“MERE HEARSAY.”
The wound from which Dasipodius was suffering proved more troublesome
than he had at first anticipated; and for the next day or two he found
himself unable to return to his work. Isaac Habrecht had called more
than once to enquire after him; but during the few minutes he had
stayed, was not communicative, beyond the assurance that things were
going on straight. Otherwise Dasipodius had had no communication with
the outside world.
Poor Christian, sorely distressed by the pain and unrest from which
his son was suffering, was anxious to summon Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg; but
Conrad peremptorily forbade any such thing. “Bruno,” he said, “had
something better to do, than to go about doctoring scratches.”
Christian, however, continued to gaze ruefully at the pale face, and
the once busy hands, now folded in sheer nerveless apathy, with
something like despair in their convulsive twitching.
“You may call it a scratch,” said Christian, “but I call it a wound,
and an uncommonly bad one too; and I wonder Dr. Bruno has not looked in
of himself——”
“Does not that prove my case?” said Dasipodius with a faint smile of
reassurance. “Bruno would have been here no doubt, had he thought it
necessary. Come now, leave Bruno alone; I shall do well enough—and sit
down here beside me and be content. Your cool hand here in mine does me
more good than an army of surgeons. See,” he went on, “in the lattice
there, lies that Book of the Gospels Father Chretei gave me. Bring it
here, and read to me a bit. Yes?”
Christian brought the book and began to turn its thick, richly
illuminated vellum pages with a pre-occupied air.
“Nay,” said Conrad. “Just read where it opens first, Väterle. It cannot
but be good hearing. What have you before you now?”
“_And they bring a blind man unto Him_,” read Christian.
“Ay, that will do—well enough. Read on, Väterle.”
And Christian obeyed, until he came to the words: “_I see men as trees
walking_”.
“Yes,” dreamily interrupted Conrad. “‘Men as trees walking.’ That is
well described. Excellently well. All blurred and indistinct, I know——I
understand.”
Christian gazed up a little wonderingly into his son’s face.
“But,” continued Conrad, “it would be horrible now, to live on and on,
in a haze like that. Wouldn’t it, Väterle? It would drive a man mad.”
“Yes,” answered Christian; “I do think I’d rather be quite right down
blind at once.”
“Ay; and that would I, a thousand times.”
“But we won’t talk about such dreadful things. Let’s go on and see what
our Lord Christ did for the poor fellow,” and Christian read on to the
wondrous story’s end.
“If the Lord Christ walked the earth now-a-days, would He still do such
gracious deeds, think you?” said Conrad wistfully.
“Well,” replied Christian, “that is what nobody can tell, can they?
But Holy Church teaches, you know, that miraculous power has been
handed down. Oh, you shake your head; but it is quite certain that a
pilgrimage to St. Ottilie’s holy well, near Schlettstadt, is said to
work wonderful cures on blind eyes, and even weak ones——”
“Ay, ay,” said Conrad. “Cold water does do great things. It’s a pity
people don’t make more use of it.”
“Yes, and then special devotion to Our Lady of Alt Nöttingen is even——”
“Nay,” interrupted Conrad with an actual laugh. “That hideous black
doll work divine deeds? No, no, Bruno Wolkenberg against Our Lady of
Alt Nöttingen any day.”
“What odd notions you have, Conrad!” said the old man with a
half-scandalised air. “But thank heaven, all that concerns us little
enough, does it?”
“Read on, father,” said Conrad wearily.
And for a short while longer Christian read on, until they were
interrupted by the announcement that three gentlemen from the
Chancellery desired an audience of the Professor Dasipodius.
“I expected this,” he said, rising from his half-reclining position.
“Bid them come in.”
“But,” interposed Christian, “you are not fit——”
“Hush, father. It must be. Lend me your arm,” and he rose to receive
his visitors.
If those delegates had enjoyed their little dream of brief authority by
anticipation, the pleasure ended rather abruptly for all, not excepting
Master Hackernagel himself, who had volunteered to be spokesman, so
that as he said, he might mercifully break the intelligence. They
shuffled and hummed, and exchanged perturbed glances in that calm
stately presence, until Dasipodius, wondering at the silence, said,
“Well, gentlemen?”
Then the syndic recovered himself, and clearing his throat, and
sounding to the attack after his own approved fashion, unrolled the
parchment he carried. “_Whereas_,” he began in his best official
voice, never too musical, “_whereas_—I—I crave pardon,” he interrupted
himself. “I have in the first place and preliminarily to observe——”
“Certainly,” said Dasipodius, “say all you want to say, Master
Hackernagel, when you have discharged your duty; but you have something
to read there first?”
“_Whereas_,” resumed Tobias, after having stolen a glance at the
mathematician’s face, “_whereas certain rumours_—ahem! Mere hearsay you
observe, Professor,” he said, lifting his lynx-like eyes to Dasipodius.
“Just so. Mere hearsay,” cheerfully echoed the supernumeraries.
“Go on, Master Hackernagel,” said the mathematician in tones which
effectually did away with further parenthetical observation on the
syndic’s part.
Although thanks to Niklaus von Steinbach the document had the virtue
of brevity, it was with the utmost difficulty that Conrad succeeded
in imposing silence on Christian till its reading was ended. The old
man’s arm on which he leaned, quivered and vibrated with suppressed
agitation, and barely had the final syllable passed Hackernagel’s lips,
than Christian burst angrily into speech. “What fooling is this?” he
demanded. “Speak to these idiots, Conrad, and send them packing!”
“Master Christian!” wrathfully screeched the insulted dignitary,
turning on Christian; but the old man had neither eyes nor ears for
him, he was staring with bewildered entreaty in his son’s face. “Speak
to them. Do you hear?” he gasped.
“You had something to observe, Master Hackernagel,” calmly said
Dasipodius, lifting his hand to command silence.
“I—Professor? Ha—yes—precisely—h’m, h’m—I was simply about to remark
that—h’m—rumour—many-tongued rumour——”
“Just so—yes,” endorsed his coadjutors. “Many-tongued rumour—exactly——”
“Is false—proverbially false. Hem!” and again for an instant
Hackernagel’s small sharp orbits were fixed on the grand sightless
ones, but once more fell shiftily. It seemed to him that they returned
his glance with such calm, deep-seeing self-possession. “Proverbially
false.”
“Proverbially false,” assented his satellites like a Greek chorus; but
Dasipodius was silent.
“Conrad!” entreated Christian, “why will you not speak—why?——”
“Hush, father—hush! hush!” he said soothingly. “Gentlemen,” he
continued, addressing his visitors, “I will attend at the appointed
time. Have you anything further to communicate?”
“Hem! hem!” coughed Tobias. “We—I—should have been glad to hear—for
certain——”
“That I am blind—assuredly. I should have known you would. This then
for your contentment. Gentlemen,” and Dasipodius fixed his eyes on all
three, till they writhed with discomposure; and even Tobias’ pink lids
fell. “I am blind—stone-blind.”
“Oh! ha! h’m! Really I assure you, Herr Professor,” began one of the
party, but Dasipodius paid him no heed. His whole being seemed absorbed
in the endeavours he was making to comfort Christian.
“So—so, Väterle! Be brave now—brave; strong for my sake,” he said,
gathering the trembling old man into his arms.
A vague sympathetic murmur thrilled the syndic’s companions, and they
began to stammer out some well-meaning word or two.
“Nay, gentlemen,” interrupted Dasipodius, making a gesture of
dismissal. “You have kind hearts. They will tell you we would be alone
just now,” and with not so much as a word of farewell, the delegates
departed, never exchanging a syllable until they had turned the corner
of the street, where the syndic began roundly reproaching them for not
having backed him up in a manner befitting the dignity of the occasion.
“If I had not been equal to my duty,” he said, “where would you all
three have been, I should like to know?”
“Well,” said one, “but he’s got such a way with him always, has
Dasipodius. Oh, hang it! No; I’d sooner stand to witness the headsman
finish off half-a-dozen, than go through such a scene as that again.
Poor old Christian! Did you mark the tears in his eyes, Master Tobias?”
asked the speaker, dashing one or two suspicious drops away from his
own.
“I marked nothing,” said Hackernagel sulkily, “but that all three
of you let it be seen plainly enough, that you sympathised with the
accused; and I should like to know what that is, if it isn’t being
accessary—winking at crime. Holding a candle to—— Never mind, it is
of no consequence. I feel at least I have performed my duty,” and the
Incorruptible strode away, to spend the next three days in drawing up
with infinitesimal care and patience, notes of all he intended to say,
when Dasipodius should appear to give an account of himself.
And still in the chamber they had left, Christian lay upon his son’s
breast, with his arms clasped convulsively round the blind man’s neck.
“Tell them to go, Conrad. They are liars I say,” he wailed again and
again. “Can’t they see for themselves that it’s all a lie? Blind! ha!
ha! ha!” and Christian burst into a wild laugh. “Why! with such eyes
as these? Your mother’s eyes—shining down on me—now; do I not see
them? Clear and beautiful, like the moon through a night-cloud! Blind
forsooth!—blind!” and again he broke into hysterical laughter.
“Hush, father,” said Dasipodius—“be a man. Bear it for me now, as I
have borne it alone for long long weeks past. Those men did but speak
the truth. I am blind.”
Christian groaned heavily.
“You see my eyes. They are wide open, you say: but your eyes I cannot
see. No: nor the tears that I know they are wet with,” went on
Dasipodius brokenly: “nor all the grief that is in them; nor the pardon
for having hidden my affliction from you. That is there too, father?
The forgiveness?”
“Oh my son! my son!” sobbed Christian, tightening his clasp round
Conrad’s neck.
“So—that is well. I did it for the best. I was mad enough to think
I could have kept it to myself. Well, I have been outwitted,” he
continued with a sudden access of bitterness; “and there is no more to
be said. Understand, father: no more to be said.”
“But——” began the bewildered Christian.
“Not now, Väterle; for my sake. We will talk of other things.”
“But tell me only this,” entreated Christian, “does Sabina—your little
Sabina——”
“Hush! Not my Sabina—now. Sabina von Steinbach knows all; yes. God
forgive her!” said Dasipodius in a hollow changed voice. “Speak no
more about her, father. Come! come!” he added, making an effort at
gaiety, “cheer thee—cheer thee now! Why surely, when the blind man
himself breaks down, ’twill be time enough to spend tears on him! Look
up—smile. Nay, but you are not smiling! Oh trust me, I can tell whether
you are sad or merry, every whit as well as if I were made of eyes. So
then—cheerily—cheerily—for my sake.”
And so it was the blind man strove to comfort his father, and
gradually succeeded in bringing him to dwell calmly on their trouble.
Notwithstanding, the mathematician’s own heart was heavy with
forebodings. “Yet, it is wicked to meet troubles half way! It was she
who said that once. Oh Sabina! Sabina! is it any wonder that I took you
for true gold!”