“UNDER THE SHADE OF MELANCHOLY BOUGHS.”
In all the cantons of the League it would have been hard to find a
kinder-hearted, more hospitable house-mother than Gridel Habrecht, the
mother of Isaac and Kaspar. Eldest and youngest of their generation,
there was between them a tribe of married brothers and sisters settled
in Schaffhausen and its neighbourhood; and an industrious and thriving
lot they were, all more or less expert in the clock and watch making
craft, which has for centuries distinguished the villages of the Black
Forest. Kaspar Habrecht, however, from earliest childhood had shown a
talent for the wood-carving, which is another branch of its industry,
and no less marked a feature of the prosperous locality where it is
said beggars are unknown. The sterling and scientific horological skill
of Isaac Habrecht had earned for him a high reputation, which had
reached Strassburg; and when, under the auspices of Chretei Herlin,
the great mechanical clock had been begun, more now than two years
ago, Isaac, at the special desire of the old mathematician, accepted
the post in his studio, and at the same time established himself as a
clockmaker and brass-work instrument maker at the sign of the Wheel
in one of the city’s chief thoroughfares. Withholding however the
lad’s identity, he had submitted some specimens of his young brother’s
handicraft to Herlin and Radegund von Steinbach, and other competent
judges; and one and all of them had pronounced the work surpassing in
beauty of design, and delicacy of touch, anything of the sort they had
ever seen; and Chretei at once desired to know whether the artist’s
services could be had for the new Horologe case? It was a proud moment
for Isaac, as then for the first time he explained that this artist was
his brother Kaspar.
“And he is but a youth, but he’ll do his best to give you and the city
satisfaction, Father; I’ll answer for that.”
And so Kaspar too had taken his place in the Dial studio. His mother
had found it a hard task to part with this child of her old age;
but she was made of stoical stuff, and when she saw the flush of
joy which lit Kaspar’s face at the unexpected distinction offered
him, she did not refuse to let him go, but bidding him to be true to
himself and his employers, sent him to the great city, and saved her
tears till he was gone; and when they had had their way, she dried
her still handsome eyes, and made herself content with the reflection
that Isaac was with him, and where Isaac was no harm could come to
anybody, and whatever Isaac did was right. That, however, made it none
the less a joy to her, when she found that he and Kaspar were coming
home for a while; and when she was further desired to prepare for the
guests they should bring with them, she set to work and brought out
her finest linen, and all the best her house afforded, and excellent
the best was; and her man Yörgli, whose normal round of duties was
confined to stable and pasture work, was bidden to come indoors and
help Mariannle to move about the cumbrous handsome old chairs and
tables and presses in the best bed-chamber; and Yörgli, who had an
avowed admiration for Mariannle, was nothing loth; neither perhaps had
Mariannle any objection, since for all she laughed and danced and
flirted whenever it suited her humour, she liked Yörgli, she said, well
enough; quite enough, she would own if driven very close, to marry him
when a sufficient number of florins had been saved up to buy a certain
charming little cottage not far off, which Yörgli had his eye upon.
In those days when pens and newspapers had not as yet come to be things
of course, Frau Habrecht could have but a very scanty conception of the
events which had so recently created such a stir in Strassburg, until
she had her son’s _vivâ voce_ relation of it. Isaac had indeed warned
her that Dasipodius was blind; rumour moreover had already brought so
much within her ken, and when she found that he was actually to be her
guest, she was a little put about at the threatened responsibility
which she imagined the charge of a blind person would entail upon her,
and her practical mind was much exercised to conceive what Conrad
Dasipodius would be finding to do with himself all day in that little
village, whose busy silence was only broken by the tapping of tiny
hammers and the grating of files.
The briefest acquaintance however with the blind man dispelled all her
perplexities. At first, indeed, she found it difficult to persuade
herself that he was blind. It was not merely that his eyes were so
clear and well open, but he was so entirely able to do things for
himself—and for other people, as she was not slow to remark; and when,
for example, at supper-time on the evening of their arrival, Dasipodius
reached a chair and placed it for her at the table, her heart was won
for ever.
“He did,” she said afterwards, “what you two forgot to do with both
your fine eyes, and for all you saw to the poor little old mother, she
might have set her own chair. He didn’t find it too much trouble to pay
an old woman attentions, such as you two, I suppose, keep all for the
young ones. And,” went on she, not a little delighted at being able to
reassume the old tyranny over her two favourite sons, “I’ve not grown
into an imbecile since you have been away, I can tell you, and I’ve
more than an idea that you’ve been playing me some trick, and that he’s
not blind at all; and if you have——”
“God forbid, mother!” said Isaac gravely. “I wish we had been; but the
master’s stone blind.”
And the good woman allowed herself to be convinced; but she was greatly
tempted to begin to question the use of eyes at all, if one could make
one’s self so pleasant and so courtly without them. And so it was that
Dasipodius won himself the first place in his hostess’s esteem, and
henceforth her solicitude and anxiety for his personal comfort was as
unceasing as it was unobtrusive, and never a suspicion of fuss in it;
for with all his gentle ways, she stood in a certain sort of awe of him.
“Poor gentleman!” she said one day to Isaac. “At all events it
doesn’t need you or anybody to tell me that he and trouble are close
acquaintance; but it’s a noble face, Isaac, a noble face,” and then it
seemed to her that in Dasipodius she had found another son.
Neither did Christian lack her kind hospitable care; and that time
he spent in the Black Forest was very pleasant to him. Many a long
year had passed since last he had basked in the sunshine of a country
spring-tide; and he would wander away on those bright mornings, finding
a chastened pleasure in giving rein to memory, till it reached that
spring-time of his early manhood when he made the journey into the
Vosges Mountains and found his first last love. If now and then time
hung a little heavy for him, he kept that religiously to himself, for
he knew the sacrifice which had been made to afford him the benefit of
this change, which of course, taking all in all, he was enjoying well
enough; but Christian sorely missed Burgomaster von Steinbach looking
in, and would have given all the grey hairs off his head for a little
squabble about the Cession. A dozen times a day the old man would be
silently considering to himself what was going on in Strassburg; and
when after they had been there about a fortnight, Dr. Bruno Wolkenberg
guilefully contrived to give his patients the slip, and handing them
over to the tender mercies of a deputy, made his appearance along with
Balder at the cottage, Christian plied him with questions about things
in general, among which Otto von Steinbach was by no means forgotten.
“And how does he get on with his work?” rather drily asked Christian.
But Bruno, who had fully and satisfactorily answered all his other
enquiries, frowning impatiently, ruffling up his hair with his fingers,
and muttering something not too complimentary about Otto, strode
silently out into the air.
“Yes, I know,” nodded Christian, looking after him, “they made a
mistake when they let my boy go; there’s no doubt of that.”
When, however, the friends found themselves alone, Dasipodius asked
Bruno how Radegund’s pictures round the Horologe cornice were getting
on.
“They are perfection,” said Bruno; “at least things outside will all be
as they ought.”
“That will rejoice the Bishop’s heart,” replied the mathematician. “Has
he returned?”
“No, but Radegund is anxiously looking for his coming.”
“But her pictures are not finished yet?” said Dasipodius.
“It is not the pictures she’s thinking of, I take it,” answered
Wolkenberg.
“What then?”
“Ah! who can ever guess what she has in her head? ‘I have much to speak
with him about,’ that is all she condescends to inform me. She might
tell you more, Conrad,” jerked out the jealous Bruno, clutching up a
handful of grass, and then scattering it to the four winds.
“What is vexing her?”
“Nay, she seems to live in a world of vexation. She never smiles now,
Conrad, and it used to be like a golden sunset when Radegund smiled.”
“Poor girl! what a burden she makes life to herself; and to you—you
patient old bear.”
“I am not patient,” groaned Bruno, his blue eyes growing at once moist
and fiery. “Oh, Conrad, it is too hard; I think it will kill me if it
goes on much longer.”
“I would to heaven I could make you both happy,” said Dasipodius
musingly.
“Honestly, do you wish that?” demanded Wolkenberg, in whom the old
suspicion was so hard to die.
“Honestly?” echoed Dasipodius, lifting his brows surprisedly; “why,
from my heart yes. And—if—nay, if I speak all I think, I will say I
wish your love might find another—that is a gratefuller, kinder——”
“What is that?” cried the surgeon, starting from his place beside
Dasipodius, and his handsome face kindling and bristling like any
lion’s. “Do you take me for a weathercock or a windmill?”
“Not a bit of it. Sit down again now, Bruno. I was only going to say
that if indeed Radegund does not return your affection, then certainly
she can have no heart, and you are worlds too good for a heartless——”
“My God! Conrad,” said Bruno, and his voice trembled with suppressed
agitation and anger, “though it is you who say that, I could fell you
to the ground for it.”
“Then I had best say no more,” answered Dasipodius. “We will not
quarrel over this—over a woman. Is she—is there one worth it? Tell me,
Bruno, have you seen—Sabina, Mistress Sabina von Steinbach?”
And Dasipodius’ cheek crimsoned and paled again before the surgeon
answered curtly, “Yes”.
“And—she was well?”
“Oh, as far as I know; but she hardly spoke a word to me; and, I’ll
warrant you, I did not to her.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? I can’t, Conrad,—there. It’s of no use. When I look at
her pretty dove-like face, and think what she can be, how false and
shallow-hearted—and to you, Conrad—to you.”
“Have done, Bruno Wolkenberg!” cried Dasipodius, clutching fiercely at
a tree branch within reach, and bringing himself to his feet. “One word
more about Sabina von Steinbach and we are enemies for ever.”
“Mistress von Steinbach,” said Bruno, in chilly even tones, and with
a contemptuous shrug of his broad shoulders, “Mistress von Steinbach
shall make no quarrel between us.”
“Good. There is no need to discuss her at all. She has passed out of my
life. If I could hear,” went on Dasipodius after a short pause, “that
another could atone to her for all the vexation my love has caused
her—that some man worthy of her——”
“Oh,” bitterly interrupted Bruno. “I am glad to think you have come
to regard it in that light. Mistress Sabina never did run short of
admirers; and now you are out of the winning, she may choose where she
pleases, and——”
“Well?” said Dasipodius, with quick short breath. “Why do you waste
words? Speak. Who is it?”
“I did not say,” stammered the inconsequential Bruno, “that it was
anybody—nobody—Otto von Steinbach that is——”
“Otto von Steinbach!” gasped Dasipodius.
“He’ll do as well as another I suppose,” muttered Bruno.
“No! no! no! It cannot be! You are wrong—you——”
“May be so; but he—you know he used to be very sweet at Hackernagel’s
house; now he hardly ever goes there, and spends all his evenings at
the Burgomaster’s.”
“And—she?” hoarsely demanded Dasipodius.
“Ah! She—sits and spins.”
Yes, yes, of course—the old old story all through again! Just as she
had sat and spun—could not the blind man see it all in his memory so
plainly? Those days that were gone! Every ripple in her golden hair
gleaming wherever the sunlight touched it like purest gold, every shy
soft glance of her eyes, the eloquent ebb and flow of rosy colour to
her soft rounded cheek. All this, and much more, passed in mocking
array before him; and so, still then in that old dining-hall, that
drama—what? Nay, that farce of woman’s love was playing, only with
just a change of lovers; for the dainty heroine, the same woman mimed
it to as great a perfection as ever no doubt. Had her new coadjutor
been worthier, perhaps Dasipodius could have borne to think of
it differently, but—well, the last straw had been added to the
burden now!—Otto von Steinbach! Ah, great heaven! could it be, the
mathematician asked himself, that he had committed some unremembered
crime, for which it was doomed that this scatterbrain, unstable boy,
should be the avenger, and his supplanter in all that made life worth
living?
Oh, woman! woman! to the end it will be like this. For your sake Troy
may burn, for you noble hearts may crack; at your feet men will chain
and enslave their best ambitions, and still, calm and silent, you sit
and spin, and seem to take no heed!
But Sabina’s old love only said: “If a storm came by, Otto would be no
shelter for the Lily, Bruno.”
“They are well enough matched,” said Bruno, hating himself that he
spoke so harshly.
“It may be so,” said Dasipodius slowly and wistfully; and in unbroken
silence the two sat on, listening to the low soughing of the spring
breeze among the oak boughs, and the gentle creaking of the pine
branches, and the waterfall’s distant roar, and the buzzing of the
insects about them, thinking the while what a fallacy it was, that
notion about nature being the counterpart of man’s life. Why, here in
the one case, was not all peace and brightness and content? and as
the days should lengthen out, this early promise would all ripen into
golden summer, and still richer autumn’s harvesting, and the happiness
of all living creatures would be perfected. Only for those two, the
buds of hope had been nipped by cruel frosts, and ere their manhood’s
summer was reached, the wintry clouds of disappointment were heavy upon
them.
So noonday waned, and never a syllable more the two interchanged, until
Kaspar came in search of them. “That is you, Kaspar?” said Dasipodius,
his ear first detecting the boy’s light step over the fallen stones of
the mountain side. “Come here; I was thinking of you this moment, and
then—I hear your footstep. That is what they say of the angels.”
“I am but a poor sort of angel,” laughingly said the boy, as he flung
himself full length upon the grass at the mathematician’s feet.
“Prove yourself at least a good spirit then. For we are sorely wanting
one to take us out of ourselves for a bit. Come now, have I not over
and over again heard you say there is a legend attached to this lake of
yours?”
“Oh, yes,” cried Bruno, “there is, I know——”
“Hold your peace,” smiled Dasipodius, lifting his finger. “Of course
you know, but you have been in a brown study this hour and more past,
and your version might not be so cheerful as Kaspar’s. So come now,
lad, begin. Once upon a time—”
“Yes,” said Kaspar. “Once upon a time there was a brave handsome knight
dwelt in yonder castle, and he was beloved by two fair ladies——”
“He loved two fair ladies, you mean,” corrected the mathematician.
“He loved one of them, yes,” gravely assented Kaspar, “and——”
“But they were not both fair,” criticised Bruno. “One was dark; that is
the way at least that I’ve heard the story, with hair and eyes like the
raven’s wing.”
“I should have said, of course,” said the patient Kaspar, “two
_beautiful_ ladies; one a Count Palatine’s daughter, the Lady
Aldegonda, and the other a poor esquire’s child, Veronica, fair-haired
and blue-eyed, and it was her the knight loved. But when Aldegonda
found that out, she went to the poor maiden, and laughing her love to
scorn, bade her find lowlier wooers, that falcons mated with merlins,
not with tercel-hawks; and that it was at her feet the knight Hugo
would fain worship. And when the poor child heard this, her heart felt
near to breaking and——”
“Now, Kaspar,” interrupted the mathematician, “surely your story is
simple nonsense as it stands with your telling. I suppose the knight
had told her that he loved her; that would have sufficed.”
“Yes, he had told her,” answered Kaspar, “but she was a woman, very
young it is true, not very wise perhaps, but old enough to know men’s
hearts can be fickle; wise enough to see how gloriously beautiful the
Lady Aldegonda was, and she misdoubted the power of her own pale beauty
in such rivalry. Don’t you understand, master?”
“Go on,” shrugged the mathematician.
“And so, as I was telling you, the Lady Aldegonda’s words almost broke
Veronica’s heart, and there seemed nothing left for her but to die. And
day after day, for the knight was absent just then from his castle,
she would come and sit just hereabouts where we are now, on the lake’s
brink, and gaze into the deep deep, cold cold water, and then there
would steal terrible thoughts into her weary desolate soul.
“One day while she was sitting so, there seemed to come a low murmur
from the Kelpie’s cave here. Nearer and nearer it came; but she sighed
to herself, ‘It is but the wind whispering among the ferns,’ and still
nearer and nearer came these sounds. ‘It is only the wavelets,’ she
sadly said, ‘stirring the long rushes.’ And truly they were; and still
the murmuring came closer, closer, until she knew it to be too sweet
for the whispering of the wind or the rippling of the water, too sweet
for aught save Hugo’s voice. ‘My life, I love you,’ it said. ‘Nay,’
sobbed she, but yielding all the while to the strong arms folding
her so fond and close, ‘but the Lady Aldegonda says——’ ‘What can the
Lady Aldegonda know,’ he rejoined, with a strange stern look, which
fled again as his face bent over hers, ‘of the love I bear for you,
sweetheart? Come, Father Sigurd waits at the holy altar to make us one.
Wilt come, dear love?’ And so from the dark weeds the maiden rose up,
her white dress heavy with the waters that had near been her grave,
and the little forget-me-not flowers she had gathered, for all her
bride’s bravery, in her bosom, and ere the Ave Maria chimed again, she
stood in the castle halls yonder, Hugo’s dear true wife, and many a
long and happy year they lived. That’s all, master; it isn’t so much of
a tale as some are.”
“And what there is of it you’ve half left out,” grumbled Bruno. “The
Lady Aldegonda——”
“Ah,” smiled Dasipodius. “She found a suitor more sensible to her
charms, depend on it.”
“No such thing,” answered Bruno. “She killed herself for love of Hugo.
Eh, Kaspar, is it not so?”
“They found her dead next dawn at the foot of the crag yonder,” said
Kaspar.
“A cruel end,” said the mathematician.
“She deserved no better,” grumbled Bruno.
“You are unkind, Kaspar,” smiled Dasipodius. “Did I not say I expected
something cheerful of you?”
“But,” pleaded the boy earnestly, “how could I twist the ending false,
and make it happy when it wasn’t?”
“Why, it is but a legend!”
“The more reason to make it seem like life.”
“Well, well—if I had tears for bygones, I think I could spare a few for
the Lady Aldegonda’s love. It is—come, Bruno, leave sighing, and cudgel
your invention to help my square inch brain find a simile. What is
misplaced love like?”
“I cannot say,” said Bruno, “unless it be like the precious pearls that
proud Queen of Egypt wasted in a cup of vinegar.”
“It will do, though it has seen some service; but sometimes it has
seemed to me that there may be some bright hidden meridian towards
which such seemingly aimless lines all converge. There, confess now, if
my science is not a match for your romance.”