CHAPTER VIII.

“OH DARK, DARK, DARK, WITHOUT ALL HOPE OF DAY!”

It was a sad day for the monks of Saint Thomas, when they bore their brother to his quiet grave in the little grass-grown God’s-acre attached to their chapel. The Bishop and his chapter had offered a prouder resting-place, in the glorious cathedral itself, for the body of the dead mathematician; but like Saint Swithin, Chretei Herlin had begged that he might be laid only “where the bright dews glisten, and the rains of heaven fall”.

When the last wreath of flowers, white as the snow which was falling, had been reverently laid on the lowly mound, and each of all that crowd, lately gathered about the grave, had gone down again to his world, ecclesiastical or secular, Conrad Dasipodius lingered on there alone. Alone! his heart yearned bitterly towards the good friend who had gone from him—for friend, in that word’s fullest and completest sense, the monk had always been to him. It had been he who had tended and fostered the earliest germ of the boy’s talent, until the bright blossom had begun to burst forth; and then he had striven to place it before the eyes of men, that they too might look on its great excellence, else perchance it might in its too great modesty, have blushed on unseen amid surrounding mediocrity, and Strassburg would have left unrecorded the mathematician’s name in her long list of illustrious children. Still, however much disposed to admire, the world is so utterly incapable of that sympathy, that reflection as it were of a man’s own soul in the being of another, which goes so far towards the perfecting of real friendship; for this, Dasipodius had been alone able to turn to Chretei Herlin. Whenever some bold new thought had flashed across his brain, it had not seemed to be thoroughly and truly his own, until he had shared it with Father Chretei; and often indeed the sunlight of the old man’s profound knowledge and long experience had illumined and matured the conceptions of his pupil. But now Father Chretei was dead, and all that free interchange of thought must cease for ever; and who might replace the dead?

Moreover, Conrad’s very superiority isolated him in the midst of his fellow craftsmen; it was declared on all sides, both by those who understood such matters, and by those who did not, that Professor Dasipodius was their leading mathematician, and for such an one to betray ordinary humanity’s weakness, for such an one to appear to be yearning for sympathy, much more for encouragement, would have been to cast him from his reputation’s newly-earned niche for ever. No, Conrad Dasipodius had to pay the penalty of fame; and yet he did stand especially in need of sympathy and counsel, just at that time when the only one who could have entered into his perplexities had been taken from him. Just at that crisis when, above all other turning points in his life, he most needed an adviser.

“And yet,” he murmured to himself, “it is as well mayhap, it would have been a grief to Father Chretei; and after all, he could have done nothing for me. Ah! what—who can do anything for me? Great God! What crime have I committed that Thou shouldst visit me thus? Can it be indeed, as some would have us believe, that I have pried too deeply into Thy mighty secrets? No, no! for it is Thou Thyself Who hast bidden us increase our talents tenfold; and yet ere this—my one poor gift is ripe—Thou wouldst take from me all—all. Oh! if I might but come to thee again, Father Chretei. Now, before this world grows dark, quite, quite dark to me! Is there no mercy, no pity left in Heaven? Let me die now, Father Chretei—Father Chretei! My God, to think that it must come!”

The mathematician flung himself on the newly-made grave, and gripped the cold, hard snow in a frenzy of grief and despair. His hair fell trailing along the ground, and his slender frame seemed almost rent asunder with bursting sobs; while those grand, earnest eyes—not alone little Sabina’s dearest pride, but the admiration of all who looked on their marvellous intelligence and brilliancy, were dim, grievously dim, with tears of bitterest mental anguish. It is always terrible to see a man weep, and to weep like this! The good Strassburgers would certainly have not recognised their calm, stately Professor Dasipodius in this despairing figure outstretched on the monk’s snow-covered grave.

The hours passed, and still the young man lay all unheeding there; heat or cold seemed alike to him, for he had but one haunting miserable thought that shut out all sensation of aught else, and no comforting word came to bid him go home and take heart again, only the longer he thought, the deeper grew his despair, and athwart its utter darkness shone no gleam of consolation. Darkness within—without; darkness everywhere, and for evermore!

Noon had long since come and gone. The brilliant clearness of the winter day had already faded, and a few snowflakes began noiselessly to light amid the folds of the mathematician’s long black cloak. The candles burning in the chapel for the departed monk, began to glimmer out more brightly through the windows, and presently the brethren of St. Thomas passed in winding procession up the narrow pathway towards the little edifice, where they were going to sing the Vespers for the Dead; but Chretei Herlin’s grave lay some yards off the beaten path, and none of the monks chanced to see Dasipodius.

“REQUIEM ÆTERNAM DONA EIS DOMINE, ET LUX PERPETUA LUCEAT EIS,”

sounded their antiphon gently through the crisp frosty air upon Conrad’s ear.

“AMEN!” assented the response; but if blessed Mother Mary herself had stood by his side then, and whispered, “Peace,” he would have said, “There is no peace,” and thought she mocked him.

“Conrad Dasipodius!” said a voice.

If the mathematician heard, he recked not to answer. “Conrad Dasipodius, what do you here?” now asked the voice, and unquestionably it was a woman’s voice.

Then Dasipodius stirred and roused himself to look up, and as he looked, he passingly wondered how long he must have lain there: for it seemed to have grown so dark, and he could only discern the faintest outlines of a woman’s dress and figure.

“Do you not know me, Master Dasipodius? You cannot see me?” said the woman. “It is I—Radegund.”

“Radegund—Radegund von Steinbach?” asked he, “and alone here at this hour?” Then he strove to rise upon his feet, but a sudden giddiness seized him, and a pain, sharp as a dagger-thrust, shot through his forehead, and all faint and cramped with the cold, he had great difficulty in recovering himself. “You have been belated,” he said presently; “you will let me see you safe home again, Mistress Radegund?”

Smiling with something of a patronising air, the woman replied, “Nay, our ways are not the same; besides I do not fear, and it is none so late.”

“It must be near five of the clock,” returned Dasipodius.

“Why, ’tis not yet four,” she answered, scanning his countenance curiously.

“Then are we to have another snowstorm; for it grows dark as night?”

The woman came closer to him now, and ventured to peer still more searchingly into his face. “Cannot you see me, Master Dasipodius?” asked she.

He started slightly. “See you? Oh yes, certainly; I can see the outlines of your gown—quite plainly. Yet, pardon me,” he added, recovering something of his natural manner, “that makes it but the clearer to me, that it is time for fair ladies to be safe indoors.”

But Radegund vouchsafed no answer; her piercing black eyes only scrutinized his face more eagerly than ever. “Cannot you see me, indeed?” she asked.

“_Heilige Maria!_ No, I say, not clearly. How should I? Am I a cat, that I should see in the dark?” he said, with an impatient laugh.

“But indeed, Master Dasipodius,” persisted she, “it is none so dark.”

The flush which had risen to the mathematician’s pale cheek when he had first found himself observed, died quite out now, and was succeeded by an ashy paleness. “Not dark? not dark?” he faltered uneasily.

“No, the sun is not yet set. It is none so dark,” said Radegund, in clear hard monotone; then she waited, calmly silent.

“Not dark?” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Nay, but you are jesting? Oh! Radegund, do not trifle with me,” pleaded the mathematician, wildly clasping his hands across his eyes.

“Do I ever trifle?” she asked, proudly drawing herself to her full height; then she added in a slow, clear, hard voice—“Conrad Dasipodius, I know your secret; I came here to tell you I knew it—You are blind!”

“Blind!”

The mathematician, stretching out his hands with an imploring gesture, staggered forward; Radegund would have caught him in her arms, but he thrust her aside, and fell once more with a heavy groan on the grave.

“REQUIEM ÆTERNAM DONA EIS DOMINE, ET LUX PERPETUA DONA EIS,”

came the antiphon from the chapel.

“AMEN!” was the solemn response.