He whistled a lively tune softly, as he went to bed in his little side-room off the passage, and wondered again, as he had wondered hundreds of times before, what caused that solemn low humming noise that throbbed so incessantly through the house, and seemed so loud when everything else was still. It was a grave sound,—suggestive of a long-sustained organ-note held by the pedal-bass;—the murmuring of seas and rivers seemed in it, as well as the rush of the wind. Karl had grown accustomed to it, though he did not know what it meant,—and he listened to it, till drowsiness made him fancy it was the hum of his mother’s spinning-wheel, at home in his native German village among the pine-forests, and so he fell happily asleep.
Meanwhile El-Râmi, ascending to the tower, knocked sharply at a small nail-studded door in the wall. The mysterious murmuring noise was now louder than ever,—and the knock had to be repeated three or four times before it was attended to. Then the door was cautiously opened, and the “Herr Doctor” himself looked out, his wizened, aged, meditative face illumined like a Rembrandt picture by the small hand-lamp he held in his hand.
“Ah!—El-Râmi!” he said in slow yet pleased tones—“I thought it might be you. And like ‘Bernardo’—you ‘come most carefully upon your hour.’”
He smiled, as one well satisfied to have made an apt quotation, and opened the door more widely to admit his visitor.
“Come in quickly,”—he said—“The great window is open to the skies, and the wind is high,—I fear some damage from the draught,—come in—come in!”
His voice became suddenly testy and querulous,—and El-Râmi stepped in at once without reply. Dr. Kremlin shut to the door carefully and bolted it—then he turned the light of the lamp he carried full on the dark handsome face and dignified figure of his companion.
“You are looking well—well,”—he muttered,—“Not a shade older—always sound and strong! Just Heavens!—if I had your physique, I think, with Archimedes, that I could lift the world! But I am getting very old,—the life in me is ebbing fast,—and I have not done my work— ... God! ... God! I have not done my work!”
He clenched his hands, and his voice quavered down into a sound that was almost a groan. El-Râmi’s black beaming eyes rested on him compassionately.
“You are worn out, my dear Kremlin,”—he said gently—“worn out and exhausted with long toil. You shall sleep to-night. I have come according to my promise, and I will do what I can for you. Trust me—you shall not lose the reward of your life’s work by want of time. You shall have time,—even leisure to complete your labours,—I will give you ‘length of days’!”
The elder man sank into a chair trembling, and rested his head wearily on one hand.