UNJUST SUSPICIONS.
Trudel being out marketing when the two reached Bruno’s house,
Dasipodius fortunately escaped any of the good creature’s jeremiads
over his mishap, and it was the doctor himself who opened the door.
“Can you mend a broken head, Bruno?” the mathematician asked, as he
followed his friend into the laboratory. “If so, here’s a subject for
you.”
“Ay,” said Bruno. “Any number of broken heads. It’s only the broken
hearts our skill won’t reach to.”
A prolonged weary sigh was all the answer to Bruno’s little sally, and
the surgeon, who had already begun to unroll a piece of lint, turned to
look at Dasipodius, where he had sunk down on the truckle-bed, leaning
forward with both hands clasped upon his stick. His eyelids drooped
heavily on the ashen grey cheeks, and it seemed to Bruno that his face
had suddenly aged by ten years with those weary hopeless lines which
had gathered about the handsome resolute mouth.
Pouring some strong cordial into a cup, he held it to the
mathematician’s pale lips. “Drink this, Conrad,” he said; “it will give
you new life.”
Dasipodius obeyed mechanically, and reviving a little, he said, “To
think that it should bring a man to this. Eh, Bruno! We are but poor
creatures after all—the strongest among us. I should have thought I
could have borne it better.”
“It’s an uncommonly ugly blow,” said Bruno, examining the wound. “How
the devil did it happen?”
“Oh! this wound? Ah! yes—well, I stumbled, poor blind wretch that I am,
against a chair.”
The surgeon made no reply, but went on scraping vigorously at his
piece of lint, and then proceeded to dress the wound, looking all the
while very grave and thoughtful. “You are so silent, doctor. Is your
considering cap on this morning?” asked Dasipodius, with a faint smile.
“Yes,” said Bruno, and he said no more.
“A heller for your thoughts, my Solon.”
“I was thinking,” answered Bruno slowly, “that your blindness has
served you sorry trick.”
“Not a doubt of that.”
“Had it gone a couple of hair-breadths nearer the temple, it must have
killed you, Conrad.”
“Yes?”
“Why yes, yes,” answered Bruno, provoked by his patient’s coolness.
“And might not another such accident befall you at any moment? And
where is our Professor Dasipodius then?”
“At peace,” said the other solemnly.
“Nonsense, man. Drink some more of this, and attend to me. So. I say,
where would be Strassburg’s pride, where would be Sabina’s——”
“Oh hush! hush!” cried Dasipodius. “Do not speak of her—not
now—presently, presently—not yet.”
“Well, well,” said Bruno, out of his knowledge that invalids must be
humoured. “What I want to say is simply, why should you strive so
carefully to conceal your loss of sight?”
“Why,” asked Dasipodius, lifting his head with sudden energy from the
cushion Bruno had placed beneath it,—“why do you ask me such a question
as that? I could not have believed you would have wasted breath on
it. Don’t you see that they would perhaps deprive me of the Horologe
commission?”
“Nonsense—stuff!” said Bruno, laughing outright. “Do you think we don’t
know a clever man when we’ve got him better than that? Upon my honour,
Conrad, you don’t give Strassburg credit for much.”
“No,” said Dasipodius, “not much.”
“Well,” conceded Bruno, “of course it’s undeniable that the world’s
fuller of blockheads than of wise ones, and you may be right, only——”
“Time will show,” interrupted the mathematician, “and quickly too; for
in twenty-four hours all Strassburg will know that I am blind.”
“What!” said Wolkenberg, turning with amazed eyes on Dasipodius. “How?
In Heaven’s name, how?”
“By the usual channel for all secrets, a woman’s tongue.”
“Holy Virgin!” ejaculated the surgeon, pale now as his friend. “Not
Radegund? No! she has not played me so false as that?”
“Oh, yes. She did that long ago. But never fret yourself on that score,
Bruno. I have pardoned your share in the matter long since. I did not
mean to have spoken of—of that mistaken kindness of yours! But it was
weak of you, Bruno. Forgive me, my Bear, you know I love you far better
than I love your Radegund; and I could easier have borne the truth from
your own lips.”
“Oh, Conrad,” moaned Bruno. “But I did not betray you.”
“I thought you did.”
“No. As heaven will judge us all, I did not.”
“I believe you, Bruno, and I am glad—very glad.”
“Listen,” said Bruno, “and I will explain—”
“No, no. I’ll have no explainings, your word is as good as a thousand
of them; and besides that is all past and gone. Be content, Bruno, your
Radegund has no share in the misery this time. It comes from nearer
home, so near—oh my God, Bruno!” and Dasipodius clutched wildly at the
surgeon’s arm. “It is Sabina—Sabina von Steinbach who has done this.”
“Curse all women and their tongues,” growled Bruno through his set
white teeth, and his yellow hair bristling. “But there is some devilry
at the bottom of this. Tell me more about it, Conrad.”
“There is so little to tell,” answered Dasipodius; and then in a few
words he related what had taken place that morning in the studio.
“And the letter,” asked Bruno, when he had done, “was in Mistress
Sabina’s own handwriting, you say?”
“How could I tell?” demanded Dasipodius reproachfully. “I have an
impression she cannot write; but it is of little enough consequence
whether she wrote it herself, or found a scribe; it comes to just the
same thing every way.”
But Dr. Wolkenberg only rumpled up his hair still higher with his
fingers, and stared thoughtfully into the fire. “You have the letter of
course?” he said at last.
“No. In the confusion, I suppose, it fell on the floor. Kaspar has gone
back for it now. But that will not mend the matter. The cruel words
will still be there.”
“And you are sure you understood them rightly?”
“I am not apt to misapprehend,” said the learned professor of
mathematics.
“Ah! I mean, you know, you are sure you heard the letter to the end?”
“I am sure of nothing. How can I be?” demanded Dasipodius in tones
strangely unlike his own. “How you do worry! Must I say again that what
I heard was enough. A million others could not deaden their sting. Oh
Bruno! Bruno! what hard hearts these women have! I could have sworn by
the Holy Rood that the child loved me.”
“So could I,” murmured the surgeon. “There—let us speak no more of her,
and for the rest, who can tell? Bruno, what a strange power guides
our destiny. Why, think only, it is this heart’s love of mine that I
thought so priceless, and would not have bartered for the Horologe
itself, no, nor a dozen Horologes—I say it is this which has ruined all
my brain’s labour, and what is left—what is left?”
And then, just as on that day when his old friend Chretei was laid to
his rest, the mathematician, worn out with mental and bodily pain,
laid down his head, and sobbed bitterly; but this time his pillow was
no chill snow clod, but his friend’s warm sympathising breast, and
for a while Bruno, knowing that all his skill could devise no such
real relief, let the sobs have their way, and his own blue eyes grew
moist for his friend’s trouble, but as he sat there beside him, he
was puzzled sorely. “Ay, ay,” he kept saying over and over again to
himself, “I could have sworn she loved him.”
Soon the mathematician’s almost dauntless spirit reasserted itself, and
it seemed to him a blessed thing indeed then to be able to call such a
man as this Bruno Wolkenberg, friend. Can one ever be really alone in
the world with one true friend? If life was to have no more sunshine
for him, at least there would be the soft starlight, and he rose up
and grasped the surgeon’s hand in his. “So now,” he said, “I have been
miserably selfish to keep you from your crucibles all this while.”
But Bruno detained him by the hand, and would not let him go.
“Loose my hand, Bruno,” he said, with a saddening little effort to
smile. “If we stand mumchance here all night, you will be able to throw
no light upon this question.”
“Do you recollect,” said Bruno, desperately rushing at his subject,
“do you recollect the last time you were here?”
“Surely I do,” said Dasipodius; “just five days ago it was.”
“You recollect that as I let you out, some one else came in. Yes?”
“Yes,” quickly answered the mathematician.
“Do you know who it was?”
“I had a foolish idea, and as I went home I laughed at myself for my
blind fancies—shall I tell you, Bruno—can your science explain, I
wonder, why I should have thought——”
“You thought right. It was Sabina von Steinbach.”
“And what did she do, poor little one, out in the cold and darkness?
Tell me, Bruno, what brought her to you at such an hour? A stolen
visit——”
“To ask me if you were blind.”
“A practical-minded maiden, truly,” scornfully laughed Dasipodius.
“Having picked up her suspicions, heaven knows where, she came to the
fountainhead, and you said yes?”
“I did.”
“God forgive you, Bruno, you served me an ill turn,” and the gloom
gathered heavily on the mathematician’s brow.
“I did it for your sake—for the best——”
“Naturally. You always do,” said Dasipodius bitterly, “as you told that
other woman.”
“You are unjust,” answered Wolkenberg. “If you had seen her——”
“If I had seen her! If I had seen her! Oh great heaven, how have I been
betrayed by the two I loved best in all the world!”
“I say you are unjust——”
“And you are weak as water. Farewell, Bruno Wolkenberg. When Kaspar
returns with that letter, be so good as to send him after me to my
house.”
And turning on his heel, the blind man strode out into the street
alone, more utterly alone than ever he had felt in his life. For
him love was dead since Sabina was false; and friendship a mockery,
now Bruno had proved himself unworthy. Only the Horologe was left.
Henceforth that would be to him friend and mistress and all. He had
always loved it as if it were a human thing, as men do love their
brain children, and now—now that he had, as he told himself, lost all
else, it would be to him a thousand times more dear. It owned now his
undivided love. He was like Faust before the arch-fiend came to tempt
him away from his crucibles with fair dreams, and ruin him with sweet
longings worse than vain. It was with him now at last, as Heaven from
the first had meant it to be, and henceforth he would be able to give
himself life and soul, and heart and body to his work, just as the
priests of old Greece belonged to their temples. And he had thought
to subdue destiny. Fritter his God-given life away on poor, fickle,
foolish, perishable human affection! Had presumed to imagine that his
heritage of intellect and genius might be made to go hand in hand with
it. But he saw his error now. He had come to feel how blind—how doubly
blind, more densely blind mentally than ever he could be physically—he
had been. Now he could see how incomparably better than all the
love—love forsooth!—of a little, capricious, shallow-hearted——. Nay!
No, no, but the child was right. How was it possible to love a blind
man? What woman could? Heaven was just, and had interposed for her,
when his selfish mad passion would have carried him astray. It had
been unjustifiable, a crime in him to conceal his affliction from her;
and now he was well punished. Love a blind man! “Oh Sabina, my darling,
heart’s dear—only little one. And it was this love of mine for thee did
thee this cruel wrong. Forgive me—thou—my own first, last, lost love——”
Some one gently touched his arm. It was Kaspar Habrecht, who said that
Otto von Steinbach had returned to the studio, and indignantly denied
all knowledge of the letter; and though they had searched high and low
for it, it was not to be found.