CHAPTER III.

THE “LILY-FLOWER”.

Could it be favour and prejudice which blinded the eyes of Sabina von Steinbach, the Burgomaster’s only child, to the attractions of her exquisite cousin Otto? Really Otto found it a hard matter to accredit such ill-taste to so pretty a girl as Sabina!

Pretty Sabina undoubtedly was, with an indescribable charm about her absolutely bewitching; the gentlest, simplest-minded maiden in all the empire; and yet, withal, in her way the most dignified little woman imaginable. No wonder the old goldsmith loved her as the apple of his eye. Only within the last year it was, that Sabina had come home from the convent near the old neighbouring town of Freiburg. Niklaus’ wife had died when their little daughter was barely two years old; and the child had ever since been under the care of her aunt Odille, Superioress of St. Marie’s Convent. This lady did her duty very faithfully by Sabina; and when, at the age of sixteen, she left the convent to come home and keep her father’s house, there was not in all Elsass a thriftier, cleverer housewife, or a more accomplished little lady, than the daughter of the Burgomaster of Strassburg.

Niklaus had a large house, and a goodly retinue of servants, and the Mother Odille had been careful to instil into her niece’s mind, that it was her duty to learn to be able to instruct these, or to put her own hand to anything when occasion demanded; and to this end Sabina had been thoroughly initiated into all those domestic mysteries essential to daily creature-comfort. Besides, however, Sabina’s peculiar genius for compounding conserves and condiments, and making such venison-pasties as have been never before or since equalled, she could spin, and embroider, and play on the virginal, and sing very sweetly; and then, too, she could read very passably indeed; so that as times went, Sabina was quite accomplished. The Mother Odille had also had some idea of having Sabina taught to write, but when she broached the subject to her brother, Niklaus negatived it very emphatically. “No daughter of his,” he said, “should ever hold a pen, if he could help it. Your women who want to be as clever as men, were never the ones to make a hearthstone happy. No, no; write, forsooth—what next?” Well, Sabina had no great fancy for learning to write; she did not care to be inking her little fingers just for the sake of being like a few learned ladies, who scrawled ugly marks on vellum and parchment, because they had got it into their heads that it was quite the thing to do.

And so Niklaus von Steinbach was very proud of his daughter, and it was a day of days for him when, for the first time, he walked one Sunday morning to Cathedral Mass with her little hand resting on his arm. Many a glance was cast at the girl as she knelt beside her father in the crowded nave before the high altar. Otto von Steinbach, among the rest, thought she was uncommonly good-looking, that little convent-bred cousin of his; and he glared jealously on one or two of his male acquaintance, who betrayed by their covert stares that they were of his opinion. Among the crowd of worshippers that same morning, chanced to be Conrad Dasipodius; but, as Otto was wont to declare, Dasipodius was always so aggravatingly attentive to the special business in hand, be it what it might, and the special business just then being High Mass, some time passed before the mathematician looked up from his missal. Possibly he might have persisted in playing this Saint Anthony part to the end of the service, had not his ear caught the tones of a soft voice, mingling with his friend the Burgomaster’s deep, thorough bass, when the Tantum Ergo swelled forth—a voice so clear, so distinct from other voices, and yet so exquisitely gentle and subdued, that he turned to see what manner of woman it was who sang; and when he saw her, it seemed to him that nothing so lovely as that face had ever rejoiced his eyes, unless, indeed, it was the picture up yonder of Our Lady,—no, no—not sad-faced Mater Dolorosa; farther along there, nearer the altar, that gentle young Mother Mary, with the bright, glad smile. And so, having once looked, he could not choose but look again, and many times; and when Mass was over, he lingered on the broad porch steps, just, as he told himself, to bid Master Niklaus a civil good-morrow; and when, as it chanced, the Burgomaster stopped, and held out his hand to Dasipodius, and said: “This is my little daughter, Master Dasipodius, you must bid her welcome home to Strassburg,” his heart beat a thought faster, and his pale cheek flushed ever so slightly; and then—then the old man and his daughter passed on. “Holy Virgin! but what a pretty creature she has grown, to be sure!” said Niklaus’ friends and neighbours among themselves; and afterwards they said as much to Niklaus himself:—“Why, Burgomaster, she is sweet and fair as a lily-flower.”

“Aye, aye!” murmured the well-pleased Niklaus. “Yes, a lily-flower, so she is—a lily-flower!”

After that Sunday morning, it was no great wonder that Sabina von Steinbach, like thousands of other pretty young girls, since the beginning of the world, began to be able to count her admirers by the score. A very ardent one among them was Otto von Steinbach; Sabina’s beauty was very much to his taste, and then that dowry, which he knew the wealthy goldsmith’s daughter would have, considerably enhanced her other attractions. As to the near relationship between them, well, one would of course have to get a dispensation for that; but dispensations were to be had, and the game was worth the candle, quite worth it. And so Otto von Steinbach decided that he would marry Sabina; and began to set about those little preliminary formalities which custom demanded on such occasions. Somehow, however, his wooing did not speed so fast as it ought to have sped; Sabina would so foolishly insist on treating him in that sort of cousinly fashion which is flavoured with too strong a spice of fraternal affection, to please a would-be lover. Of course, Sabina being a woman, and a young and pretty one to boot, had in her something of the coquette, and liked her cousin’s homage very well, just as she liked to hear the sighs of those other Corydons who flocked about her; but she treated all with the greatest impartiality, troubling her head little enough about them, and as to her heart, that seemed not to have the shadow of a share in the matter; and when Niklaus used jokingly to ask her who was to be the chosen one, she would only laugh merrily, and say that they were “a pack of silly geese, and not one of them was to be chosen”.

Now and again Conrad Dasipodius would look in at the Burgomaster’s for half an hour of an evening on his way home from the studio; but that was an old habit of the mathematician’s; his father Christian and Niklaus had been schoolmates, and the friendship thus begun in youth, had continued on through life, and there was nothing these old men so well enjoyed, as to sit down and enjoy a friendly quarrel together over a beaker of Burgundy, for luckily their politics did not in the least agree. Niklaus was all for ceding Strassburg to France, a subject which had already begun to be mooted, while Christian was dead against the cession. Strassburg, he contended, had been the Fatherland’s time out of mind, and the Fatherland’s it ought to remain to the crack of doom; but Niklaus would tell Christian that he was a sentimental old pig-head—was not Germany already a vast deal too big and unwieldy for its own comfort?—wasn’t it divided against itself? and what good was Strassburg ever to get out of such a state of things?—whereas France was a grand united thriving monarchy, with men at its head who looked well after its affairs; why, there couldn’t be another opinion about it at all. Christian, however, maintained that there was another opinion, and he stuck to it to his dying day, and Niklaus stuck to his; and perhaps if these two old men could come back from Shadowland now, they might still find something to talk over regarding this question.

And so Niklaus and Christian being such fast friends, it was natural that Christian’s son should look in now and then at the Burgomaster’s. Moreover, Conrad had lately had business with von Steinbach. The goldsmith was negotiating about certain precious stones required for the interior mechanism of the new clock, and this transaction brought Dasipodius into yet more frequent communication with von Steinbach. Therefore, as Sabina told herself, it certainly was the most natural thing in the world that the mathematician should come and pass half-an-hour or more in their old dining-hall, at least three evenings in the week. When it comes to be a question of precious-stone dealing, one cannot of course be too careful down to the smallest minutiæ; and Sabina began quite to like these visits of the young mathematical professor, and indeed to look forward to them. It was so good, she thought, for her father to be having a chat with a clever man now and then, instead of being always obliged to bend to her little feminine intellectual level, and that of the every-day people with whom he ordinarily had to do. And then really, although often she could not altogether follow the learned current of their confabulations, it was very pleasant to sit by at her spinning or her embroidery-frame in the mullioned window, and listen to the grave, quiet tones of Conrad’s voice, which to her had in them something far more agreeable than the magpie chatter of her cousin Otto and the rest. Then too, it seemed to her that his accents sounded still more strangely sweet, when he turned, as sometimes he did—not often—specially to address herself; and she thought that never were such good, kind, beautiful eyes as his—yes, so incomparably more beautiful—so different from any other eyes she had ever seen; and she would read them to herself, just as she used to read in her little Book of Hours, until their glances lived in her heart and her memory, every whit as much as the prayers did; and she came by degrees to meditate long and often upon them—for indeed there was in their quiet, thoughtful earnestness, much food for meditation—until the girl found herself no longer fancy free, but loving Conrad Dasipodius with all her heart.

Yet, what a terrible state of things! To think that she had fallen in love, as people call it, with this tall, grave, learned gentleman, who could have as much idea about her, as he had about a gingerbread doll. Oh, it was humiliating! terrible! and Sabina began to fret herself greatly about it; but there was no need at all, because Conrad Dasipodius had had many ideas about Sabina, a great many—they had come to him, much as they had come to her, sitting by the mullioned window, and watching the crimson glory of the setting sun lingering round her fair head, and crimsoning the tips of those little white fingers, as they daintily twined the silken threads; and at such times his heart beat with a strong new-found love. Sometimes, when these sunrays had quite faded, he fancied that curious crimson flush still hovered about her transparent brow and cheek, but then he feared he might be mistaken, that it was some defect in his eyesight, for indeed his eyes had been troublesome to him of late—that it was all a delusion, a mere pleasant dream, for it could be only your dashing, showily-dressed fellows, such as Otto von Steinbach, for instance, who were likely to have any chance with pretty maidens of eighteen; and then Dasipodius began seriously to reconsider that old resolve of his about taking the vows in Saint Thomas’ monastery. It had always seemed the best course he could adopt; for a man who intended to devote his every energy to his profession, there was nothing so good as cloistered seclusion. Once there safe under its protection, one could work on from morning till night—ay, from night till morning even, unshackled by tiresome custom, undisturbed by those drones and frivolous creatures of the world, who make the student’s life hideous to him by their thoughtless interruptions. Only the monotonous tinkle every hour or so of the bell calling to Nones or Compline, for the utterance of a prayer and a psalm, which, at all events, must do more good than harm. No carking cares in the peaceful monastery; no distracting pangs born of unrequited or misplaced love, which make a man unfitted for life or for death. None of these things; and so Dasipodius resolved not to allow the germ of his love for the Burgomaster’s daughter to spread in his heart, until there might be no wrenching it away without fearful damage. But yet—yet—Conrad, as became so great a mathematician, weighed and calculated, and watched, and thought, and pondered, until it began to dawn upon him, that perhaps fine clothes and a few surface accomplishments need not be all in all to a woman; and gradually he found himself saying, as lovers will say: “No—is she not so different from other girls this clear, darling, little Sabina—she has some sense”;—he did not add in so many words, “for she likes me”; but he began to think she might like him, and so he grew bolder and bolder, until one evening he brought her a dark red rose, and begged her wear it for his sake, daring, as he offered it, to lift his eyes to hers just for one little moment, and then it must have been—either that deeply-blushing rose, or else the red sun was at his tricks again, for there came that red glow in her cheeks, and the lily fingers, as they fastened the flower in her bodice, trembled and grew chill; and almost before Conrad knew what he was doing, the little hand was in his warm grasp, and he had said: “Sabina—I love you—say, can you love me?”

And Sabina nestled to his breast, and said: “Yes, Conrad”.

And there was one kiss, one rapturous murmur, and so ended the suit of Conrad Dasipodius with Sabina, the Burgomaster’s daughter.