OLD-WORLD TALES.
Supper is just over in the Burgomaster’s house. The table is not yet
cleared, and the ruddy wine lying low in the silver flagon gleams in
the soft firelight, while the jaws of the great larded boar’s head
seem absolutely agrin with delight at the marks of havoc which have
been made into his cervicular region. Master Niklaus von Steinbach
is just going for a little quarter-of-an-hour or so longer back to
his counting-house, to look through some memoranda concerning a
consignment of precious stones for which he is in treaty for the new
cathedral Horologe. Conrad Dasipodius has himself called in about this
matter on Niklaus, and the Burgomaster, although, as he told himself,
matters were a little awkward just then, could but invite his visitor
to share their evening meal, and Conrad accepted Niklaus’ invitation
with a well-contented smile. “That was all reasonable enough,” Niklaus
thought, “as far as it went”; but when, after supper, he found that
negotiations could only be brought to a successful issue by consulting
some documents locked up in his strong-room, he began to feel much put
about at the notion of leaving the two young people together. “It is
dangerous,” he grumbled to himself, “most dangerous!” and then he made
something of an attempt to induce Dasipodius to go to the strong-room
too, and look over the documents with him. The mathematician said,
however, there would be no use whatever in his going, and he would,
with Master Niklaus’ good leave, much prefer staying where he was.
And so, without referring to details which perhaps were best left
alone, Niklaus could not see how he could gainsay him. “I can’t afford
to quarrel with Dasipodius,” he said to himself, as he crossed the
flagstones of his courtyard; “and it’s just as likely that these
two have forgotten all their fancies by now, and even supposing——A
murrain seize this lock! has the Ice King got into it?” and in a
vigorous tussle with the stubborn bolts of his counting-house door,
the Burgomaster forgot all about that dangerous _tête-à-tête_ in the
dining-hall.
Meantime, Sabina had seated herself by the fireside and begun to
spin; the light of the lamp hanging from the middle boss of the
carven ceiling was put to shame by the dazzling blaze of the flames
roaring up the spacious chimney, and throwing the stately shadow of
the mathematician on to the oak-panelled wall behind him, as he stood
facing the young mistress of the house. Stealing a shy glance up at
him, Sabina thought that never had his beautiful eyes looked more
beautiful than now.
“Do you remember the puppet that so pleased you the last time you were
at our studio?” he asked presently.
“Which do you mean. Old Father Time and his scythe?”
“No, the beautiful youth, Cupid.”
“Ah, yes,” and Sabina blushed, though she hardly knew why.
“It is finished. Kaspar placed the bow and shaft in his hands this very
noon.”
“That is capital,” said Sabina, with sparkling eyes.
“It is the last of the figures. They are finished now.”
“Why, then, the Horologe is done!” delightedly exclaimed she.
“Nay, not quite that,” answered Dasipodius with a sigh; “much of the
machinery lacks completion as yet; and some of what is done is not as
good as I would have it.”
“Ah, but you are too particular—you are indeed,” she said, looking up
at him; “the Bishop was talking with my father only this morning, and
he told him that he thought the Horologe simply perfect, and my lord
must know, for he can talk Hebrew and Greek, and——”
Dasipodius smiling and shaking his head, fixed his eyes wistfully on
the fire. “There was once a mouse——” he said.
“Once a mouse,” echoed Sabina, swiftly but very noiselessly turning her
wheel-handle, for she dearly loved a story. “Go on.”
“And this mouse had lived all his life in an old oak chest in the
sacristy of a church.”
“Ah, I know!” interrupted Sabina, “like the St. Thomas’ Church, or even
perhaps like our glorious cathedral itself?”
“No, I think not; it was only a poor little country church, and the
sacristy was of course a very small place indeed.”
“Well,” said Sabina, in rather disappointed tones.
“But then the mouse thought his wooden chest a splendid apartment. ‘How
large it is!’ he always said to himself, as he ran round and round in
it.”
“Dear little thing.”
“Well, one day it happened that the curate, who was looking for some
old parchments, opened the lid of the chest, and out popped the mouse.”
“Oh!” said Sabina anxiously, “did the good father see him?”
“Not a bit of it, he was far too busy to worry his head about a scrap
of a mouse; and so the little thing got safely away and hid himself in
a hole in the sacristy wall, until everything was still again, then he
summoned courage to put his head out: ‘Ah,’ he said to himself, ‘but
this is a fine large place if you like’.”
“And did he live happy there for ever after?” asked Sabina.
“Dear child, no; for after he had run round and round it for a day or
two, he chanced to catch sight of a line of daylight shining under the
door, and he contrived to squeeze himself through into the church.”
“Ah!” said Sabina softly, “with the blessed Christ Child and His dear
Mother, and all the holy angels!—the beautiful church itself! And he
was happy then, Conrad, quite, quite content?”
“Alas, no!” and then the mathematician paused. “It is true our mouse
said just what you say, my Sabina: ‘Ah, one can be—must be happy in
this great beautiful place!’ and for a long time he stayed there, and
grew into a steady and most respectable mouse. And he grew fat, as
church mice now and again do, dear child. I am afraid he ate too much
of the bread that used to be in the church for giving to the poor.
At all events he stayed there for a long time, feeling himself very
comfortable. Somehow at last, however, he began to grow restless, and
when he used to hear the sweet choir music, it seemed to him that
after it had filled every corner of that vast place, some of it still
floated away—away, out beyond those beautiful walls and fair windows,
and he wanted to discover where the music went, and one day he followed
it, and found himself outside the sheltering walls of that brave old
church.”
“Oh, the silly, silly mouse!” regretfully cried Sabina.
“Outside, amid broad green fields, with the free air playing round him,
and telling him a thousand things he had never heard before—and the
blue sky overhead; but when he looked well up all round, he saw several
black clouds——”
“And just served him right!” said Sabina, with a majestic nod; “how he
must have wished himself safe back inside the dear old church.”
“No, I don’t believe the clouds frightened him; he had such a great
deal to think about besides; and when he had looked all round with
his bright eyes as wide open as ever they could be, he was amazed to
think what a very little he could see after all. ‘Oh, now I know,’ he
said, ‘that it is limitless. I cannot run all round and round here. I
positively believe it has no walls!’”
“Well, and so what became of him?” asked Sabina, for the mathematician
seemed to have come to his story’s end.
“That is more than I know,” said Conrad.
“What a stupid story,” said Sabina; “I hate stories that don’t finish
off nicely. Tell me, Master Dasipodius, do you think those terrible
thunder clouds killed him?”
“I think not, dear little one, the good God of all is so great and
merciful——”
“Yes,” said Sabina, “that’s true, and it might be made a nice story
if—if——”
“If what? thou dearest of all little mice,” asked Conrad, quitting his
post, and preparing to seat himself beside Sabina, when an appalling
sound, beginning with a savage growl and ending in an agonized screech,
made him start back in alarm: “_Himmelsdonnerwetter!_” he exclaimed.
“Ah, get away! you’ve trodden on the cat,” cried Sabina, stooping down,
and tenderly taking the aggrieved Mitte up in her arms, she began to
cuddle the creature back to its normal quiescence. Meantime the unhappy
Conrad stood afar off; an indignity offered to Sabina’s cat was, in her
eyes, all the deadly sins rolled into one.
“Poor Mitte,” he ventured to say at last, groping for the creature
under the table on hands and knees, “but I am so sorry; I would not
have hurt you for the world. Here, Mitte, Mitte!”
“She is here. Don’t you see, safe in my lap. But it really was very
awkward of you, you know, Conrad, when the poor thing was right under
your eyes—staring you in the face.”
“Was she?” said Dasipodius absently.
“Of course she was,” indignantly said Sabina. “What has come to you? I
do believe you are as blind as a mole.”
Conrad’s cheeks flushed, and he laughed uneasily as he said, “Mitte’s
eyes are certainly very charming——”
“Yes, are not they?” and Sabina’s frown grew less terrible.
“But somehow I don’t care for them, when Mitte’s mistress’s eyes are
shining on me.”
“That is nonsense,” said Sabina, laughing a low, happy little laugh;
then Conrad took undisputed possession of a seat beside her.
“Yes, rub her head so, that will make her good-tempered again,” and
Conrad continued the rubbing process, till at any rate Mitte’s mistress
grew good-tempered again, and Mitte purred enough for all three,
singing on her comfortable music, even after Conrad’s hand had strayed
from her tabby crown, and possessed itself instead of Sabina’s little
hand; and Sabina let her hand be, but, like happy people sometimes
are, the two were very silent; the old clock was able to say,
“Wait-tic! wait-tac!” over and over again before either spoke. At last
Conrad said, “Dear child, you love me still?”
“Yes, Conrad.”
“And you are trusting me? You do not repent of your promise?”
“I will not answer you, Master Dasipodius.”
“Conrad—say Conrad, Sabina.”
“I will not, until you have promised to ask no more foolish questions.
Is it not enough that I have already told you I love you, and how
should I be weary?”
“But it is I who weary for thee, my darling. It is only half-living,
Sabina, when you are not by.”
“We must wait, Conrad; things will come right.” And while the old clock
endorsed this announcement, Sabina’s little hand stole up and stroked
the student’s thin cheek.
“But I cannot bear to see you so pale and anxious,” she said.
“It is nothing, little one,” he answered, “but what must be.”
“Nay, it need not be; it comes of sitting up so late, and toiling so
closely over your work, and your eyes look so—so——”
“So what?” demanded Conrad; “tell me!”
“Nay,” she answered, “I cannot tell. I think it is so bright that I
mean, and yet so strangely tired.”
“Yes, I suppose they were—I mean they do grow tired. A little dim
even now and then; but press these dear lips on them, my little love,
and it will make them well,—quite well again,” and the mathematician
stooped his stately head, and Sabina kissed those poor sightless eyes,
and then she laughed merrily, and said he took such odd fancies into
his head; and altogether that was quite a half-hour of Paradise, while
Niklaus the goldsmith still tarried in his strong room, and there was
only Mitte, the mother of a hundred kittens, to play propriety—and she
dropped asleep, as chaperons sometimes do.
“When you are my wife,” said Conrad presently, “I mean to—hush! What is
that?”
“Nothing,” said Sabina.
“I mean to——. I tell you, child, I hear a footstep in the courtyard.”
“Nonsense,” said Sabina.
“Is it your father coming back?”
“No, it cannot be; there is no stick.”
Niklaus sometimes had a gout-fiend in his left leg, and wherever that
leg went, the stick, like a familiar spirit, had to go too; and all
Strassburg knew the sound of the Burgomaster’s stick.
“How fanciful you are!” said Sabina, pushing aside her wheel, and going
to the lattice, she opened a movable pane, and listened.
“Look out,” she said, turning to her lover, who had followed her, “and
satisfy yourself;—there is not a creature there.”
The mathematician put his head out, and listened intently; what his
eyes might not see, he thought his ears might hear, for they had become
preternaturally keen; but there was utter silence in the spacious
quadrangle, now illumined by the bright clear moonlight, and save the
broad flight of steps, with its heavy stone balustrade, leading up
to the dwelling part of the house, there was no object to cast any
shadow. When earlier in the evening, Dasipodius had come in through
the little door built into the massive wooden entrance gates, he had
carefully bolted it behind him, for he knew that the goldsmith was very
particular about having his household all safe under lock and key by
sunset. “There never was such a place as Strassburg,” he always said,
“for rogues. And he had pretty maids and precious jewels to answer
for.” And so, if people wanted to be let in after dark, they had to
announce themselves by the great house-bell; therefore it must have
been, as Sabina said, the mathematician’s fancy, and Dasipodius began
to think she was right, and secretly hoped that his blindness was not
making him nervous. Then the lovers turned from the window, and came
back to the cheery fire. “How bitter cold it is to-night,” said Sabina,
kneeling down in front of the blaze, and spreading her hands over it.
“You have chilled yourself at that open window, dear child,” said
Dasipodius, chafing the cold little fingers in his own hands, and
kissing back the warmth into them.
“Nay,” she answered, “but all the evening it has seemed so chilly, as
if some lattice must be open. There! There it comes again! Some one is
walking over my grave,” she said, shuddering, just as old wives will
say.
“Now it is you who are fanciful,” smiled Dasipodius; but Sabina’s face
did not reflect his smile, her eyes were fixed on the blaze, and some
bright tears welled slowly up into them, and brimmed over. She was
trying to gaze into futurity, and the brain-pictures she made saddened
her. Such a strange mood as this the Burgomaster’s sunny-tempered
little daughter rarely fell into; how doubly strange, then, that she
should fall into it now! When her arms actually rested on her lover’s
knee, and he was whispering to her words that sounded sweet and blessed
as the whisperings of her guardian angel,—indeed they were one and the
same, for Sabina’s guardian angel just as often wore a black doublet as
white flowing robes and spotless wings, and its face was spiritualised
with thoughtful intellectual beauty, glorified by the halo of her love.
How then should there now come this shadow of some unknown dread to mar
the feast of happiness overflowing in her heart? It seemed so hard to
be reminded just now that her Paradise was not an eternal one, and that
her guardian angel was, after all, but a mortal man; and yet of those
saddening thoughts were born words which were blessed to her lover’s
ears, and which, even when that time came when he did his best to
silence their echoings, still lived on in his memory. Very simple they
were. “Conrad,” she said, “whatever is to happen, you will know that I
love you.”
“My own little darling one.”
“Nay,” she said, “but you are to say—Yes, Sabina!”
“Yes, Sabina.”
“That is right,” she said with a relieved air, “and now we will talk
of other things.” But the other things just resolved themselves into
the old, old story, and Conrad began to tell her of his plans for the
future, and was just about to begin again that interrupted sentence
of his, “When you are my wife”—and all her fancies quite forgotten,
Sabina was blushing rosily, when there came across the courtyard
an unmistakable sound of footsteps, and Sabina said, “There is the
stick,” and Niklaus clattered up the steps, and paused for a moment,
ere he entered, to contemplate the scene before him. There sat Sabina,
like the loveliest little housewife in the world, spinning ever so
diligently at her wheel, and the tall figure of the mathematician
leaning against the lintel of the fireplace, with that face of his,
which none could choose but look at twice, turned towards the fair
girl.
“They are a goodly couple,” nodded the Burgomaster to himself, “and
make quite a picture there. They don’t seem to have budged an inch
since I left them more than half-an-hour ago, but I wouldn’t be on my
oath about that.” Then Niklaus’ brow knitted itself into a terrific
frown, but the blue eyes beneath twinkled merrily enough; and had he
not owned a soft corner in his heart for Conrad Dasipodius, he would
hardly have taken it into his head to have left him so long in the old
dining-hall alone with his Pearl of pearls.
“Here are the documents, Master Dasipodius,” he said, coming forward
into the light, and placing some parchments in the mathematician’s
hand. “They only need your signature; but you had best read them
through first.”
“Will you read them?” said Dasipodius, handing them back to Niklaus.
“By our Lady—no!” said the Burgomaster. “That is a strange request for
young eyes to make of old ones.”
“Young eyes are not always what they should be, Master Niklaus. Mine
see but badly by lamplight,” acknowledged Conrad.
“Hey?” said the Burgomaster. “What’s that? Overstrained them, eh?
It is shameful, scandalous, how you young folks gamble away God’s
gifts now-a-days. It’s the fiddle-ma-gee clock has done that piece of
mischief for you, I suppose, hey?”
“Possibly,” said Conrad.
“Possibly! I say of course it is. I tell you what, Master Dasipodius,
you young folks live too fast now-a-days. Make money, make money!
that’s the beginning and end of your motto. In my time we made love,
and let the money go hang.”
“And jeopardised the love?” asked Conrad.
“That’s as it might be,” grunted Niklaus; “but you must take care of
those eyes of yours, or there’ll be neither love nor money.” Then
he took up the parchments again, and read them through aloud to the
mathematician, who put his signature to them in such a clear firm hand,
that the Burgomaster said, “There can’t be much amiss with your eyes
after all, Master Conrad,” and then Dasipodius turned to take his leave.
“Nay,” said Niklaus, “if you don’t object to an old man’s company,
I’ll walk part of the way home with you. I’ve been so busy all day,
I haven’t had time to stretch my legs; and it’s a glorious night.”
Then turning to his daughter, the Burgomaster said he should be back
in half-an-hour or so, and bade her go to bed, or have one of the
women-servants to sit with her if she was afraid of the ghosts; but
Sabina laughing merrily said, “Spinning-wheels always laid the ghosts,”
and when they were gone, she meant to be busy a little while longer.
“Well, it’s plain anyhow she wants to be rid of us,” laughed Niklaus,
“so come, Master Dasipodius.”
Then the Burgomaster and the mathematician sallied forth.