“INTER ALIA.”
On hearing that the Horologe designs had been safely deposited at the
Chancellery, Syndic Hackernagel took to himself no small credit for the
satisfactory issue to which he had conducted the whole affair; and as
he reflected how entirely Otto von Steinbach was beholden to him, his
green eyes gleamed with triumph.
All the same, he was puzzled by his easy conquest.
“It is of course entirely gratifying,” as he passingly observed to
Councillor Job Klausewitz. “I myself had an impression that the man
would have made more difficulty about it. However,” he loftily added,
“I must own that it shows his sense.”
And Job, who had caught a bad cold in his head on the trial day, and
done nothing but sneeze ever since, said he thought it did; and that
the Professor Dasipodius must be uncommonly glad at finding himself
quit of the whole business.
The Syndic’s exultations fell considerably, however, when he found
that both the Habrechts had resigned their posts. While he shrank from
owning it even to himself, he had uncomfortable misgivings as to Otto’s
scientific capabilities; and in the event of any deficiencies becoming
inconveniently conspicuous, he had counted on Habrecht for glossing
them over.
His vexation applied almost equally to Kaspar, who, stripling though
he was, no older craftsman in all the city could replace. Any forlorn
hope, however, Hackernagel had entertained, that the two brothers might
be compelled to work on at the studio by the terms of their indentures,
was annihilated when he consulted these; and the desperate final
attempt he made to induce the two to remain, met with stout refusal.
To Niklaus von Steinbach the result of that day’s work at the
Chancellery had been very grievous. He felt that under a guise of
friendly delicacy a crying injustice had been done Dasipodius; and yet
he did not feel that he had had the power to avert it. He had hoped
and believed that calm discussion of facts would have put an end to
the absurd rumours and ignorant scandal concerning the mathematician’s
infirmity, and have done him the service of raising him still higher
in public esteem; but there had been no discussion, only the empty
pipings of a bigoted enthusiast, and Niklaus sorely repented of the
manner in which he had permitted the whole affair to be conducted; and
yet he feared still more to retrace the false steps, lest Dasipodius
should be exposed to even worse than he was already enduring. Niklaus,
after his lights, was a clever, even shrewd man, but he was not equal
to grappling with, and trampling down the hydra-headed superstition
and ignorance surging around him. It was no empty bugbear which
Hackernagel held aloft, when he hinted at fire and stake as the reward
of men who dealt in matters of which the ruck of that generation had
no conception, and consequently no toleration. Had his relations
towards the mathematician been less intimate and kindly disposed than
they were, it seemed to him he might have been able to have spoken out
on his behalf more freely, and found better eloquence for refuting
Hackernagel’s absurd sophisms. That the Syndic’s mode of attack had
been thoroughly unworthy of the position he occupied, it did not need
half of the Burgomaster’s perception to see; but the people’s ignorant
infatuation for this man had shown itself more than once before now,
and if the demagogue chose to say black was white, they infinitely
preferred saying so too, rather than use their prescriptive right of
thinking out a question for themselves. There was nothing they appeared
more to enjoy than letting Syndic Hackernagel lead them by the nose.
Had this all happened a year earlier, Niklaus felt that he might have
said out all that came uppermost in his mind concerning Dasipodius, and
done him real service thereby; but with that knowledge of his character
which a closer intercourse with him had brought, the Burgomaster knew
himself to be under the influence which the mathematician seemed to
exercise upon all who had to do with him. If ever for prudential
motives he had striven to withstand this influence, he had capitulated
long since, and been constrained besides, not even to refuse him
his treasure of treasures, his one ewe lamb, his Lily; and yet more
than this, since when he learned the affliction which had befallen
Dasipodius, although he certainly strove, to persuade himself that
Heaven had been very merciful in averting such a marriage, he failed
miserably, and soon gave up vexing himself with the fiction that he was
glad.
Had he been told in the past years that he would have been content to
see his child the wife of a blind man, and one even by comparison with
his own worldly state, a poor blind man, he would have indignantly
spurned the monstrous notion; but the Burgomaster bowed to facts, and
now his warm generous heart only yearned to bring back the roses to
Sabina’s cheeks, and to shield Dasipodius from the storm which was
buffeting him.
And he knew not how to do it. However iniquitously party spirit might
have influenced the public voice to pronounce against Dasipodius, he
had still been set aside by a process which in itself was at least
fair; and as for Sabina, she maintained such a complete, almost stern
silence touching the sudden disruption between herself and her lover,
that Niklaus felt like one with his hands tied, and could only be a sad
and anxious spectator. It was true he had his suspicions that his niece
Radegund knew something of the real state of affairs, and he once went
the length of speaking a word with her about these troubles vexing
and perplexing to him; but Radegund so fiercely demanded of him if he
thought her the mathematician’s keeper, that Niklaus shrank into his
shell, and only said: “Well, well, niece, the poor child is troubled;
and I fancied that a woman, and such a clever woman too as you are,
might have been able to do what a stupid old father only blunders
over; and I thought as you and the Professor Dasipodius are such good
friends——”
“We are not—friends,” interrupted she.
“Oh!” returned Niklaus, scrutinizing her gloomy face from under his
bushy brows. “It looked like it anyhow.”
“Do you mean to insinuate——”
“No,” returned he acridly. “That’s not my way—insinuating.” Then he
added rather more hesitatingly: “It is merely that I have twice come
upon you, niece, and the Professor Dasipodius in close confabulation
together after dark; and that sort of thing always seems—friendly.”
“Things are not always what they seem.”
“Ah, well,” said Niklaus in rather hurried tones, for he stood in dread
of Radegund’s oracular moods, “if you could have righted things for my
poor little woman, I know you would, niece. So we’ll say no more about
it.”
And Niklaus was right. If his child’s troubles had been of any other
nature under the sun, there was not woman living who would have gone
to her, and soothed, and striven to comfort, and lain aside her
own pleasures for her sake. For pain and poverty, and every sort
of wretchedness, mental or physical, humanity knows, Radegund had
boundless sympathy, and of that sterling sort which spends itself in
endeavouring to alleviate the misery it looks upon; but the waves of
that swift and troublous current to which she had abandoned herself,
hissed and howled their evil music in her ears too deafeningly for
her to catch aught beyond the faintest echo of those angel voices
beseeching her to return; and the sternest Calvinist in all Alsace
could not more calmly have yielded to Destiny’s decree, than did she to
the sway of her passionate worship of Dasipodius. It numbed down like
an opiate all her generosity and her high sense of honour. Yet dead
these were not; and many and many a time wakening from their uneasy
sleep, they stirred her to a different course; but fiercely hushing
them to quiescence, she abided with sphinx-like impenetrability on her
beautiful face and awful outward calmness, the solving of the riddle
she had propounded for herself and for those she loved.
Even when rumour said the Professor Dasipodius was about to leave
Strassburg, she betrayed no shadow of interest in his goings or
comings; but silently and unflaggingly continued to pursue her own
share at the Horologe work, and this to her brother Otto’s unspeakable
relief. He had dreaded as an almost inevitable outcome of the new order
of affairs, that Radegund would throw up her contract, and make things
generally unpleasant; but his terrors proved groundless, and it was
a comfort to him beyond power of words, to mark how she seemed to be
throwing all her energies into superintending the fixing of two of the
completed panels into the cornice of the clock. To be sure, the outside
of the Horologe was going on promisingly indeed!
And truly time was not to be lost now. The last winter snows had
melted, and among the little ones of the old city a whisper had gone
forth that if you looked very carefully indeed along by the river
banks, out there beyond the walls, you would find a few tiny violets;
and bolder spirits, though they of course were “Sunday children,” who
always know pleasant things before others, declared that Cuckoo had
begun to hint his agreeable intelligence. This must certainly have been
true, because on the very next sunny morning, before a creature was
up, the primroses peeped out, and rather in a fluster at having been
so long caught napping by the quiet violets and the fresh young grass
blades, hastily shook out their golden stars, for the saucy little
yellow things do so love to have the best freshness of the dark purple
foil of their modest sisters, declaring that without it their beauty is
not seen to anything like the same advantage; though at this indirect
compliment of course the violets can afford to smile in their gentle
way, and say: “Foil, forsooth; well, well, they are dear merry little
things, the primroses, let them chatter as they like!” But ere long
spring must ripen into summer, and later summer was to give Strassburg
its new Horologe. Under Dasipodius’ untiring supervision, there had
been little fear that its nearly completed mechanism would have been
ready even some weeks before Saint Laurence’s day. But the master’s
hand was stayed now, and his successor stumbled beneath the weight
of his own responsibility. Yet for very shame he dared not share his
burden with those about him. If he could have taken his sister Radegund
into his confidence, he knew how useful she could have been to him; but
he instinctively comprehended that he might as well have sought counsel
from one of the Cathedral marble effigies as from her. She never so
much as entered the studio where he now reigned with fussy consequence,
and since neither by word nor look she ever troubled herself to enquire
how he prospered, he found himself driven to maintain a dignified
reticence, which was none the less vexatious, on account of his having
to keep his annoyance to himself. “Oh you know,” he one day airily
remarked to Syndic Hackernagel, “one has quite enough of the thing all
day long; and I make it a rule never to talk shop at home. Besides,
one has such an immense objection to women meddling in things so far
above their heads, to say nothing of their being so confoundedly
self-opinionated.”
Tobias assented with an emphatic nod.
“Yes, you know,” continued Otto, “Dasipodius got into a way of
consulting her about one thing or another, till he made her positively
unendurable. And that’s just the whole difference between his method
and mine. We work you see on curiously contrasting principles; it may
have suited Dasipodius to get an opinion from a petticoat, but——”
“I’ve a notion,” said Hackernagel with a knowing wink, “that Dasipodius
vastly admired Mistress Radegund.”
“Ah, oh—well, everybody does you know,” returned Otto proudly; “don’t
you?”
“H’m,” conceded the other, “she’s a magnificent creature, but——”
“Well?” challenged Otto, who tolerated no _buts_ save his own where
Radegund was concerned.
“Ah! I was merely about to observe—hem—I had an impression that fairer
beauty was more to your individual taste.”
“Well, perhaps,” sighingly admitted Otto, “I believe you are not wrong,
Syndic Hackernagel.”
And then Syndic Hackernagel, smiling an indulgent smile, reminded him
of his promise to look in for half an hour that evening on their family
circle; a custom which of late had not been infrequent with Otto, who
enjoying as he did in an eminent degree, the sensation of having caps
pulled for him, found it satisfied in that quarter to almost the top
of his bent. The consciousness that behind his back internal strife
waged high among the four Mistresses Hackernagel on his account, was
balm to Otto’s unhealed love wounds. It was so soothing to find himself
appreciated, to feel sure that he had but to hold out his little finger
for it to be instantly caught at and caressed by eight fair freckled
hands.
Yet it was precisely this overflow of appreciation which confused
him, and rendered him for a long time irresolute as to which of
the sandy-haired goddesses he should give the golden apple, that
is supposing things really went so hard with him that he should be
driven into bestowing it in that quarter at all. Clearly he could only
marry one of them, and the reflection made him shrink with terror and
commiseration from the picture he conjured to his imagination of the
three rejected ones. Those smiles he now basked in, and the honeyed
flattery which now soothed and tranquilized his whole being, would be
all changed to bitterness, and the good times, in short, would be fled
for him for ever. And all for what?—for the sake of having chosen where
he had no choice, or next to none.
Choice indeed was hardly to be conceived of, since the four ladies,
formed on the lines of their sire, so nearly resembled each other,
with their light eyes, sandy hair, and sallow complexions. Only the
third, Mistress Gretchen’s, eyes were a shade darker, her nose within
more feminine proportions, her figure less angular, and above all, her
voice less shrill than her sisters’; but Otto clung to liberty a little
longer, and moreover he had not jeopardized so much for the mere chance
of horological honours when he first set about executing the little
manœuvre which had led to the overthrow of Conrad Dasipodius. The
chance of being able to win Sabina from him had been at least an equal
incentive to his efforts; and that the tide of favour and prejudice had
now set in his way so strongly was, he considered, no more than due
reward for all his efforts to help himself; and he looked now to be
having his way a little with the world and its womankind, for all the
coast was clear and his rival trod the steps of the city no more.