“WORSE THAN SILENCE.”
Mass is over in the Cathedral, and the few worshippers who have braved
the early morning’s biting frost are gone shiveringly home to their
firesides. The vast edifice seems utterly deserted; as indeed, says
Prudentius, it always ought to be at daybreak; for what creature with
an ounce of brains, would loiter about in it of his own free will just
when Erwin’s daughter and the rest of the ghostly crew are flitting
back to their niches and pedestals and dim corners out of the way of
good honest broad daylight?
The sacristan, according to the long-established law which he has made
unto himself, is in the buttery hatch, fortifying his inner man against
the cold, and all those other little disagreeable incidentals, which he
declares each day brings, as surely as fast follows feast.
Meanwhile in the Cathedral, laggard full daylight glides stealthily,
yet with weird and awful grace, and through her filmy veil, like
ghostly guardians of that silent temple’s chaste loveliness, loom
the marble monuments and clustered shafts casting faint shadows
along the aisles. Especially about the Saint Laurence chapel, where
the wintry sunlight’s first pale ray steals in through the painted
window, spreading a haze of mystic loveliness, these shadows fall very
strangely, on picture and carving, and sheeny-broidered hangings.
Is it indeed true, as Prudentius avouches, that those statues walk
the Cathedral at nights? or is it with Strassburg this cold winter
morning as old legends tell it once was ages ago, with the fair old
Norman city, when angels brought the statue of Our Lady across the
waves, and set it there in a shrine to be the place’s patron-saint
for evermore? At least the figure standing under the fretted gateway,
as sculptured saint might stand in canopied niche, is a crowning
grace to the chapel’s beauty. Pale and clear as purest alabaster is
that sad young face, slightly upturned, but the hair rippling back
from the brow is golden-hued, gleaming where it catches the chance
sun-rays like purest metal. There too, all cunningly rose-tinted, are
the transparent finger-tips of the white hands, one of which gathers
close the ample blue velvet miniver-bordered mantle, while the other
clasps a richly-bound missal, wound about with a chaplet of pearls and
rubies strung on a golden chain. Judged by that uncertain light, the
close-fitting under-dress might be taken for some soft, thick, white
camlet stuff, and certain it is that the sculptor of this gracious
figure must have been a true master of his craft, yet whether the
beautiful yet suffering face might be a Saint Margaret’s, or whether
she were a Jephtha’s daughter, or some other virgin-martyr or confessor
of holy memory, no inscription was there to tell; or it might have
been that the creator of this figure desired to personify Ruth the
steadfast-minded, her of the loving clinging heart, who said: “Where
thou diest, I will die”.
Such a place that Cathedral was for idealizing every-day things. For
after all, the figure was but Sabina von Steinbach’s, the Burgomaster’s
daughter, who had chanced to pause for an instant on the threshold of
the chapel, where after mass she had stolen away to tell her beads.
For once however she had treated them with somewhat scanty ceremony,
hurrying on to make in the most persuasive terms her troubled heart
could improvise, extemporary supplications suited to her own particular
needs.
Sabina, always a most orthodox member of the orthodox church, had
ordinarily small fancy for this sort of invocation. Hitherto she had
always found the prayers in her missal and her Book of Hours amply
sufficing; but on this special morning, not all the beatific doctors
who had ever lived could have expressed her heart’s desire for her
before high Heaven’s throne. Yet it was a simple matter enough; she
had only entreated that things should go well that day and always for
Conrad Dasipodius, and that no breath of the blight threatening him
should fall.
For the old footing between him and herself to be renewed, she did
not dream of asking. What to him was her love but a valueless burden
which had already wrought, oh me! such boundless mischief? No! because
this love of hers for Dasipodius was unquenchable, it must burn on,
but henceforth it must be always hidden, self-consuming, and she was
content—at least she told herself she was—quite content to live apart,
finding her pride in his success, her joy in hearing his fellow-men
speak well of him, and her peace in the conviction that her own death
in life had made good some of that ill she had so unwittingly worked
him.
For her henceforward, things must at best be cruelly dull and
commonplace; yet what was that but just to find herself like anybody
else, instead of the happy creature singled out by the one man in all
the universe worth a thought.
And now Sabina is practising the new order of things. She is going home
to see that all is bright and comfortable for her father. And when he
comes in from his counting-house, it is to be no love-lorn Phyllis he
is to kiss and bid good-morrow to, but a busy little housewife with
never a thought in the world—ah dear no—not the shadow of one, beyond
that solemn question touching the fitness of the great Westphalian
boar’s head for immediate larding, and what quantity of sugar must be
had in for the new confections aunt Ottilie has sent her the recipe
for. And as Sabina, casting one parting look at the blessed Saint
Laurence, stepped into the aisle, and made towards the western portal
round in front of the Horologe scaffolding, all the mystery seemed
to float away from her, and she was just once more a pretty, rather
demure little lady, hastening home from early Mass. Demure it was
absolutely incumbent on her to appear, because just across yonder a man
was kneeling by one of the pillars of the Horologe, and although his
face was now entirely hidden in his long black cloak as if absorbed
in prayer, there never is any telling when a man’s head may pop up
if a woman’s dress happens to rustle by; and that is precisely what
did occur; and before Sabina well knew how it had all come about, he
had risen to his feet, and she found herself face to face with Conrad
Dasipodius, and heard his voice bidding her a formal good-morrow. With
a painful effort she returned the greeting, and strove to pass on; but
her feet refused to obey her will, and pale and trembling she stood,
murmuring some incoherent words about the Horologe.
“No, Mistress von Steinbach,” replied Dasipodius, “it was not the
Horologe work which brought me here this morning. I came to pray. We
all have need of that sometimes.”
“Of course,” stammered Sabina—“always.”
“Very like,” he said; “but one prays with a difference.”
“I—I—do not—understand you, Master Dasipodius,” she faltered.
“No?” he said, with a slight shrug, and lifting of his brows. “Ah, I
meant only to say, that the prayer which yesterday was an irksome task,
becomes to-day a necessity. At least, I find it so; but these matters
do seem to be quite another thing with you, Mistress von Steinbach, and
such as you, whose sympathies are as evenly regulated as four sides of
a square; never outrunning the angle of prudence, and whose pulses keep
time as correctly as the beats of this clock here. Nay, often I despair
of bringing this cold hard thing of wood and brass to such obedience.
Maybe,” he continued with a harsh laugh, when no response reached him,
“I should do well to entrust it to your discipline for a bit? You who
so skilfully regulate that—which you call your heart.”
Could he have seen the bloodless, agonized face before him! But he
could not; and he merely stood, with his head slightly bent forward
in the old listening attitude she knew so well, while his eyes seemed
striving to penetrate some dark veil hanging between him and all joyful
things. It might have been that one word then from the girl beside
him, could have rent it all away, but though her dry pale lips were
parted, and quivered convulsively, no syllable came from them. Her very
breathing was suspended; and a dead sad silence reigned in the vast
Cathedral, while daylight, now striding on apace, cast a sickly glare
upon those two white and stony faces.
“Your letter,” he continued, “reached me; but that of course you know.
Everyone knows it.”
“And—and you?” she gasped.
“Ay, yes, yes. I am to blame for not having answered it yet—much to
blame; but there is some indulgence to be accorded to blind men, even
when they dare—as I have dared. Speak, will you not say one word to me?
At least you forgive me—Sabina?”
She stretched her trembling arms towards him.
“It is you who should forgive me,” she said. “Oh—Master Dasipodius,
what mischief I have done! If the Horologe——”
“Nay, never fret about the Horologe,” he said wearily. “I was thinking
of—of that mistake of ours, when we thought we loved each other. I
blame myself very much for this, Sabina. Not for all the horologes in
the world,” he went on, while she stood shrinking back, with her eyes
fixed in tense earnestness on his face, “ought I to have deceived you.
And yet—do not think too hardly of me. I sought to act for the best—I
felt so sure that you—your love——”
“Yes—I know,” she said, a crimson flush overspreading her ashen face.
“You thought I had given it to you—before you had asked for it——”
“Indeed,” he interrupted in surprised tones, “I had no such——”
“And so,” she said, waving away his words with a slight involuntary
gesture of contempt, “you thought you would take pity on me.”
“Pity!”
“Ay—yes; but it shall not be. I will have no such sacrifices;
because—because——”
“No,” he answered coldly, “there must be no sacrifices, and we
understand each other now quite well. Is it not so, Mistress Sabina? We
need be at no more cross purposes. I am glad we have met. It is much
better to be clear.”
“Oh, much better,” she said brokenly.
“And,” he went on, feeling with his hand for hers, and taking the
death-cold fingers in his icy ones, “we are friends—henceforth—is it
not so?”
And as hand-in-hand the two stood there, cold and impassive as a pair
of marble statues, who could have guessed at the torn hearts quivering
beneath?
“Oh, Master Dasipodius!” she sobbed forth at last, “if I could indeed
be your real true friend: if I could give——”
“You would give me—anything in reason,” he said, with a smile of chilly
sarcasm, “would you not?”
“I would give you my life if it——”
“Nay,” he said, “I need no such extravagant protestations. I am sure
you are a good child; and friendship is an excellent thing no doubt,”
he added with a groaning sigh, as he dropped her hand and turned away.
“Conrad!” she wailed, and in the agony of her despair, she clutched his
mantle with her half-numbed fingers. “Conrad!”
“Mistress von Steinbach?” he said, pausing attently, but not another
syllable reached his ear, and again he turned impatiently from her, all
unconscious of her grasp. His action was so abrupt, that it wrenched
the cloak from her feeble hold, and staggering back, she would have
tripped and fallen, had it not been for the clock’s friendly wooden
framework; while the blind man who would have stepped aside from
trampling on the merest weed, strode with stern, set face from the
woman he so passionately loved.