A Hero of the Pen

CHAPTER XXX.

Waiting

The winter had passed. More than six months lay between that eventful autumn night, and the spring day which now poured its sunny magnificence over B. Six months, full of snow and ice, full of new sieges and new triumphs. Now the bloody strife had ended. Overthrown in his last, despairing struggles, exhausted, driven back into the very heart of the country, the enemy at last confessed itself beaten. The last war for the Rhine had been fought; henceforth, new boundaries were to guard the ancient river and the land through which it flowed.

In the Rhine-country the first thunderbolt of war had fallen; here the people had most feared and trembled, most fervently prayed; because here the danger had been most imminent; and it was the Rhineland that was to be first greeted as saviour and conqueror. The trembling hope that had a little while ago followed the departing soldiers, was now changed into shouts of exultation and plans of victory.

The old city of Bonn did not remain behind in the joy of victory, in the festal-splendors that lighted up every town and hamlet. Here, too, banners waved from roofs and towers; windows and doors were garlanded, and a gay, triumphant life ruled over all. The house of Doctor Stephen, which had usually been the first to celebrate a victory, belonged this time to the number of those which, bare and garlandless, with closed doors and drawn blinds, gave token that its inmates were called to lament the fallen. The death of his nephew, and respect for the surviving sister, had this restraint upon the doctor and his wife; but all proper sorrow for Frederic and all fitting respect for Jane, could not hinder the doctor from preparing a private festal reception for his Professor on the morning of his return; and although the house showed no outward adorning, he and his wife had secretly intruded into the professor's apartments, and passed a whole afternoon in decorating them.

At this moment the doctor stood at the top of a huge ladder, in a hard tussle with the obstinate end of a festoon which would not yield to the windings required to form the initials which were to be displayed over the door of the professor's study. The Frau Doctorin stood at the foot of the ladder and indulged in some rather merciless criticisms as to the artistic capabilities of her wedded lord; now the spray was too high for her, now too low, now she would shove it to the right, now to the left; at last she declared that the initials were crooked. The doctor rearranged, perspired and growled alternately; but at last he lost all patience.

"You cannot judge rightly down below there, child!" he said angrily "Just go back to the door and look at it from there. The general impression is the great thing to be considered, not strict accordance with mathematical lines!"

The Frau Doctorin, obediently stepped back, but just at that moment when she stood leaning against the door, the better to enjoy that all-important general impression, the door was opened from the outside, and the unexpected visitor, with an outcry of terror and compassion, grasped the old lady who had almost fallen into his arms.

"Herr Behrend," sounded the doctor's voice, in its deepest bass, down from the ladder, "be pleased to remain standing there! That is right! Now tell me if the garland is too high, and if the initials are really crooked."

With a polite apology Doctor Behrend released the old lady from his arms, and stood there immovable to take a look at the decorations in question.

"It is very beautiful, very finely designed, but–"

"I told you so, the general effect is all right!" cried the doctor triumphantly, while with a last stroke of the hammer he fastened a festoon to the door; then he laid aside the hammer, and clambered down the ladder to extend his hand to the younger colleague from whom he had long been separated.

"I came to see if Walter's apartments were in any sort of order," said Doctor Behrend, "and to my great surprise I find them festally adorned. You have attended to this in person–"

"Yes, I am the very man!" said the doctor with great self-satisfaction. "We are not quite through here, but come with me into the professor's sanctum; there you can better admire our work."

With these words he seized Doctor Behrend by the arm and drew him into the study. The professor's "sanctum" differed very much to-day from its appearance when the professor was at work there. Everywhere were traces of the ordering hand of the doctor's wife; the green curtains were thrown back, and through the open window streamed in the full dazzling sunlight. The writing-table, the walls, even the bookcases were adorned with flowers and festoons, and the whole had an exceedingly festal appearance.

It was very strange, but the young surgeon showed little or no delight over all this; he said something of the very tasteful arrangement, of the kindly feeling that prompted it, but all these tokens of respect to his friend seemed to affect him more painfully than otherwise.

Happily, in the joyous excitement Doctor Stephen remarked nothing of this peculiar constraint. "He will not take it so ill, will he?" he said rubbing his hands in ecstasy. "So entirely without song or garland, the professor was not to enter my house, which of all others has the first right to welcome him. He will meet welcomes enough outside! All B. has blazoned his name on its shield as her hero and poet, and the students are wild with enthusiasm. He is the only one of the professors who has fought with them, and how he has fought! I tell you, colleague, there was exultation enough here whenever your letters or other tidings of him arrived. City and university alike went wild over him, and his poems that you sent us, as your malicious Mr. Atkins would say, like Congreve rockets, set fire to both old and young. Do you know that the university designs giving him a reception?"

"I have heard so, but I shall advise the gentlemen to make no arrangements on his account. It is very doubtful whether Walter returns."

The doctor in his horror almost let fall the vase of flowers he had just lifted.

"Doubtful as to his coming? Good heavens! we confidently expect his regiment this very morning."

"Certainly! But I fear Walter will not be with his comrades. According to the letter I received from him this morning, he appears to be tarrying behind in H., and to have no intention of coming home."

The doctor sat the vase so violently down upon the writing-table as to break it. "I wish our whole military strength might be brought to bear against this obstinate lieutenant, and force him to come home!" he cried angrily. "And so he is not to return to us! He went away as a sick man, whose life we half despaired of; and now, when he might come back healthy, honored, admired by all the world, he will not come. Doctor Behrend, there is some hidden reason for all this! He might have come with you if he had chosen, but he really flies from B. Why did he always make his military duties an excuse for absence, and now that they are ended, why will he persist in remaining away! Something has happened. Tell me what it is."

"I know nothing about it," replied Doctor Behrend evasively. "Perhaps he dislikes the ovation which awaits him here. You know he could never endure being placed in the foreground."

"Nonsense!" cried the doctor furiously. "He must now step to the foreground. We tolerated that anxious timidity in the scholar; but now when he has launched out under full sail as a poet, we forbid all such whims!"

Behrend shook his head. "Do not cherish too great hopes as to Walter's poetic future," he said. "I very much fear that with the sword, he will also lay aside the poets, then bury himself among his books, shut himself out from the outside world more vexatiously than ever, and in a year's time stand just where he did at the opening of the war."

"He will not do that!" cried the horrified doctor.

"He will; it would just suit his fancy. With all his genius, Walter remains an incorrigible dreamer; his energy is only an impulse of the moment. In moments of excitement and inspiration such natures do and dare all; as soon as the incitement is wanting, they sink back again into their dreaming. Life in its every-day dress is nothing to them, simply because they do not understand it."

"And a delightful thing it must be to dream away one's life," cried the doctor excitedly pacing up and down.

"Sensible men like you and me, Doctor Behrend, haven't the least idea of the nonsensical things that haunt such a learned, poetic head as Walter Fernow's."

"He needs a spur to effort," replied the doctor, gravely. "He needs an energetic, ardent force to remain daily and hourly at his side, and wrest him from that ideal life, to animate him for the conflict with the world and give him what he does not possess; ambition and self-confidence. If this were granted him, I believe there is no height he might not attain in the long future yet before him. But if an unhappy passion once comes to such a nature–"

Here Doctor Stephen suddenly wheeled around, and with supreme astonishment gazed into his colleague's face. "An unhappy passion!" he cried. "For Heaven's sake, our professor has not fallen in love!"

Behrend bit his lips in vexation. "Oh, not at all! It only occurred to me as a mere supposition."

Doctor Stephen was not so easily satisfied. "You have hinted at the truth," he said, "now out with it; who is the professor in love with? How long since it happened? Why is the love unhappy? I hope it is no French woman. Are the hindrances on the side of family, national hatred, or what?"

"I know nothing at all about it, my friend."

"You are positively insufferable with your know-nothingness," growled the old doctor. "You know all about this matter and you might confide in my discretion!"

"I repeat to you that my idea is founded upon a mere suspicion. You know Walter's reticence; he has never spoken a word to me on the subject. In any event, I urgently implore you not to take advantage of my indiscretion, and tell the Frau Doctorin–"

"My wife?" The doctor threw a glance at the door, which fortunately, he had closed behind him. "God forbid! That would be to set all the women of B. in an uproar! The professor has already become a hero to our ladies; if now, the nimbus of an unhappy love surrounds him, he will be overwhelmed by their romantic sympathy. Who would have thought this of our timid professor, when he sat here at his writing-desk, and I gave him lectures upon his health, which I warned him was going to ruin physically and mentally! Now he goes to the war, fights, makes verses, falls in love–it is most atrocious!"

"I must go," said Behrend, evidently anxious to shorten the interview. "You will excuse me for to-day."

"Well, go then!" growled the old doctor. "I can get nothing out of you; but let the professor only come home, and I will set his head right."

The young physician smiled incredulously. "Well, try it!" he said. "I have done my utmost; but that sickly melancholy is beyond my power."

He went, leaving Doctor Stephen very much out of sorts. All his joy in the festal preparations was over, and he said to himself that if the professor really came, he would be hardly in the mood to do justice to the reception prepared for him. All delight in the anticipated surprise was over. Since Frederic's death, everything had gone wrong.

The death of their nephew had come very near to the doctor and his wife. It had been a bitter day for them when the young man who bad gone from them as a servant, was brought home in his coffin, as their nearest relative. The sting which ceaselessly tormented Jane, and would allow her no peace, had also its smart for them, when they thought how the sister's child, so long and so anxiously sought, for whose recovery thousands had been sacrificed in vain, had lived as a menial in their own house, without enjoying the slightest share of the wealth and the affection that should have been his. And yet, the poor fellow had been so grateful for the little they had given him out of mere kindness! His honest, sincere parting words rang continually in their ears! "You have been very good to me during these three years; if I come back, I will richly repay you; if not–may God reward you!"

In Frederic Erdmann, the servant Professor Fernow had brought with him to B., who would have recognized the lost Fritz Forster? The name his foster-parents had given him had prevented the discovery, and a second change of name had been still more unfortunate for him. If his sister had come back to her relatives as Johanna Forster, it might have led her brother, who knew that his family had gone to America, to a remembrance, to a declaration, which would have thrown light upon all; the foreign name of Jane Forest had made this impossible, and the subordinate position of Frederic had done the rest. The servant naturally had made no inquiries as to her history or her former name; and Professor Fernow, who knew both, in his hermit-like seclusion, kept himself too remote from the doctor to be made the confidant of his family affairs, and of the researches Jane was making. Indeed Jane, having Atkins at her side, kept these researches as much as possible from her uncle. The chance solution of the whole mystery, which might have occurred at any moment, did not come, and the decisive word had been spoken only in the hour of death. Perhaps all this had been more than mere chance; it was not to be. Of all this wealth, nothing was to fall to Forest's heir but the splendid monument over his grave, and it was of no avail to Frederic when young Erdmann wrote in answer to the letter addressed to him, removing the last possible doubt, and confirming word for word all that had been already learned. The dead received the name justly his due; but it was too late for aught else.

The relations between Jane and her relatives were, if possible, colder than ever, and she did not make the slightest effort to increase their warmth. When, accompanied by Atkins and Alison, she had come with her brother's corpse to B., she had been most kindly and sympathetically received by her uncle and aunt; but she gave this kindness no return. She secluded herself with her sorrow more obstinately than before with her pride, she bore her grief as she was wont to bear all else, alone and silently. The doctor and his wife could not comprehend a sorrow inaccessible to consolation or sympathy, and were more than ever confirmed in their belief in Jane's heartlessness. In fact, hers was too self-reliant, energetic a nature, to change in a day, or become untrue to its proper character. In the moment of her deepest agony, she had shown her dying brother that she really possessed a heart; but she showed this to none else, and the words Doctor Behrend had spoken of Walter, applied also to her. Her future, too, depended upon a power outside herself; and the few next days would decide whether she would return to the old hardness and reticence, or gradually become that being which one only recognized in her; assert that true nature against which she had fought so long, and which had first asserted itself at the hour of her brother's death.

CHAPTER XXXI.

The Balance of Power

Atkins had taken up his abode in B. for the winter; but Alison had left a few days after Frederic's burial. He must have felt that his presence was not comforting to Jane; so he resumed his original plan of travel. He had passed the autumn and winter in a tour through Switzerland and Italy, and now, in the spring, when he had visited the larger cities of Germany, he was about to return to B. The doctor and his wife even now knew nothing of his relations to their niece. Jane had never alluded to the subject. They only knew that the year of her stay in Germany having expired, and its purpose having been accomplished, she was soon to return to America; that the first of the next month had been fixed upon as the time of her departure. It was delegated to Atkins to inform the relatives that Jane would return as Mrs. Alison, and that it was thought best the marriage ceremony should be performed here in the house of her uncle. The great respect and deference they had always shown the young lady's wealth, now found its reward; they were treated as if really inferiors, not being informed of this most intimate of family relations, until their aid was needed in arranging the necessary preliminaries for the marriage decided upon so long ago.

Alison had arrived at Atkins' hotel, and would remain there for the present; but his manner today betrayed nothing of that passionately concealed impatience, which, upon his former arrival in B., had driven him at once to Jane, and subjected him to Atkins' ridicule. He now stood nonchalanty at a window, and gazed indifferently down into the street, as if in no haste at all for the approaching reunion.

Alison at this moment seemed quite another being than on that night when unfettered passion had carried him beyond all bounds. In the last six months he had found ample time to recover his equanimity, and he had perfectly succeeded in the effort. He was again the calm, formal man of business with the cold, calculating glance and the conventional polish. That which lay dormant under all this, and had once so dangerously come to the surface, had now sunken back into the depths. His face looked as if it had never known an emotion, only one trait remained; that expression of inimical hardness and cool determination which had first appeared at that meeting in S.; it was yet in his face; it stood firmly engraven there as if during those six months it had not for an instant left his features.

"You come very late, Henry," said Atkins, who stood near him. "We expected you sooner."

Alison turned and gazed at him. "We! Do you also speak in Miss Forest's name?"

Atkins evaded the answer. "You ought to have come sooner," he repeated gravely. "It was not considerate in you to leave Miss Jane here amid all these rejoicings over the victory, which must have made her loss only the more bitter. We might, all three of us, have been on our way to America long ago."

Henry gave an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. "My travelling plans admitted of no change," he said, "and besides, I had an idea you would all be thankful for the delay. Doctor and Mrs. Stephen are not yet informed, are they?"

"I have just told them."

"Well, after an interview with my betrothed, I wish to be introduced to them as a future relative. The three weeks from now to the beginning of next month will suffice for all necessary preparations, and we shall leave immediately after the ceremony. You are aware of my arrangements with Miss Forest?"

"She has told me that she leaves all to your decision, and that I have simply to consult you in regard to the arrangements."

He turned again to the window. Atkins was for a while silent, but all at once he laid on his hand Alison's arm.

"The regiment is expected back to-morrow, Henry!" he said.

"I know it!" returned Alison, not moving from his place. "And Professor Fernow is coming in any event," continued Atkins, with marked emphasis.

Henry glanced at him calmly. "Do you know this so certainly?"

"He surely will not remain away from a reception that is especially designed for him."

"He will not come!" said Alison coolly. "After what has passed between us, he does not enter this house while my betrothed remains in it, or I do not understand the German sentiment of honor."

Atkins looked at him doubtfully. "Well, I was not a witness of your interview," he said. "You must know what is to be expected of him; but if he really remains away are you just as sure of Miss Forest?"

Henry did not answer; he merely smiled in his ill-omened way.

"Supposing she should refuse to fulfil her promise to you?"

"She will not refuse."

Atkins did not seem to share his decided conviction. "You may find yourself in error," he said. "Jane is no longer in that hollow stupor that was upon her at our first arrival in B. She is silent as usual, but I know that all her strength of mind is now directed towards one conclusion; and this conclusion will hardly be blind submission to your will. Look before you!"

Henry smiled again, and it was with almost a sympathetic glance he looked down upon the man who warned him.