A Hero of the Pen

Atkins, taking advantage of Jane's unusually gentle mood, ventured to speak a name which, during the whole winter, had not been mentioned between them, and he had his reasons. They had begun to treat him as they treated Doctor Stephen, to keep him in entire ignorance of the course of family affairs, revealing nothing to him until it was absolutely settled. This vexed him beyond measure; he wanted to know what had passed between Henry and Jane, wanted to know how matters really stood, and as he could venture no direct questions he tried this manœuvre.

But he missed his aim. Jane certainly blushed when Fernow was mentioned, but she remained calm and did not open her lips. It required more than the mere mention of a name to rob her of her self-possession. Atkins saw that no subterfuge would avail him; he must advance openly to his goal.

"Our travelling arrangements will perhaps require some change!" he began again in his sharp, searching tone. "Henry's sudden departure has disarranged all our plans; I have not been told,–I certainly have not been informed," he added with an irritation that showed his sensitiveness on this point, "why he last evening stormed so violently into my lodgings, demanded his travelling effects, and immediately drove to the station–and in such a humor too that I thought it best to keep as far away from him as possible; but, for my own interests I would now like to ask you, Jane, what you think of all this."

Jane's glance fell. "You are the first to inform me of Henry's departure," she said. "Did he leave no line for me?"

"No! not even a good-by; he declared that he should return to America on the first steamship that sailed from Hamburg."

Jane made no answer, but a deep sigh escaped her breast which had in it more of sorrow than relief.

"What had you done to Henry, Jane?" asked Atkins in a low voice, as he bent down to her. "He looked terribly when he came from you."

She glanced timidly up, but her voice was subdued and unsteady. "You always declared that he cherished a passion for me," she said. "I had never believed it. I thought the dollar the only divinity to which he knelt."

"It will perhaps be so in the future!" replied Atkins dryly. "Such weakness overpowers a man like Henry but once. He should have held to his American traditions; then the heir and future chief of the house of Alison & Co. would have received no refusal. It is not well, this mixture with German blood; you yourself very well see that now, Miss Jane, and Henry evidently has had enough of your German romances to last a lifetime. But his is not a nature to burden itself with an unhappy, love for any long time, and I do not doubt that within a year's time we shall hear of his marriage with one of our home heiresses."

"Would to God it might be so!" sighed Jane from the deepest depths of her heart, as she rose and stayed her arm against the wall.

For some moments, Atkins stood near her in silence. "Shall we continue our walk?" he asked at length. "This old castle is doubtless very interesting, but there is a draught about the romantic, mediæval haunt. I think we had best return to the sheltered valley."

"I shall remain!" declared Jane with her usual positiveness. "But I will not allow you to expose yourself longer to this 'romantic draught.' You will of course direct your walk to M. and we shall meet upon our return."

The hint was plain enough, and Atkins very readily accepted it. He thought it inexpressibly dull up here, and gladly availed himself of any excuse to withdraw.

"I have an idea that I shall have to return to America alone," he muttered to himself, as he took a by-path leading directly down into the valley. "And besides, I am to have the extraordinary pleasure of sending Mr. Forest's whole fortune across the ocean. The fortune Henry Alison made the object of all his energies and calculations, and which is now to fall into the lap of this German professor who was stupid enough to care nothing at all about it, and who would have married unhesitatingly upon his professor's salary! And he will have a brilliant career in the world–there is no doubt of that. They are now lauding him as the future poet, and there must be something in the uproar his verses cause. If a million stands behind them, and a wife like Jane sits near him–all this will urge him on more surely and speedily to the wished for goal. Our deceased Mrs. Forest would have been triumphant; but I'd like to know what Mr. Forest would say at seeing his riches exclusively in German hands and subserving German interests. I believe he would"–here Mr. Atkins bethought himself, and concluded with this emphatic ejaculation–"I believe he would say amen to it!"

Jane had remained behind alone. She drew a deep breath as if relieved of a heavy restraint, and sat down again in the old place. The bright spring radiance fell around the gray, ancient ruins of the castle, while above and beneath them, throughout all the landscape, reigned a thousand-fold life of fragrance and blossoming. The ivy again wove its green meshes around the dusky stone, and let its wavy tendrils flutter far out over the abyss. At her feet, lay a grassy expanse bathed in the sun's golden lustre, while far beyond flashed and shimmered the dear home river, as if only hours had passed since that day when they two had sat here; as if autumn and winter, with all their tears and conflicts, with their melancholy symbols of mourning, had been only an evil, oppressive dream.

And, as at that time, the gravel now creaked under advancing footsteps. Could Atkins have come back? Impossible! This was not his calm, deliberate tread. It came nearer; a shadow fell upon the sunny space before her; Jane sprang up, brow and cheeks suffused with a treacherous glow, trembling, incapable even of a cry of surprise. Walter Fernow stood before her!

In eager haste he had climbed the hill, but this time, he did not arrive breathless and exhausted, as once from his most quiet walks; such exertion was now sport to him, and it must have been something quite other than fatigue, which at this moment stopped his breath and sent that deep flush to his face. He would fain hasten to Jane's side, but he paused suddenly and gazed silently on the ground; it seemed as if with the old student's dress which he had to-day for the first time resumed, the old timidity had returned.

"Professor Fernow–you here?"

A shadow of painful disappointment passed over Walter's face; perhaps he had expected a different greeting. The deep flush vanished and the old melancholy expression again darkened his features. Jane had meantime in a measure recovered her self-control, although she could not overcome the agitation that thrilled her frame and gave a treacherous vibration to her voice. "I–we heard that you were not with your regiment; my uncle and Doctor Behrend at least declared that you were not," she said.

"I did not come with my comrades; I arrived an hour ago. Doctor Stephen and his wife were not at home, and I was not in the mood to enter at once into the festivities. I undertook this walk; it accidentally led me here–"

His face betrayed the untruth! He had incidentally heard at the house that Jane was not at the festival, and it was not without good reasons that he had undertaken this walk so immediately after his arrival. It had perhaps been more presentiment than accident which had led him here. Jane might have felt this, the flush upon her face deepened, and the dark lashes sank slowly, while her trembling hands sought a point of support in the wall. Walter hesitatingly approached.

"I have frightened you!" he said in a subdued voice. "It was not my intention to return so suddenly; I felt that I could not for the present come to B.; but a meeting I had with Mr. Alison–"

"With Henry!" cried Jane in painful apprehension. "Did you speak with him?"

"No, I only saw him! He arrived last night at the hotel in K., where I had taken lodgings; we met upon the stairs, but he passed me silently and morosely, without greeting, and as if he did not know me. This morning a note was brought me with tidings that the gentleman who had left it had already gone; it explains the reason of my being here so soon."

He handed her the note; it contained only a few lines.

"I release you from your promise to meet me after the close of the war; there is need of no such meeting. In future, the ocean will lie between us, that secures to you the fruit of your victory. I do not hinder your return to B. There you can demand an explanation of what has happened. In a few days, I leave Europe forever.

"Henry Alison."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The Riddle Solved

Jane held the sheet silently in her hand; her eyes were veiled as if by starting tears. It is never a matter of unconcern to a woman to see a heart bleeding for her sake, least of all if she is the first and the only one who has taught this proud, cold heart to feel.

Walter's glance rested searchingly upon her face; it was sad, and painfully intent, as if from torturing unrest.

"I must now entreat the explanation, and yet, I do not know whether Miss Forest will be inclined to give it. When we met for the last time, on that day of my return from L. with Frederic's corpse, Mr. Alison stood between us, and held your hand in his, firmly, as if by this one act he would assert his right to all the world, He need not have thought it necessary to deprive us in so decided a manner of all opportunity to be alone; the moment forbade any word but of sorrow for the dead; we both alike lost much in him."

Gently but excitedly Jane shook her head. "You lost only a servant, Professor Fernow," she said. "The lot of my brother was one of cruel servitude from his earliest youth, and destiny would have been still more cruel to him had he not found in you a good master. I–did not make things easier for him while it lay in my power, and later, I could give him nothing–nothing but the cold marble above his grave!"

Walter now stood close to her; gently he took her trembling right hand in his. "And the last embrace of a sister!" he said softly.

Jane's lips quivered in bitterest sorrow. "He paid dearly enough for it," she said; "he had to buy it with his life-blood. If I had not been near him in that hour he might have come back healthy and merry with the others; my rescue was his destruction. I bring only sorrow to all that love me; I had to give death to my brother; I had to make Henry wretched–keep far from me, Professor Fernow, I can give you no happiness!"

With a convulsive movement she stepped to the edge of the balustrade, and with averted face gazed out into the distance. Frederic's death still threw its shadow over her life; the shadow would not lift, she could not overcome her remorseful sorrow. Something of the old hardness and bitterness again lay upon her features, and the anguish which thrilled through them and would scarce yield to control, only too well betrayed how serious she had been in those gloomy words before which at this moment, all hope, every dream of the future, sank into nothingness.

"Johanna!"

It was again that tone which once before in S. had wrought so mightily upon her heart, lifting it above all sorrow and all conflict; it compelled her now to turn round, to glance up to him; and when she met his eyes, hardness and bitterness could no longer hold their ground before these blue depths which once more spoke to her in that language of dreamy tenderness now as then holding her spell-bound.

"You have also caused me sorrow, Johanna, fearful sorrow; it was upon that autumn night when I implored you to make yourself free, and was ready the dare the utmost to win you. At that time, you flung back at me, this hard, 'Never! Even if Alison should release me and every other barrier should fall, NEVER, Walter!' Those words have ever since stood threateningly between us both; they have intimidated me up to this moment. Will you now at last, solve for me the riddle?"

Jane bowed her head. For some moments she was silent, then she said in a hollow voice: "I had found a clue to my brother, I knew that he had been reared by pastor Hartwig, and I heard the name from your lips as that of your foster-father."

"For God's sake, you did not believe–?"

"Yes! Do not chide me, Walter, that I deemed it possible. I suffered fearfully from that possibility, I almost died from that unhappy error."

Jane Forest's proud lips had at last humbled themselves to this confession, and there was a moist glimmer in her eyes, their "boreal glow" had vanished and the ice with it, and from those eyes beamed forth as it were, a radiant, glowing spring–life. That glance which Alison yesterday had seen but for a moment, when she had fallen on her knees before him in agonized entreaty–that glance through which she had forced him to a renunciation which without it she would never have attained, now fell, ardent yet tender, upon him who had known how to awaken it. He felt the whole spell of this nature, a nature which could irresistibly attract, indissolubly fetter, and infinitely bless. He knew the worth of the being who now, for the first time, gave herself fully and unreservedly to him.

There was no wooing, no proposal, not even a declaration, between these two; but there was much, inconceivably much that had been wanting at that first betrothal where all had been so formally arranged, glowing blushes, tears of happiness, and a betrothed bride, tender, joyous yielding up of life and future into the hands of him she loved. And here was the deep, glowing, inspired passion of a man over whom cold calculation and interest could have no sway. In his arms, Jane felt that this dreamer who had known how to throw aside the pen and wield the sword, knew also how to love with all the fervor of a deep, unselfish nature.

There was a rustle in the shrubbery at the foot of the ruin, and Mr. Atkins, who again had been playing the spy, came to light. But this time, he neither disturbed the pair of lovers, nor brought them his congratulations.

His face expressed anything but good wishes as hastily and unremarked, he took the homeward way.

"A most preposterous, sentimental thing, love is here in Germany!" he growled. "Jane Forest was lost us to the moment she set foot on this poetic soil. It is shameful! And that accursed Rhine over yonder, with its romance, is answerable for all!"

He threw a glance of deepest resentment upon the hated river, and then, muttering, turned his back upon it. But the Rhine did no seem to take the discourtesy at all to heart. All through its waves there was a sparkle and a glitter as if the old Niebelungen horde had mounted up from those deep recesses, making those waters one tide of liquid gold, that overflowed even the environing shores. And the old river rolled on mightily and triumphantly, as if upon it swelling current, it were bearing the spring and peace far into the land.

The End