“SPIRITS OF HEALTH, OR GOBLINS DAMN’D?”
Next morning, as usual, Brother Prudentius came to unlock the cathedral
doors. Utterly beyond the power of words would it be to describe the
Sacristan’s horror at finding his domain already occupied by—the ghost!
Sabina—not the living, rosy, comfortable little daughter of Niklaus the
goldsmith, but her terrible ancestress, the two centuries-dead Sabina
von Steinbach. There she—It—stood half way up the nave, shading Its
ghastly face with Its shadowy hand in a haze of bluish green, and the
blood gouts all staining Its flowing white robes. Ah! grisly, fearsome
sight! And Prudentius would have turned and fled, had not a sepulchral
voice called him by his name,—“Prudentius!”
And Prudentius stood all rooted with terror to the spot; then
staggering forward, sank on his knees, not three yards from the
apparition.
“Prudentius! get up; don’t be a fool.”
With quite military promptitude the Sacristan obeyed. If that awful
voice had said: “Prudentius, stand on thy head,” assuredly, had the
encumbrance of the flesh permitted, he would have striven his best to
obey. “Heaven help thee,” continued the voice; “was ever such a craven?
Do you take me for a ghost, that your jaws clatter in that fashion?
Speak, fellow.”
“Pardon—forgive—gracious——” stammered Prudentius, thus adjured; then he
broke down.
“Forgive, yes; you did but your duty, poor wretch; but I warn you not
to attempt ever again to dispute the right of way with Radegund von
Steinbach; do you hear?” and the Artist, for she it was, came near
and sternly measured the breadth and length of the unhappy little
Sacristan. She had stepped into the shadow now, and the mists of his
extremest terror clearing from his eyes, he began to perceive that
the ghastly haze which had enveloped her was but the azure and golden
reflection of those glorious choir windows, in the sunrays, pouring
down on the cathedral floor, and that Radegund von Steinbach and no
ghost stood before him; but the blood-flecks, ah! were they not still
there? Well, the Artist had already been two hours at her task, and
some small patches of vermilion had fallen from her paint-brush on to
her bodice, just as in these days an ink spot or two will now and again
stain the garments or the fingers of careless literary ladies, and at
least that bright red had an advantage in being picturesque.
“And now,” continued Radegund, “leave off mopping and mowing, and get
about your business, as I am doing.” Then she turned and began silently
to survey her morning’s work. It did not strike her that there was
any need for wasting words in explaining to the little Sacristan how
she had succeeded in obtaining the start of him in his own peculiar
hunting-grounds, and Prudentius was himself but too glad to escape
from her on such easy terms to “affairs demanding,” as he hurriedly
explained to her, “immediate attention” right away there in the Ladye
Chapel at the other end of the cathedral. Certainly his mind was
relieved when he found that the ghost was, after all, but the mortal
Radegund von Steinbach; yet only comparatively, for Prudentius stood
in the deepest awe of this dark-eyed handsome woman. That she had
dealings with the supernatural, he never doubted, therefore on these
and many other grounds she was much to be avoided. As to her beauty,
she was not all his style. Beauty indeed; why, was she a morsel like
the widow Hedwig, who always had a chatty word with him, when he went
to cater for his community at her _kraut_ stall. There was beauty if
you like, all plumpness, and wholesomeness, and colour. No angle about
her.
Not a scrap neither, like that sweet little maiden, Niklaus the
Burgomaster’s daughter, who came so regularly every day to tell her
beads up yonder in Saint Laurence’s Chapel, and whom, if he could tell
a cat from a king, Master Dasipodius was so sweet upon. No, Prudentius
was certain that Radegund von Steinbach was uncanny, and he was neither
by any means the only one who thought so. Mother Etzel was saying just
the same only last week, when this Radegund had caught her in the act
of pulling a hair or so out by the roots, from her imp of a child’s
head, for sitting in the middle of the gutter; and there out in the
street, regardless of all appearance, if my haughty madam did not rate
her in such sound fashion, that she was actually driven to promise she
would not do it again, just as if one was not to do as one pleased with
one’s own child! And then, too, when the blind beggar’s clumsy brute of
a dog got his leg broken under the trooper’s horse, if this Radegund,
who hasn’t ever a word to throw at a Christian, didn’t actually kneel
down in the mud, and bind it up with her own hands; and didn’t the
beast keep licking them all the while instead of biting, as it would
have done, if only her flesh had been true Christian flesh. And the leg
healed in no time too, like magic. Like?—it was magic! and now there
was this dog and his idiot of a master ready to worship the ground
she trod. Some folks said Radegund was a genius.—Well, we all know
what that means, genius or witch,—witch or genius, and Mistress von
Steinbach would come to a bad end. Why, you had only to look at her,
to see the devil peeping out at the corners of her eyes—Heaven save us
all! and then Prudentius always shivered and crossed himself, at least
half a dozen times.
But now Radegund had aggravated her offences; she had bewitched the
Bishop. Never before perhaps had such an instance of the frailty
of poor human nature been known. Here was my lord, goodness and
righteousness itself, a man apparently incorruptible, and yet to be
hoodwinked by a woman just because she happened to be able to smarten
up a piece of dirty canvas with paint! It was a sin and a shame, if
ever there was, to see how he had given in to all her whimsies, and
now this getting the run of the cathedral was just of a piece with all
the rest. She had been, as usual, twisting my lord round her little
finger, and lost no time about it neither; and now, if it pleased her,
and of course it would please her, she would be turning night into day.
Yes, there would be Walpurgis night in the place before long, and all
respectable God-fearing folks would be terrified out of their wits. In
such soliloquy the Sacristan relieved his mind, when he had put the
cathedral’s length between himself and the Artist. Then he proceeded
to replenish the stoups with holy water, “for,” said he, “there’ll be
oceans full of it wanted, if this Radegund is to have the run of the
place”.
Time however proved that Radegund was quite content with her own corner
of the cathedral, where stood the outworks of the Horologe. There, by
virtue of her little pass-key, she came and went at her own will, and
never so much as knew whether there was such a personage as the fat
little Sacristan about the precincts at all, and although this put him
sorely out, it was only, he said, of a piece with all the rest of her;
“despising dignities”; and then, too, all things considered, perhaps he
liked it best as it was, and so there ensued an interregnum of perfect
outward serenity, and the great work of the Horologe went prosperously
on.
Conrad Dasipodius also came and went to his work; and to the learned
in horology, the clock’s interior was even more beautiful than
its exterior. Once or twice Sabina and her father had been to the
mathematician’s studio to see the wonderful work, and very pretty
and amusing she thought were all those wheels and chains and shining
brasses which were being gradually knit together into a marvellous
whole; but she liked infinitely better the quaint automata which were
to perform their parts outside. Those were clever things indeed, and
when the artificers, gratified by the pretty little lady’s notice, set
the awkward arms and legs of the puppets into all sorts of wonderful
attitudes for her pleasure, she would clap her hands and cry aloud
with delight: “Oh! but how lovely! and it was you, of course, who
cut out this darling little man’s great nose, and stuck all his five
fingers in so nice and straight?” she said one day to Dasipodius, her
eyes brimming over with pride and admiration.
“Nay, I cannot accredit myself with such sort of skill,” answered the
mathematician; “that is the work of Kaspar Habrecht here,” and he laid
his hand on the boy’s head. But Sabina’s countenance fell: “You seem to
care for those needles and bits of chain, and things, much more than
you do for all these handsome little wooden ladies and gentlemen,” she
said.
“They are dearer to me, certainly,” admitted Dasipodius, with a grave
soft smile; “for these needles, and chains, and wheels are the life and
soul of the Horologe, Mistress Sabina.”
“And what of Radegund’s—my niece’s share in the work?” asked Niklaus.
“She gives us little of her confidence; but you—you have seen—what do
you think of it?”
“My Lord Bishop considers it very admirable so far; and there is not
you know, Burgomaster, a better judge of painting in all the city than
he is.”
“And you,” insisted Niklaus, “what is your own opinion?”
“I am no competent critic,” answered Conrad.
“But,” said Sabina, with a little _moue_, “you can say whether or not
you think it pretty, I suppose?”
“I have scarcely seen it, Mistress,” evaded Conrad; and Sabina was
enchanted with his reply. To her jealous little ears it seemed so
plainly to say: “I do not trouble my head about Radegund and her
doings”.
Yet doubtless in the innocence of that heart of his, which was
all Sabina’s, he would have accorded Radegund’s productions their
well-deserved meed of praise had he been able to see them. But he could
not see them; the magnificent pictures danced before his eyes like
great blots of scarlet and purple, and dazzling yellow, without shape
or outline, just as now the bright farthingale and silver-laced bodice
of his mistress, as she tripped about from bench to bench, made him
giddy; and it was only when her shapely head and neat rounded figure
flitted between himself and the casement, that with an agonising,
although outwardly imperceptible straining of the eye-nerves, he could
distinguish her beloved form from the clumsiest wooden block awaiting
the carver’s chisel in his studio.
Ever since that bitter grief-day, when he lay in the snow on
Chretei Herlin’s grave, Dasipodius had become nearly stone-blind.
There were moments when his vision cleared a little, but that
only made the returning darkness still darker; and yet, with all
their Will-o’-the-wisp cruelty, and false whisperings of hope, the
mathematician was very grateful for these light-flashes, because he
was able to clutch at them as they came, and so to use them, that they
should teach him what to be doing in that future when they should come
no more; for Bruno Wolkenberg, the surgeon, had told him that the hour
must come when they would cease altogether. That time seemed very close
at hand now; for while at first he had had many consecutive minutes
of comparatively clear vision, as the days passed, their angel visits
grew fewer and farther between; but once or twice in a week, and then
one week—two weeks would pass and they came not at all. Still, come or
go, as far as the Clock was concerned, it mattered little enough to
Dasipodius; his nature’s incorruptible honesty would at all hazards
have prompted him to give up the public work he had undertaken, had he
believed that it would have suffered by one hair’s-breadth from any
incapacity consequent on his deprivation; but Dasipodius was no more
incapable of fulfilling his trust now, than he had been in the days
of his perfect eyesight, and never perhaps was the great principle
of compensation more thoroughly demonstrated, than in the blind
mathematician’s case. Nature had but carefully gathered up all the
essence of the one lost sense of sight, to mingle it with the sense of
touch, and to the world no grain of his wondrous power had been lost
by his personal calamity; for with all its alleviations, a calamity it
undoubtedly was. What can blindness be else, even to the dullest, most
insensitive human atomy on the face of the earth? but on such a nature
as the mathematician’s, to which the blue sky, the waving grass, the
glance of his old dog Rappel’s wistful eye, the ripple on the river,
the wings of the dragon-fly glistening in the sun-light, the purple and
golden sheen of a painted window, and all those million sights which
wean the mind from for ever looking inward on miserable or merry self,
spoke so eloquently, the deprivation fell heavily indeed.
Yet who should talk of Heaven being unkind, or life a blank, now
Sabina loved him? Had such a compromise been possible, he would not
have bartered this love of his for a thousand eyes; why then should
he murmur, he whose lot was so immeasurably more blessed than that of
others? Barely even the shadow of a thought that Sabina might love him
the less for his affliction ever came to distress him. On the contrary:
“Had this affliction befallen her, as it has me,” he would argue to
himself, “would that have lessened my love for her? Dear little one!
no, surely;—love is love, and she loves me, that is enough.” And had it
been merely a question between himself and his mistress, he would, in
all thorough trustfulness, have confided to her his sad secret; but on
this same secret hung every question of his future, and of hers. Sabina
was in all things a very woman,—that was perhaps why he so devotedly
loved her—having all the idiosyncracies of a woman; and had he told her
of his blindness, how could he be sure she would not fall a weeping
and lamenting for her lover’s hard destiny, and so let the world know
what he so earnestly desired to keep hidden? Or, refraining from that,
as possibly she might, for Sabina was a brave little heart, she would
nurse her grief, and let concealment “feed on her damask cheek,” until
Niklaus, and he himself—though his own eyes might not see her faded
looks—would be driven distracted about her.
As to objections which the Burgomaster might raise against his
child’s uniting her fortunes with a blind man, he pondered much over
that; and a conflict had arisen in his heart, as to whether honour
and his boundless love for her did not urge him to give her up; but
that curious mingling of common sense and of sentiment which were
characteristic of the mathematician’s nature, argued that, as a man,
Sabina’s father approved him. Moreover, Niklaus liked money, and
providing a man was an honest fellow besides, Dasipodius believed that
with a little demurring, the goldsmith, if all else went well, would
come to forgive the blindness, and at least that part of the question
must take care of itself. “I cannot put folks into my skin, and nothing
short of that would ever make him, or others, believe that my eyes
are not essential to their Horologe; and, at all hazards, the secret
must remain a secret.” And so Dasipodius went about his work with calm
self-possession, and it so grew and glorified beneath his fingers, that
his co-workers would look on in loving wonder and admiration, and say
that their teacher was inaugurating a new era in mechanical science,
and that his fingers seemed almost enchanted.
“Ay,” muttered the only one among them whose wonderings were mingled
with envy and malice, “he is possessed,—he needs scarce look at what he
is doing. His eyes are as often cloud-wandering as on what he holds in
his hands. Do you mark that strange look in his eyes?” demanded Otto
von Steinbach of his comrades.
“It is inspiration,” said they.
“It is the devil!” said Otto.