DR. WOLKENBERG.
Bruno Wolkenberg lived in a comfortable roomy house, whose exterior
well befitted the position which he had won for himself in the city’s
estimation. If anyone had the mischance to break his head or dislocate
his knee-joint, or otherwise damage himself, or if his body suffered
from any of those thousand and one “ills that flesh is heir to,”
there was not one who could set him on his legs again like Bruno the
surgeon. Only two objections were ever brought against the clever,
well-looking doctor: he was young, that is, he was still some years
from forty, and—he was a bachelor! but Bruno was wont to laugh down the
first of these two objections, saying it was a fault which was daily
mending itself; and to sigh down the second, declaring that, at all
events, it was an error for which he was not responsible, although
there were damsels in Strassburg who thought differently; but surely
so clever a disciple of Æsculapius might have been allowed to know
best where the wound in his own heart was. There was no doubt at all
that Radegund von Steinbach had made that wound; and she alone, the
surgeon felt, could cure it. Honest, brave, loyal-hearted, and generous
to a fault was Bruno: a friend to the poor, well beloved by all,
naturally of a bright, cheery temperament, and something moreover of a
poet. He had even been crowned by the _Meister-singer’s_ wreath, but
the _Meister-singer_ philosophy was far less to his taste than those
glorious romantic old _Minne-lieder_ of his country, and he knew by
heart pretty nearly all the wild sagas and legends of Germany, and of
other lands too; and many a sufferer’s weariness he had beguiled, and
many a little one forgot its pain when Bruno had time to sit down and
sing, or say, in his clear, gentle voice how Sigfrid the Horny slew
the fearsome dragon, or how Knight Roland fought so bravely with death
in the terrible valley; or to tell the tale to the little ones of the
Cid’s good faithful horse Babieça, or best of all, how Walther von der
Vogelweide so dearly loved the birds, that in death he did not forget
them, but ordered holes to be scooped out in his tombstone, away up
there in quaint old Wurtzburg city, and left money for crumbs to be
put in them twice each day for ever, for the pretty creatures; and
how (no greedy wretches, calling themselves Christians, having as yet
stolen and appropriated the legacy) they came hop, hop, chirp, chirp
there, and sang to the kind old Poet lying peacefully in his grave.
Altogether, Doctor Bruno Wolkenberg was a very clever man, and a very
good one, and people said he ought to be a happy one; but—well, had the
surgeon lived but a century or two later, he might have found a dismal
consolation in that aphorism his brother poet has sung:
“There’s something in this world amiss,
Shall be unriddled by and by.”
There was something very much amiss with Bruno’s world, and had been
for a long time past; and often when this riddle worried him more than
usual, he would sit before his lonely hearth, and vex himself almost
into a fever trying to unriddle it, and yet it was soon told—nothing
more than a hopeless love for Radegund von Steinbach.
Hardly so much can be said for the inside of the surgeon’s house as
for its outside. Two years previously, he had bought it in the full
hope and confidence that he should succeed in prevailing on Radegund
von Steinbach, the beautiful artist, to come there and be its queen
and _châtelaine_, and better still, his own well-beloved wife; but the
great desolate place stood a dreary wholesome witness to the folly
of lovers who reckon without their host. Bruno Wolkenberg believed,
indeed, that he had good reason to hope, but the lady had proved
far more difficult than he had expected. It is true, she did not
immediately consign him to despair—that would have savoured too much
of mercy to please Radegund von Steinbach; she had had experience in
despairing lovers, and knew how very soon they were apt to find sweet
consolation, and it by no means suited her to lose from her shrine a
devotee whom it enhanced her glory to retain. At the same time, she
told him she was wedded to her art, or at least cared for it too well
to dream of sacrificing her love to it for the sake of a mere man;
and yet withal, she would so smile or frown upon this mere man as the
humour took her, that at the end of two years, he found his chains
binding him more tightly than ever, but the ordeal had done him no
good. Truly he did not moon about all ungartered and unshaven, or visit
his wretchedness on his patients—the gold of his nature was too pure
for that; and it was only said, that each day seemed to make Doctor
Bruno the gentler and fuller of compassionate endurance for sickness
and suffering of every kind whatsoever; but the healthful bloom faded
from his cheek, and the joyous light in his eyes grew dimmer, and the
footstep, which once had seemed to bring with it hope and health, was
slower and more measured than of yore, and those brave stories of
fighting Goth and Hun were all changed into sweet sad ditties, like
that of the hapless lovers of Rolandseck, or of such patient obedience,
faithful unto death, as the gruesome romance of Count Alarcos.
Then, too, that unworldliness and self-forgetfulness grew upon the
surgeon, until the rare virtues almost fell into a weakness, for the
so-called poor would take advantage and extract from him gratuitous
service, when they could very well have paid for it; while the rich,
after their kind, worried him, calling him out at unearthly hours to
attend to fidgety little ailments, which would have been none the
worse for waiting till morning. But Bruno had a kind of feeling that
the world might do as it liked with him now, and whether he lived or
died, could be of small consequence to anybody—least, perhaps, to
himself. And all this to arise out of his ill-starred adoration for the
woman who was so well able to turn him round her little white finger,
that she was no more than justified in calling him, as she had called
him, her spaniel! for Bruno would have sold his soul for Radegund, and
at her imperious bidding, would fetch and carry, coming in, to boot,
for his full share of kicks and blows.
To-night the surgeon is sitting before his hearth, elbows on knees, and
his fingers clutching his crumpled locks, pondering over his problem.
In all that wide experience of his amid mortal man’s accidents and
diseases, he has come upon no such complication of disorders as this
web of hopes and fears tangling about him now; and again and again he
gazes wildly up at his surgery walls, as though hoping to find written
there something which should help him.
Bruno always lived in that laboratory; the rest of his house had for
him a weird indescribably desolate look. He possessed no kith nor kin;
and excepting old Trudel, a woman who had received him in her arms on
the day when he first came into this troublesome world, and was now
his housekeeper, and sole attendant to his few wants, he liked to tell
himself that there was not a creature to care whether he went tagless
and buttonless, dinnerless and supperless. Wolkenberg himself was not a
man to be concerned much about such mere details, but he was Trudel’s
one thought by day and by night, and while the faithful soul lived,
there was indeed one woman who loved him from her heart’s core. Truly
her despotism almost matched her love; but then, as she would always
tell you, if she, who had had him in her arms when he was scarce an ell
long, did not know what was best for him, who did? As for taking care
of himself, there—he was just every bit as much of a baby about it as
on the day he was born.
Bruno let Trudel have her way pretty well entirely with himself and
his belongings; but all her persuasions could not induce him to live,
as she phrased it, “like a Christian,” and inhabit his handsome
house, instead of keeping it shut up almost air-tight, and made a
hunting-ground for the rats and mice and ghosts; but the surgeon
was obstinate in passing his existence, day and night, in the great
gloomy chamber, which was his surgery and parlour all in one, while a
small recess in the wall contained the narrow bier-like construction
he called his bed. Where was the use, he would rejoin to Trudel’s
representations that Doctor Bruno Wolkenberg should live surrounded by
at least some of the magnificence his repute and means commanded—if his
bed were of silk and eider down, he would be more loath perhaps to come
out of it, than he was to leave the board and rug, whence one could
jump up in an instant on a sudden summons. As to his meals, upon the
self-same principle, it was handier to take them sitting on his little
three-legged stool by the surgery hearth, than in the fine, vast, chill
guest-chamber; because, when called away, as nine times out of ten he
was, just as Trudel had brought him some nice, hot, savoury dish, it
could be popped down by the fire and kept hot there, you know, even if
you didn’t come back till midnight.
Then, too, those rugged, old smoke-embrowned walls seemed to the
lonely man more sociable and friendly of aspect than the smooth-shining
wainscot and rich Flanders hangings, with their brand new smartness,
which only reminded him of hope deferred—nay, well-nigh crushed, and
made him unendurably wretched.
Notwithstanding, in a lonely subdued sort of fashion, the surgeon
contrived to make his life happy, when once he had got himself into his
rusty old frieze gown, and could indulge in the luxury of an hour or
two’s uninterrupted experimentalizing or research into that great art,
his devotion to which no love for woman could deaden. And well indeed
for Bruno that this was so, for he was made of that sensitive stuff
from which so frequently spring madness and self-murder, when hope is
disappointed; thus work was his guardian genius.
To-night, however, he has laid work aside, and is sitting wearily down
to look at Tantalus pictures in the fire. Outside it is blustering
and stormy, and Bruno’s dog Balder pricks his ears askance at the
hurly-burly, and cowers closer to the blaze. Old Trudel is dozing away
in her sanctum, which years ago the surgeon caused to be made a model
of snugness for her, and in a hazy sort of way, hopes that no one
will come fetching her master out on such a night. “Though it’s more
likely than not, of course,” soliloquizes she; “for sick folks haven’t
a spark of conscience, and would worry you out of bed though you may be
dreaming of the dear Heaven itself! And it’s now here, now there—I’d
as lief be the church weathercock as a doctor. There now! didn’t I say
so?” she cried, starting from her comfortable posture at the sound of
a knocking at the outer door. “Never leave anybody in peace, that they
don’t,” she added mutteringly, as she rose and proceeded to unfasten
the heavy bolts. As, however, she flashed her lamp in the visitant’s
face, her ruffled old brow relaxed at recognising the Professor
Dasipodius.
“Ah! You is it, Master Dasipodius?” she cried. “Come in, come in then,
out of the rain. Have a care of the lintel; you’ll be knocking your
head. Holy Virgin! It is cold comfort outside to-night. To my thinking,
a thaw’s always crueller cold than the blackest frost ever made; for
all the world like death-damps——”
“Your master is alone, Trudel?” asked Dasipodius, shaking the rain from
his cloak.
“Lone, poor dear, as the church weathercock,” sighed the old woman,
availing herself of her pet comparison. “A deal more alone than is good
for him. But there’s none so welcome to him as you, Herr Professor.”
And then Trudel fairly pushed Dasipodius into the laboratory, and
returned to her own sanctum, where she folded her hands with a
contented air on her lap. Her poor Bruno would be happy now, chatting
with his friend of friends. Well, and you would go a good long summer
day’s journey before you’d find a pleasanter spoken or a nobler looking
gentleman than the Herr Professor; hardly excepting Bruno himself.