CHAPTER XIV.

“DAS HERZ IST GESTORBEN, DIE WELT IST LEER.”

Sabina watched her father and her lover cross the courtyard, and pass out through the little wicket door, which the Burgomaster carefully locked behind him, then she listened until the sound of their voices and the clit-clat of the stick had quite died away in the distance, and so at last she came and resumed her spinning by the hearth; and while the wheel turned steadily, she thought her happy thoughts. What an evening had that been! how unexpectedly joyful! what a red-letter day! and how strange it was, she thought, that the good God always made one’s joys and sorrows come when one was the least thinking about them! Here had she been spinning, dressing, eating, sleeping, day after day for ever so long past, each day being exactly like another (always, of course, excepting the blessed Sunday, when she went with her father, in best silken kirtle and furred hood, to cathedral mass and caught there a glimpse of a certain dear face); and this day had begun in just the same leaden humdrum old way as all the others had, yet suddenly into what a flood of hope and content had it burst! Of hope, because it seemed to her that her father’s objections and scruples were melting away, and at last he was to be won over; of content, because she felt herself so entirely assured of Conrad’s love. Her assurance on that score seemed now so doubly sure. Of late, some troublesome little fancies, doubts she would not call them, concerning what her father had seen in the churchyard, had worried her just the least bit in the world; and indeed, being a most frank and truthful little woman, she had had it in her mind to ask Conrad about that same meeting of his with Radegund; but all such intentions had long fled to the four winds. How was it possible to look at Conrad’s face and not trust him? and was he, who had so much to think about and to worry him, to be vexed with her little foolish jealousies—jealous, forsooth! jealous of Cousin Radegund, indeed? Would that be womanly—wifely; that is, would it be worthy of the woman whom Conrad Dasipodius had chosen for his wife? And then, up rose the future again, clad now in no sombre colours, but all soft and rosy and lovely; and then, too, up rose that past, which not a quarter of an hour ago had been the present; and it seemed to the girl that the voice so grave and manly, and yet withal so tender and gentle, lingered yet on the still warm air of the old dining-hall, and of such stuff as this were Sabina’s ghosts.

* * * * *

“Sabina!” said a voice, but not now the fancied echoes of her lover’s accents: this voice, although it was a woman’s, had in it a harsh ring, and the Burgomaster’s daughter, starting from her happy reverie, looked hastily towards the lattice whence the sound came. “Who are you? what do you want?” she said, with beating heart.

“It is I, Radegund, your cousin. Do you not know me? Let me in, Sabina, I am dying of cold out here.”

“Poor child, of course you are,” said Sabina, pushing aside her wheel, and going to the door to admit her visitor. “But how long have you been there? the gates have been locked these two hours.”

“Yes,” shivered Radegund, “ever since Conrad Dasipodius came in, and I came in with him. I could do that I suppose, couldn’t I?”

“I shouldn’t have thought so,” replied Sabina; “that is, I mean, unperceived.”

The artist made no reply, she only smiled curiously, as she crouched down over the flame, and spread out her thin hands in the welcome warmth; and as the red light flickered on her tall figure, Sabina could not help thinking again of that terrible picture of Atè in the Town Hall. At last Radegund spoke. “I’ve been outside there ever so long. And there has been another snowfall. It chilled me through and through; and all the time you were billing and cooing here by the warm fire.”

“Oh, Radegund!” was all Sabina found to say.

“I’m dead cold,” shuddered the Artist, more closely gathering her long cloak about her, between whose folds the melting snow trickled down like tears.

“Let me dry it,” said Sabina, trying to take it from her shoulders.

“Leave it!” said Radegund, snatching it roughly from her hand. “I cannot stay. Supposing your father should return!”

“He would be very angry with you for standing out there, to get your death of cold, Radegund. I can’t imagine what possessed you to do such a thing.”

“Don’t stare at me like that, child. Holy Virgin! what a goose you always are!” said Radegund crossly, as her magnificent eyes quailed uneasily beneath the enquiring gaze of the Burgomaster’s daughter. “Do you know you are looking positively ugly now?”

“Am I?” said Sabina, as she thought to herself what very different stuff lovers and lady-cousins must be made of! but _qu’est-ce qu’allait-elle faire dans cette galère?_ what freak of her eccentric cousin’s had led her to lurk outside in the cold dreary courtyard at such a time of night? “But I will leave her to herself a bit,” decided Sabina. “She is a little cross now, poor thing, and that is no wonder, considering how cold she must be.”

“So you are thinking I was mad—possessed, to stand out there,” said Radegund, after a silence of some duration; “possessed with what, think you?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Sabina; “I cannot make it out.”

“No,” answered Radegund in lofty tones; “poor child; but I will tell you, it was with a desire to do you a service, Cousin Sabina.”

“That is so kind, Cousin Radegund,” said the girl, with the inward heart-shrinking one does sometimes have under such sort of assurance.

“I followed Conrad Dasipodius hither to-night to see if he made love to you.”

“And are you satisfied?” said Sabina, with scarlet cheek and heaving bosom. “Really, I should be very grateful for this.”

Radegund waved her hand carelessly. “Sarcasm does not sit well on you, my dear. Wait till your mock thanks become real ones. I say I saw the Professor Dasipodius caress you; I heard his soft whispers in your ear, for I pushed open yonder pane; I saw——” Radegund paused and gasped painfully, “I saw his lips pressed to yours!”

“What more, mistress, what more?” cried Sabina, her rosy lips paling and quivering with uncontrollable anger.

“Oh, not much more!” mocked the Artist. “Stay, how was it? ah, yes! then it was Mistress Sabina, the Lily of Strassburg, who kissed Master Dasipodius.”

“And if I did, what——”

“Oh, it was prettily done, no doubt. A sweet long kiss on each eye-lid, that is how ’twas, I think, little Cousin, and then a soft tremor, and a blush or two. Very becoming, very dainty. But it was all thrown away, child; your lover cannot see these pretty ways of yours. He is blind!—stone-blind!”

Only one momentary glance, to mark how her shaft told, the artist stole to her cousin’s face, then her eyes fell again. _Eheu!_ what demon had stolen the old frank look from that woman’s eyes, and filled them instead with frenzied malice? In the old days, Radegund von Steinbach could look all the world in the face; but now—now!

“It is false!” cried Sabina, “and you are ill—mad, Radegund! If I thought you knew all you have been saying, I would never forgive you! But your hand is burning hot, and your cheeks are dead white. What is it you want to say?”

“I am not ill!—I am as sane as you! And I tell you, Conrad Dasipodius is blind!”

“Don’t, Radegund!” shivered Sabina; “I cannot bear to hear you talk such wild nonsense!”

“Will you have proof? Well—what about your cat there? Did not he fall over it just now?”

“But that was no wonder, Cousin Radegund, he was looking at me; and the best of people tumble over cats sometimes.”

“Little fool!” said Radegund scornfully, “he saw not you, nor your cat neither. Tell me, did not you mark how he groped about after the creature, when all the while you had it upon your knee? Why, I myself heard you say, ‘You are as blind as a mole!’”

“But,” argued Sabina faintly, “that was fun.”

“Fun that must have grated sharply enough on his ears. But tell me, is it true that you have had no suspicion of Conrad Dasipodius’ blindness?”

“No,” said the girl, awed at last by Radegund’s now calm manner; then she burst into tears.

“Not when you said to-night, as I heard you say, that his eyes had a strange look? Not when he himself confessed to you and to your father that they were sometimes dim—had you then no glimmering of the truth?”

“No! by our Lady of Sorrows, no!” and Sabina was bitterly weeping now.

“Well, don’t cry, child; that won’t mend the matter.”

If the blurring of her own beautiful eyes could have been a means of restoring her lover’s lost sight, the little woman would have gladly wept on till the crack of doom; but as it was, Sabina strove to stay her sobs, and soon the big round tears stole only silently down her cheeks; truly she tried to stay them too, but when she recalled those jesting words of hers, whose truth must have stung him so sharply, the tears would have their way. “Oh, how heartless!—how cruel she had been!”

“And now,” said Radegund sternly, “what do you think of all this?”

“Think?” said Sabina, looking up through her tears; “I think that he might have told me himself. It is very kind of you, Cousin Radegund, to bring me this ill news; but I wish he had told me himself,” and the tears rained faster.

“Yes,” sympathised Radegund, “he ought to have done it.”

“I did not say _ought_,” corrected Sabina; “I said I wished he had confided this trouble of his to me. I can’t think why he did not,” she continued musingly to herself.

“Such a light-hearted little maiden as you are, is scarcely one to be entrusted with grave secrets. Remember, Sabina, this is a secret involving much, very much; and it is only because I believe you to be wiser than you seem, dear child, that I have confided it to you.”

“And did Con—— Master Dasipodius, confide to you this, which he has withheld from me, Radegund?” stiffly inquired Sabina.

“If he did, it would have been no such great marvel,” returned the Artist. “Nay, have patience, Sabina; the work we are mutually engaged on would have warranted the confidence; but I heard it not from his lips.”

“From whose, then?”

“That cannot concern you, child; and I have no time to stand here chattering.”

“Oh, Conrad! Conrad,” moaned Sabina.

“Oh, but you must not be too angry with Conrad Dasipodius,” began Radegund.

“Angry?” interrupted the girl, with a mystified air.

“Yes,” replied Radegund; “the time has come for you, child, to put all sentiment out of the question. Your day-dream is past now; and of course any fancies which it may have amused you to indulge in, any little feelings which natures like yours please themselves by calling love, are now at an end.”

“Will you say all that over again, Cousin?” said the still mazed Sabina; “you are so much cleverer than I am, and I do not think I understand you.”

“I mean,” said Radegund, “that any thought you might have had about being the wife of Conrad Dasipodius will be at an end now.”

“Why?” asked Sabina, her eyes growing very round.

“Oh, you are too childish! I suppose it is not your intention to be tied to a blind husband all your life?”

“Yes, it is,” answered Sabina, “if Conrad is blind.”

The artist rose, and began to pace the floor.

“Would not you, if you—I mean, if Conrad loved you, and you——”

“Have done!” shrieked Radegund, clasping her hands over her passion-torn heart. “What can you know of love? Do you flatter yourself, you little morsel of pink and white humanity, that Conrad Dasipodius loves you?”

“There is no flattery, Radegund!” answered Sabina proudly; “Master Dasipodius has told me that he loves me, and that is enough.”

“Poor little fool! I thought you had at least more sense than I find in you; and so you really think that this Master Dasipodius, this great professor of mathematics, whom the most learned of Germany and France call teacher, this man, of whom no living woman is worthy, can stoop to love a little doll like you?”

“I am not a doll! Certainly I am little, and Master Dasipodius is very tall, but he says he doesn’t mind; and as to trying to be clever like him, one may just as well leave that alone altogether. I know, as you say, there is no woman good enough to tie his shoe-string, unless it were yourself, Radegund; and everyone knows——”

“What do they know?” hurriedly asked Radegund.

“Where your heart is,” placidly smiled Sabina.

“What do you mean?” gasped Radegund.

“Ah! but do not look like that. Is it any shame? Nay, fie, Radegund; it is a happy thing indeed to be loved by such a worthy gentleman as Bruno Wolkenberg.”

“Bruno Wolkenberg,” said Radegund, with curling lip.

“Nay, now, Radegund, you cannot gainsay me. Doll I may be; but I know all about it, and how he worships you as if you were a saint in a shrine; and so he ought, for you are so noble, and so good, and so beautiful, and charitable; and Conrad often says——”

“Well?”

“Well—patience, dear. Conrad says that you and Master Bruno will make a goodly pair; and indeed you two are well matched: not a bit like the giant and pixie Conrad calls himself and me,” and Sabina laughed quite cheerily. “Then you are two such clever people; why, Conrad says——” chatted on the little woman, delighted with her opportunity of repeating the loved name over and over again; “Conrad says, there is not a skilfuller surgeon in all Strassburg than Doctor Wolkenberg, let him be young or old.”

“I am glad,” said Radegund coldly, “that you esteem this Doctor Wolkenberg so highly, Sabina; since then, perhaps, you will not scorn his counsel as you have scorned mine.”

“I do not understand,” faltered Sabina, with another chill at her heart.

“I hoped, when I came here to-night, my own words would have sufficed to persuade you to give up your lover. I wished to mention no names, and I would have avoided paining you if I could; but you are so obstinate, child, and it does not suit you to acknowledge that to marry a blind man, is to marry one bereft of half his faculties.”

“Truly, I cannot acknowledge that,” answered Sabina; “but go on, you have more to say.”

“Next I grew bolder, and tried to make clear how foolish it is of you to imagine that so learned a gentleman as Master Dasipodius should really love such an ordinary little thing as you are.”

“It is curious,” mused Sabina; “I told you I thought so, and I do feel very proud about it, I assure you, Cousin Radegund.”

“But now,” continued the Artist, “since my own counsel is set at nought, I must tell you what Bruno Wolkenberg says, for it is Doctor Wolkenberg whom Conrad Dasipodius has consulted concerning his blindness.”

“Can he cure him?” joyfully asked Sabina. “Is there any hope?”

“None, as we count hope; but one hopes against hope sometimes, child. Listen! Yet, I fear your intellect, my Sabina, will scarcely grasp all the signification of Doctor Bruno’s learned diagnosis.”

“Tell me, then, your own unlearned one, Radegund, so only I may know all about it,” pleaded Sabina.

“Well, then, this blindness is the effect of too close an application to his profession, and indeed, ever since he was a child, to study. It is an overstraining of the eye nerves, a mischief which, had it been attended to a year or two since, might have been overcome, but then, as you know, came the competition for the making of the Horologe; and although he knew the germs of the evil were already set, Conrad Dasipodius made himself a competitor.”

“Yes,” said Sabina, with a proud glisten in her eyes; “it was very wrong indeed of him. Go on.”

“You know the result. His temperament, which is so sensitive and nervous——”

“No; there now you are wrong,” cried Sabina. “Conrad is very strong and brave; he is not a bit nervous.”

“Truly,” said Radegund contemptuously, “you are the silliest child, with your vulgar notions about nerves. I tell you one is but the braver for being nervous, and it is just this subtle and delicate organization which makes Conrad Dasipodius the man he is.”

But Sabina shook her head. “No,” she said, “it is his soul.”

“Put out of your head that priestly jargon of body, soul, and spirit,” said Radegund impatiently. “I cannot stay to explain now”—as if some leisure moment might come when she could—“how the soul acts through the mind upon the body, and how this body would be but a mere inert mass without the life-spreading nerves with their marvellous reaction——”

“But about Conrad, dear Radegund.”

“And just as some mysterious power does by a mere sword-thrust, or a pestilential breath destroy the whole body, so can it destroy or render temporarily lifeless a separate group of nerves, such as in the case of Conrad Dasipodius.”

“And it is God who has done this to Conrad!” cried Sabina, in awe-stricken tones. “Ah, what sin——”

“Don’t be foolish, Sabina. We who are wiser and untrammelled by superstition, know that it is the Horologe which has done this, and—you!” Then Radegund, with a hard cruel light in her eyes, looked searchingly at the shrinking unhappy girl, and saw that such a triumph as she wished for was to be hers. “You follow my reasoning now I think, Cousin Sabina,” she said. “You comprehend that this great mind has been overwrought, and the injury it sustained has been aggravated by mental anxiety on your account.”

How often had Conrad Dasipodius told his little sweetheart that she was his hope-star, his joy and consolation, but the world was all upside down for her now; and the bewildered Sabina could only sign to Radegund to proceed.

“I do not wish,” continued the Artist, “to lead you to imagine that it is his affection for you which thus disturbs him, because that would be, as I have already shown you, a delusion. It is rather the harassing consciousness that you have given him your affection.”

“He asked for it,” murmured Sabina in a choking voice.

“He did,” replied Radegund, turning pale as death. “So much the worse that he was carried away by a momentary impulse of—admiration we will call it; but when reflection came, then being honour itself, how could he recall his promise? And now it is this constant anxiety to be doing rightly by you, this struggling and toiling night and day to grow rich because of you——”

“Yes, yes,” cried Sabina, seeing once more a glimpse of her lost sunshine through all the bewildering mist of words, “I know he has said that to me often,—often, for my sake.”

“Yes, it was so that his kindly compassion put it to you; but it was rather in his desire to act honourably.”

“If it is only that,” said Sabina, “I had a million times rather he should forget there is such a thing as honour.”

“Spoken like a brave maiden! but Conrad Dasipodius will never act a dishonourable part. He will,” Radegund continued, “earn the guerdon for the Horologe, and then he will overrule your father’s scruples,—they are but slight ones,—and so he will marry you, my dear.”

“Never!” said Sabina, standing erect, and in a firm low voice.

“What—who is to hinder it?”

“I—I would sooner die a thousand deaths than be his wife—now.”

“Ah, I felt so sure that when the truth was made plain to you your proper pride——”

“But I have no proper pride! none, none—I love him dearly, dearly, dearly!”

“Then there is no more to be said,” replied Radegund, turning on her heel; and as she lifted the arras at the threshold, she paused—“Marry your blind wooer. Tie him to your apron string,—be his curse if you will,—vain, obstinate, selfish, shameless thing!” then she was gone.

“Radegund!” cried Sabina in a voice agonised by grief and perplexity, and, with hands wildly outstretched, “come back! tell me—Radegund—come back, come back!”

But as she brushed the blinding tears from her eyes, and strove to collect her bewildered sense, it was her father whom she saw standing before her.

“Hey, hey, pretty one,” he said, “what! have the ghosts been too much for you, then, after all? By Saint Laurence, I could have sworn one flitted by me as I came in just now, but that Marcobrunner is heady stuff, very heady. You were calling me, Sabina. Nay, nay, but what is it?” for Sabina was sobbing very bitterly now. “Have I left you too long alone? Shame on the old father, then, to play you such a sorry trick. Come, come, but I will not have you nervous like this. So—hark in your ear, little daughter,” and the Burgomaster drew his weeping child on to his knee; “you must scold your lover for this. ’Twas he beguiled me to go farther than I meant; by our Lady, he has such a winning tongue, it does one good to hear him discourse in that clerkly style of his. None of your pedants neither. Why, were I a woman myself, I’m not so sure——”

Sabina grew calmer, she had stifled her sobs that she might hear her father’s praise of the man she loved so well; praise which one little hour since would have wafted her away into a very seventh heaven of proud joy, and though so bitter to her now, yet its very bitterness was blessed.

“No,” continued Niklaus, stroking her soft hair, “it is of no use for a poor old father to try and withstand such a couple as my little lady here and yonder noble-hearted gentleman, and I hinted as much to him to-night.”

“No, father, no!” said the girl, “you did not do that! Tell me you did not do that!”

“No? But I tell you I did.”

Sabina moaned and hid her face on her father’s neck. “And you are an ungrateful puss not to be giving me a thousand kisses for it, instead of sighing and languishing away in this fashion. Why, that is not a bit like my honest little girl, who always—— Hey? What’s this—what’s this?” for Sabina’s weight was growing heavier on his breast, and her white arm slowly relaxed its hold, and slipped from his neck, and as the Burgomaster tenderly lifted the golden head of his lily, he saw that its rosy tints had all fled—Sabina had fainted.

The old man bore his unconscious burden to her chamber and laid her tenderly on her bed, and was about to summon the women servants; but scarcely was the girl’s head on the pillow than she revived, and, looking up in his face, said with a wintry smile, “I am well again now, Väterchen. It was very silly of me—how was it?”

“I don’t know,” ruefully grunted Niklaus; “we were talking about Con——”

“Ah, yes, I remember; well we won’t talk any more about him, Väterchen. It was all a mistake; and you won’t ever say his name to me again, dear? Promise.” And out of that utter trust he always placed in his little daughter, the Burgomaster promised.

“I don’t want anyone but you, Väterchen; you love me,” she asked wistfully.

“Love thee! my pretty darling. Ay,” said Niklaus, brushing away a tear or two, for the pale, gentle face brought back the face of her dead mother to the old man’s loyal heart; and what would he not have given for that mother to be there now, for he was persuaded that something had gone amiss with his child, though what it might be puzzled him sorely.

“Then kiss me,” said Sabina, holding up her arms to him. “Good-night, God bless thee, dear. I am going to sleep now. It was very silly of me, wasn’t it? but I was so tired—so tired.”

And truly indeed Nature had pity, and Sabina slept, and there came no hideous nightmare of despised love to vex her rest, only the gentle moonlight stole across the floor, and spread a soft halo about her pretty head; and the stars peeped in through the snow-crystalled panes, and no sound broke the silence save the voice of the clock in its distant corner with its eternal “wait-tic, wait-tac,” and Sabina almost smiled as she thought what a monotonous, steady, stupid old thing it was.

But the Burgomaster went back to the empty dining-hall sorely discomfited, and seating himself by the dying fire, cogitated and cogitated; but although he sat there till he was frozen to his bones, the only conclusion he could arrive at was that “never were such creatures as women, they won’t leave you alone a minute till you give them their way about a thing, and then when you’ve been regularly bothered into letting them have it, they don’t want it—they don’t want it!”