at that time when the
only one who could have entered into his perplexities had been taken
from him. Just at that crisis when, above all other turning points in
his life, he most needed an adviser.
“And yet,” he murmured to himself, “it is as well mayhap, it would
have been a grief to Father Chretei; and after all, he could have done
nothing for me. Ah! what—who can do anything for me? Great God! What
crime have I committed that Thou shouldst visit me thus? Can it be
indeed, as some would have us believe, that I have pried too deeply
into Thy mighty secrets? No, no! for it is Thou Thyself Who hast bidden
us increase our talents tenfold; and yet ere this—my one poor gift is
ripe—Thou wouldst take from me all—all. Oh! if I might but come to thee
again, Father Chretei. Now, before this world grows dark, quite, quite
dark to me! Is there no mercy, no pity left in Heaven? Let me die now,
Father Chretei—Father Chretei! My God, to think that it must come!”
The mathematician flung himself on the newly-made grave, and gripped
the cold, hard snow in a frenzy of grief and despair. His hair fell
trailing along the ground, and his slender frame seemed almost rent
asunder with bursting sobs; while those grand, earnest eyes—not alone
little Sabina’s dearest pride, but the admiration of all who looked on
their marvellous intelligence and brilliancy, were dim, grievously dim,
with tears of bitterest mental anguish. It is always terrible to see a
man weep, and to weep like this! The good Strassburgers would certainly
have not recognised their calm, stately Professor Dasipodius in this
despairing figure outstretched on the monk’s snow-covered grave.
The hours passed, and still the young man lay all unheeding there;
heat or cold seemed alike to him, for he had but one haunting miserable
thought that shut out all sensation of aught else, and no comforting
word came to bid him go home and take heart again, only the longer he
thought, the deeper grew his despair, and athwart its utter darkness
shone no gleam of consolation. Darkness within—without; darkness
everywhere, and for evermore!
Noon had long since come and gone. The brilliant clearness of the
winter day had already faded, and a few snowflakes began noiselessly
to light amid the folds of the mathematician’s long black cloak. The
candles burning in the chapel for the departed monk, began to glimmer
out more brightly through the windows, and presently the brethren of
St. Thomas passed in winding procession up the narrow pathway towards
the little edifice, where they were going to sing the Vespers for the
Dead; but Chretei Herlin’s grave lay some yards off the beaten path,
and none of the monks chanced to see Dasipodius.
“REQUIEM ÆTERNAM DONA EIS DOMINE, ET LUX PERPETUA LUCEAT EIS,”
sounded their antiphon gently through the crisp frosty air upon
Conrad’s ear.
“AMEN!” assented the response; but if blessed Mother Mary herself had
stood by his side then, and whispered, “Peace,” he would have said,
“There is no peace,” and thought she mocked him.
“Conrad Dasipodius!” said a voice.
If the mathematician heard, he recked not to answer. “Conrad
Dasipodius, what do you here?” now asked the voice, and unquestionably
it was a woman’s voice.
Then Dasipodius stirred and roused himself to look up, and as he
looked, he passingly wondered how long he must have lain there: for it
seemed to have grown so dark, and he could only discern the faintest
outlines of a woman’s dress and figure.
“Do you not know me, Master Dasipodius? You cannot see me?” said the
woman. “It is I—Radegund.”
“Radegund—Radegund von Steinbach?” asked he, “and alone here at this
hour?” Then he strove to rise upon his feet, but a sudden giddiness
seized him, and a pain, sharp as a dagger-thrust, shot through his
forehead, and all faint and cramped with the cold, he had great
difficulty in recovering himself. “You have been belated,” he said
presently; “you will let me see you safe home again, Mistress Radegund?”
Smiling with something of a patronising air, the woman replied, “Nay,
our ways are not the same; besides I do not fear, and it is none so
late.”
“It must be near five of the clock,” returned Dasipodius.
“Why, ’tis not yet four,” she answered, scanning his countenance
curiously.
“Then are we to have another snowstorm; for it grows dark as night?”
The woman came closer to him now, and ventured to peer still more
searchingly into his face. “Cannot you see me, Master Dasipodius?”
asked she.
He started slightly. “See you? Oh yes, certainly; I can see the
outlines of your gown—quite plainly. Yet, pardon me,” he added,
recovering something of his natural manner, “that makes it but the
clearer to me, that it is time for fair ladies to be safe indoors.”
But Radegund vouchsafed no answer; her piercing black eyes only
scrutinized his face more eagerly than ever. “Cannot you see me,
indeed?” she asked.
“_Heilige Maria!_ No, I say, not clearly. How should I? Am I a cat,
that I should see in the dark?” he said, with an impatient laugh.
“But indeed, Master Dasipodius,” persisted she, “it is none so dark.”
The flush which had risen to the mathematician’s pale cheek when he had
first found himself observed, died quite out now, and was succeeded by
an ashy paleness. “Not dark? not dark?” he faltered uneasily.
“No, the sun is not yet set. It is none so dark,” said Radegund, in
clear hard monotone; then she waited, calmly silent.
“Not dark?” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Nay, but you are jesting? Oh!
Radegund, do not trifle with me,” pleaded the mathematician, wildly
clasping his hands across his eyes.
“Do I ever trifle?” she asked, proudly drawing herself to her full
height; then she added in a slow, clear, hard voice—“Conrad Dasipodius,
I know your secret; I came here to tell you I knew it—You are blind!”
“Blind!”
The mathematician, stretching out his hands with an imploring gesture,
staggered forward; Radegund would have caught him in her arms, but he
thrust her aside, and fell once more with a heavy groan on the grave.
“REQUIEM ÆTERNAM DONA EIS DOMINE, ET LUX PERPETUA DONA EIS,”
came the antiphon from the chapel.
“AMEN!” was the solemn response.