“WERE ALL THY LETTERS SUNS, I COULD NOT SEE.”
“A letter for you, Master Dasipodius,” accordingly said Otto von
Steinbach next morning, as he entered the studio.
“Thanks, Otto; from whom?” said the mathematician, stretching out one
hand for it, and laying it unopened on the bench beside him.
“My sister—bade me give it you,” replied Otto.
“That is well,” said Dasipodius, calmly going on with the delicate
little wire coil he was fashioning into a spring. “Ah! you are there
still?” he added presently, for Otto had not stirred, but stood eyeing
his superior curiously. “Do you know, my friend, that the wheel you
finished off yesterday does not fit.”
“It’s right enough,” said Otto, snatching the offending wheel from his
own work-bench, and thrusting it under Conrad’s eyes. “Look, you can
see for yourself; what is amiss with it?”
“That,” answered Dasipodius, “is for Habrecht to decide. It is enough
that he says the wheel will not do.”
“Habrecht is such a grumbler,” muttered Otto, but loud enough for Isaac
to hear.
Now Isaac Habrecht was a worker after Dasipodius’ own heart; he lacked
the soul and inventive genius of his superior, but whatever he did
was done with all his might, and done well, and anything carelessly
finished off was an intolerable abomination to him; and so when he
overheard Otto’s remark, he did not think it worth his while to say
more than: “The wheel won’t do; we can’t be having any slop-work about
the Horologe”.
Otto turned on his heel, and noisily throwing down the wheel, glared
wrathfully at it. He knew that he might just as well set about
endeavouring to convince the two Nile statues that he had made his
wheel well, as these two pig-headed mathematicians, when they said
he had not; and unless he wanted, which he did not, to lose his
appointment under Dasipodius, he dared not argue the matter further.
Turning therefore on Dasipodius once more, he only said sulkily: “My
sister bade me tell you that letter was urgent”.
To escape the one chance of his infirmity being detected, Dasipodius
made it his invariable custom to request one or other of his pupils to
read aloud to him any documents which happened to be brought to the
Dial.
“Then will you kindly read it out,” he rejoined, “while I go on with my
coil? I dare not let it unroll just now.”
But to read that letter was more than Otto had bargained with himself
to do. Other reasons apart, he was horribly afraid of bungling over
the hard words; for it was one thing to understand their meaning,
and quite another to pronounce them properly _viva voce_. Muttering
therefore something about having to attend to his unsatisfactory piece
of workmanship, he was about to hand over the letter to Isaac Habrecht,
but remembering just in time that this quick-sighted, ready-witted man
would discover all too soon what manner of letter it was, and would
therefore come to a halt long before he had reached its more striking
clauses, he changed his mind, and looking towards Kaspar Habrecht, who
was busy over his wooden blocks in the embrasure of the window, said,
“Here, Kaspar, my lad. ’Tis said there are hopes of your making a fair
clerk one of these days—give us a proof of your scholarship, and come
and read out this letter to Master Dasipodius.”
“Ay do. That’s my brave Kaspar,” said Dasipodius.
The lad looked up from his work, and came forward, pushing his bright
hair back from his broad white brow, and with a flush of proud content,
received the missive from Otto von Steinbach’s hands.
“Will it please you to open it yourself?” he asked, turning to
Dasipodius.
“Nay. You shall do that office for me,” smiled his master. “I cannot
spare my hands.”
And so, disentangling the thread, and breaking the seal, Kaspar read
out the superscription. “_To the Herr Professor Dasipodius_——”
“Never fret your brain about the preamble,” bluntly interrupted Isaac.
“Let us hear at once what Mistress von Steinbach has to tell us.”
“Excuse me,” said Otto, “the letter’s none of your business, Isaac
Habrecht.”
“The clock’s my business,” retorted Isaac; “and if your sister is
going to be good enough to give us a notion at last, when she means to
finish off these gods and goddesses of hers, why——”
“Holy Virgin!” cried Dasipodius, with a nervous knitting of his brows.
“Do hold your tongue now, Isaac. There’ll be no hearing the letter all
day at this rate! Go on, Kaspar.”
“_Since we last met_——” began Kaspar.
“A strange beginning!” thought Dasipodius, industriously manipulating
his coil. “I saw her but yesterday.”
“_I have come to know that of you which you have kept concealed from
me_——”
“What now?” mused the mathematician, with a half smile. “Some fresh
offence of mine, clearly. Well, well, she is a wayward creature! Heaven
help the man she will call husband! Poor old Bruno!”. And still he
worked on contentedly at his spring-coil.
“_It would have been so far, far better that I should have known all_,”
continued Kaspar in slow mumbling tones, for it began to be very
evident to him that the letter’s contents were not intended for this
house-top sort of proclamation.
Dasipodius, however, had no such impression. That one secret of his
heart, Radegund had declared she equally desired to keep buried in
hers. Turning therefore to Kaspar, he said jestingly: “Well, my Kaspar,
but you are such a laggard at learning after all! Make haste and let me
hear the rest.”
“Yes, get on, for patience sake,” said Otto. “Is this your fine
schooling? Do you think Master Dasipodius is going to wait till
next week for you to dunder out your words in that fashion. Give me
the letter,” and he snatched it from the boy’s trembling fingers;
for had he not by heart what came next. “Let me see—h’m—h’m—_known
all_—h’m—h’m—_trusted me_—h’m—ah yes, here we are,” he went on raising
his voice, and reading very distinctly, so that all who chose to
listen might hear: “_Why could you not have trusted me? Why did you
not tell me you were blind?_” But then his voice was lost in a strange
clattering of metal, and jarring of wires, and falling of tools; and
low-bending necks were suddenly upraised, and startled wondering looks
were turned on the mathematician.
“What the foul fiend is my sister talking about?” said Otto, looking
round with widely-rounded eyes. “Has she gone mad?”
But Dasipodius, with his fingers stayed in their deft movements, sat
rigid and still; until at last in low monotone, he said once more, “Go
on”.
“Yes, you know, but really—ha! ha! this is too absurd. Isn’t it—by
Jove, really!” cried Otto, emboldened by the impassivity of Dasipodius.
“Too much of a good joke. _But_—just listen to this now—_but I will ask
no questions, since I desire no answer. Your own heart knows it will be
best for us both you should not answer; for that which you have called
love between us_——”
“Hush! Silence! It is from her, my poor child, yes. Give it me. Give it
me,” cried Dasipodius, and casting down the spring and starting to his
feet, he swayed forward with outstretched arms hither and thither, like
some stately rudderless ship, while Otto, with swift dexterity, thrust
forward the chair on which he had been leaning, and sprang noiselessly
aside. Then, turning to his bewildered comrades, he pointed with
mocking significant gestures at Dasipodius, who was advancing with
rapid strides towards the spot on which he imagined Otto to be still
standing, and still with his hands eagerly outstretched for the fatal
letter; but his knee came in contact with the chair, and he stumbled
and fell heavily forward against its sharply-carven corner. With a
simultaneous rush, the students flew to his assistance. Kaspar was
first beside him, and kneeling down, the boy gently raised his master’s
head, and laid it back on his own breast; next instant his jerkin was
dyed through and through with the blood streaming down from the broad
brow, and it was all his slender frame could do to support its fainting
burden. Then, however, the elder Habrecht came and lifted Dasipodius
tenderly into his own strong arms, and with his handkerchief staunched
the wound, gazing down, meanwhile, with loving anxiety on the pale
closed eyelids.
Let be—let be awhile, friend Habrecht. Call not thy master back to life
yet. Let him rest only for a few brief moments, pillowed there on thy
kind heart. Rest, ere consciousness shall set again to his lips the cup
of bitterness he must drink so deeply.
“So bravely! bravely then, Master!” said Habrecht, when after the
lapse of a few seconds, Dasipodius once more opened his sightless eyes.
“What has happened?” asked the mathematician in faint, dreamy tones,
lifting his hand to his head. Then with Isaac’s aid he slowly
raised himself to his feet, but his cheek was deadly pale, and all
blood-stained from the wound which had glanced startlingly near the
temple. “That letter!” were his first words; “who has that letter? Give
it me.”
“Do you hear?” sternly demanded Isaac, turning to where Otto had been
standing. “Give the master his letter.”
But Otto was not there, nor in any other part of the spacious studio.
Neither, although they all searched high and low, could the letter be
found.
“Otto has taken it with him, no doubt,” said Habrecht. “What has he
gone off like, that for? Run after him, Kaspar, and——”
“Nay, stay!” said Dasipodius, lifting his hand. “I have something to
say first.”
“Not now, Master,” gently entreated Habrecht, marking how vainly the
low agitated voice strove to regain its wonted firmness. “You will be
stronger by-and-bye, and then we can clear up this strange mistake.”
“No,” replied the mathematician, in resolute measured tones. “It is no
mistake. I am blind, my comrades,” he went on, turning to face them
all, “utterly—stone blind, and the daylight to me is no more than the
starless night. It has been so with me nearly all the time we have
worked together.”
“Blind!” broke forth the wondering chorus. “But—no, no, it is
impossible.”
“No, with God nothing is impossible. I would—I should like to explain
to you—now—many things, but this letter—nay, I would of course say,
this unlucky fall,” and Dasipodius lifted his hand to his head, “seems
to have unnerved me, and my brain is all confused. Lend me your arm,
Habrecht; I had planned to get through so much to-day; but I should
spoil it now, and it must go—to-morrow—to-morrow. Nay, that is your
stalwart arm, Isaac, I meant not you; Kaspar here will do me the good
service to lead me home.”
Isaac stoutly remonstrated. He saw what mischief the fall and that
“accursed letter,” as in his own mind he called it, had wrought,
and it seemed to him hardly safe to trust Dasipodius, weak from his
loss of blood and blind—(Heaven and earth! was it then true?)—with
only his young stripling brother, through the jostling street-crowd,
but Dasipodius insisted. “If you and I are both absent,” argued he,
smiling faintly, “something or other will be sure to go amiss with
our Horologe; for what is the body without the head? and by my faith,
I think I have mislaid mine,—so be my representative for to-day, old
friend.”
“For to-day—yes then,” conceded Isaac, and Dasipodius turned to go.
“Poor little coil!” he murmured, as he passed by his own bench, where
his morning’s work lay all undone. “Strangled at thy birth. But
Habrecht shall give thee new life. See to it, Isaac,” and he turned,
and laid it tenderly, as if it were some sick, breathing thing, on
Habrecht’s bench. “And,” continued the Master, with the stern, somewhat
peremptory, ring in his voice, which, on rare occasions, did steal its
wonted gentleness, “bid Otto von Steinbach, when he returns, attend to
those wheel-teeth at once. Come, Kaspar.”
And one hand on his good stick, and the other on Kaspar Habrecht’s
shoulder, Conrad Dasipodius went out from the scene of his labours
into the streets, and as he passed along, many a fellow-citizen doffed
his hat in respectful salutation to their mathematician. It never
occurred to the good Strassburgers to take offence because Dasipodius
rarely, if ever, returned their greetings. It was their creed that
geniuses were not to be held amenable to ordinary social conditions;
“and, of course,” said they, “he is far too deep in his calculations
and things, to be able to see outside him as one may call it”. And
in that way the worthy folks, out of the experience of all who had
ever had to do with him of his natural courtesy and goodness, made
every allowance for what they regarded as his little eccentricities.
But undoubtedly, on this special occasion, if Dasipodius had been
accommodated with all the eyes of the Apocalyptic Beast, they would
have been to him no more than that unpardonable sin against the canons
of true art, a matter of superfluous ornamentation; since all his
faculties were turned inward, strained to gather up, and to grasp the
full significance of that strange letter, whose ending he did not even
yet know.