A Hero of the Pen
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"In disguise, and under an assumed name, I reached Hamburg, where my wife and children were awaiting me. You had been born during these last months. Poor child! It was in an evil hour I first pressed you to my heart. With the first kiss of your father, tears of glowing hatred, of bitter despair fell upon your infant face. I fear they have thrown a shadow over your life; I have never seen you carelessly merry like other children.
"On our way to the ship we separated so as not to attract attention. Your mother carried you in her arms, I followed at some distance, leading my boy by the hand. When half way up the ship's stairs, I recognized a face of evil omen. It was that of a spy. I knew him, he knew me; if he saw me, I was lost. Hastily forming my decision, I told the boy to follow his mother; he was old enough to understand, and she stood there in sight. I flung myself into the thickest of the throng at the harbor. An hour later, the spy had vanished, and I reached the ship unremarked. My wife, who had been prepared for possible delay on my part, hastened to meet me; her first inquiry was for the child. After a few words of terrible import, we understood the situation. He had not joined his mother; he must be on shore. In mortal apprehension, I rushed back regardless of the imminent danger to myself. I searched the whole harbor up and down, asking tidings of my boy of all I met. No one had seen him; none could give me information.
"The signal for departure was given. If I remained on shore I was lost, and my wife and child would sail, forsaken and friendless, on the wide ocean to a strange continent. The choice was a fearful one, but I was forced to make it. When I trod the ship's deck without my child; when I saw receding from me the shores where he was left alone, a prey to every danger,–that moment–when I broke loose from home and country forever, the persecutions and bitternesses of a whole lifetime all came back; that moment set the seal to our separation, and darkened every remembrance of the past to me.
"The first hour of our landing in New York, I wrote to my wife's brother; but weeks passed before he received my letter. Doctor Stephen, my brother-in-law, pursued the search with the warmest ardor and the fullest sympathy. He went to Hamburg himself, he did everything in his power; but it was all in vain. He did not find the slightest trace of your brother. The boy had vanished utterly; he remains so to this day."
Forest was silent. His breathing became difficult, but Jane bending forward, eager and intent, had not thought of preventing an excitement which might prove dangerous, perhaps fatal to him; such regardful tenderness did not lie in the relations between this father and daughter. She had a secret to hear, a last legacy to receive, and if he died in the effort, he must speak the words necessity demanded, and she must listen. After a short space for rest he began anew:
"With this last sacrifice, the evil fates that had pursued me were propitiated, our misfortunes ended. Success attended me from the first step I took on American soil. In New York, I met Atkins, who was there gaining a precarious livelihood from a secretaryship. He rescued me and my little all from a band of swindlers who already had me, the inexperienced foreigner, half in their net. Out of gratitude, I proposed that he should accompany me to the West. He had nothing to lose, and came with me to this place, then a vast, unpeopled solitude. Our plough was first to break up the prairie sod; the board cabin we reared with our own hands was the first dwelling erected here. Perhaps you remember when, in your earliest childhood, your father himself went out to the field with scythe or spade, while your mother did the work of a maid-servant in the house. But this did not last long.
"Our settlement made rapid strides. The soil, the location, were in the highest degree favorable; a town arose, a levee was built–lands which I had bought for a song rose to a hundred-fold their original value. Undertakings, to which I pledged myself with others, had an undreamed-of success. Participation in public life, and the position for which I had once so ardently longed, with social importance and consideration past my most sanguine hopes, became mine; and now, my daughter, I leave you in a position and in pecuniary circumstances, which make even our exclusive Mr. Alison consider it an honor to win your hand."
"I know it, my father!" The self-importance of Jane's manner at this moment was more noticeable even than before; but it did not seem like her usual haughtiness; her pride was evidently rooted in the consciousness of being her father's daughter.
With an effort so violent as to show that his strength was failing, Forest hastened to the end of his recital:
"I need not tell you, Jane, that I have never abandoned the search for your brother; that I have renewed it again and again, and that since means have been at my command, I have spared no outlay of money or of effort. The result has been only disappointment. Latterly, I have lost hope, and have found solace in you; but your mother's anguish at the loss of her child, was never assuaged. To the hour of her death, she clung to the hope that he was living, that he would sometime appear. This hope I had long since relinquished, and yet upon her death-bed she exacted from me a promise to go myself to Europe and make one last search in person. I promised this, as the last amnesty had lifted the bar which had hitherto prevented my visiting my native land; and I was just making preparations for a long absence, when illness prostrated me. But the last, ardent wish of your mother ought not to remain unfulfilled. Not that I have the slightest hope that a trace, which for twenty long years has eluded the most vigilant search, can now be found.
"You are simply to fulfil a pious duty in keeping the promise I have no power to keep; you are to go through a form to assure yourself, before my entire fortune falls into your hands, that you are in reality the only heir; and for these reasons solely, I send you to the Rhine. In the business steps to be taken, your uncle will stand at your side; you are only to add to your proceedings, that energy of which he is incapable. It will not appear strange to our social circle if you pass the year of mourning for your father among his relatives, in his former home. If Alison wishes, at the end of his European travels, he can receive your hand there, and return with you; but I leave this matter to you alone. I place only one duty in your hands, Jane; you will fulfil it."
Jane arose and stood erect before her father with all her energies aroused for action.
"If a trace of my brother is to be found, I shall find it, father! I shall yield only to impossibilities; I give you my hand upon that!"
Forest clasped her hand in his, and now the peculiar gravity of the relation between this father and daughter was evident, there were no kisses, no caresses, a pressure of the hand as among men, sealed the given and the accepted promise. For a few moments deep silence reigned; then the dying man said suddenly and in a subdued voice:
"And now, draw back the curtains; I can no longer endure the darkness. Let in the light."
She obeyed. She drew back the heavy, green damask curtain, and through a large corner window, streamed into the room the full dazzling glow of the midday sun. The dying man raised himself upright, and gazed intently out upon the broad prospect offered to his view. There lay the city, with its streets and squares, its sea of houses, the river-landing with its boats; there lay the lordly Mississippi dotted with its fairy isles, among which glided in and out the countless skiffs and steamers. Scattered near and far, were suburban homes surrounded by broad cultivated acres, and smiling in peace and plenty, while away to the horizon's utmost verge stretched the illimitable prairies, green, billowy seas of verdure, relieved here and there by groves of oak and stretches of uplands.
Forest fixed his glance upon the magnificent panorama. Perhaps he was thinking of the time, when no human foot-fall had profaned this primeval solitude, when poor and friendless, he had come here to wrest from nature her as yet unappropriated wealth; perhaps he was gazing with pride upon the city which owed its birth and expansion to him; perhaps he was sad at the thought of leaving all this beauty and grandeur and prosperity. Convulsed with emotion, he sank back on his pillow. Jane bent anxiously over him. But this was no sudden access of bodily illness, no regretful feeling for the new home and the new-found riches he was to leave for ever. It was a sudden, overmastering feeling long repressed, which now compelled utterance.
"When you arrive in Germany, my daughter, greet the old home and the old home-river for me! Do you hear, Jane? Salute Germany for me! Salute our Rhine!"
The words came painfully subdued, almost inaudible from his lips. Jane gazed at him in mingled surprise and terror.
"Have you then loved Germany so much, father? You have almost taught me to hate it."
Forest was silent for a brief space; his lips quivered, and tears, seemingly wrung from a terrible inward conflict, rolled down his cheeks.
"The home-land had only misery for me," he said in a voice trembling with emotion. "It persecuted, degraded me, cast me out; it denied even bread to me and mine. America gave me freedom, gave me riches and honor; and now, Jane, I would renounce them all–all, could I only die upon the Rhine!"
There lay such harrowing anguish in this final utterance of a long repressed sorrow, that Jane recoiled in terror before it. This fatal homesickness! Her mother, the sensitive, delicate woman, after long years of suffering, had died of it at last; and her father, that proud, energetic man who had so entirely broken away from home and its remembrances, who had united heart and soul with the land of his adoption, and had seemed petrified into hatred against his fatherland, he too had buried this agonized longing deep in his heart, only to acknowledge it in his dying hour!
Jane stood dumb and bewildered before this discovery, but she felt that here, just here, that strange something lay, which, despite all misunderstanding, had yet made her father and mother one; which must keep her eternally remote from both. She gazed intently at her father, he now lay quiet, with closed eyes and compressed lips. She knew that in such moments as this she must not disturb him. Softly gliding to the window, she let down the curtain, and the usual subdued twilight again ruled in the sick chamber.
CHAPTER II.
A Strange Cavalier
"Well, Miss Jane, a most promising introduction this much bepraised Rhine gives us, to that fatherland of yours! In six-and-thirty hours, I have become mortally weary of the whole country. We landed in such a fog that we couldn't see the shore until we set foot on it; that day we passed in Hamburg there was such a rain that I really thought a second deluge had broken out, and here upon the Rhine, we find a pretty state of things, don't we? I cannot understand how you remain so calm through it all!"
It was indeed no enviable situation, this, which so aroused Mr. Atkins' ire. In a dense fog, in the midst of a drizzling but incessant rain, the heavy post-chaise lay half upset in the middle of the suburban road. The horses already loosed from harness stood near with bowed heads, as if fully comprehending the unfortunate state of affairs, and in a gully by the road side near the broken hind-wheel, sat the postilion, his head bound up with a handkerchief, and groaning as he held his injured foot in both hands. Jane, who with an air of resignation stood by him, paid no heed to Atkins' complaints. She only gave a slight shrug of her shoulders, and persisted in an obstinate silence.
"We cannot possibly remain here longer in the rain!" continued Atkins in renewed vexation; "You certainly cannot. So far as I can determine, our postilion's injuries are not dangerous, and he declares that B. is only an hour's distance at the furthest. Our best course is to hasten on there and send him the needed help."
"No," interrupted Jane, gently but decidedly. "His wound is still bleeding, and he is liable to faint at any moment. We could not possibly leave him helpless and alone; you at least, must remain with him, while I try to reach the nearest house."
"Alone? In a strange country? In this fog which would be very likely to lead you right into that accursed Rhine, that we hear raging down yonder, without seeing a glimpse of it? No, I shall consent to no such thing."
"I am not at all afraid," declared Jane, with a positiveness which showed that she did not allow Atkins to have the least influence or control over her movements, "and if I follow the main road it will be impossible for me to lose my way. In any event, it is the only thing that remains for us to do."
"But Miss Jane, consider!–If some human being would only make his appearance!–Hold! there comes some one!–A word with you, Sir, if you will allow it."
These last words, although spoken in German, must, through their strong English accent, have betrayed the foreigner, for a low but musical voice, asked in the purest English; "What is the matter, Sir?"
"God be praised, it is a gentleman; he speaks English!" said Mr. Atkins, with a sigh of relief, and quickly approaching the stranger, who until now had been only half visible through the fog, he continued excitedly:
"We have had a mishap with our carriage. It is broken, the postilion is injured, and we are entire strangers here. May I ask if you would, perhaps, show us the way to B.?"
"Certainly!"
"And I also beg you to send us out the first carriage you can find. And one thing more! You will, perhaps, have the kindness to take a young lady to B. under your protection."
The stranger, who had bowed a polite assent to the first request, at the last stepped back, and there was something like a tone of horror in his voice as he replied.
"A young lady–am I–"
"You are to conduct her to the city and to the house which she designates to you. Miss Jane, may I implore you to confide yourself to this gentleman's care? You cannot possibly stand here longer in the rain."
Jane, who had taken no part in the conversation, now turned to the stranger. She glanced at his pale, delicate face, into a pair of blue, dreamy eyes which at this moment had an expression of mingled terror and embarrassment.
"I am exceedingly obliged to you," said Mr. Atkins, without waiting in the least for the gentleman's assent. "And now may I beg you to hasten, for the young lady's sake as well as my own? Good-by, Miss Jane. Have no anxiety in regard to the injured man; he remains in my care. I hope to meet you soon in a dryer atmosphere."
All these arrangements had been made so hastily, with such dictatorial politeness, and in such an incontrovertible tone of command, that no evasion seemed possible. The stranger made no effort at resistance; in dumb consternation, he allowed all this to pass over him, and followed mechanically the directions given him. With a silent bow, he asked the young lady to accompany him; the next moment they were already on the way, and a winding in the road hid them from the eyes of Atkins and the coachman.
Whether the stranger was more surprised at the free, American manner in which the lady confided herself to the care of the first man she had met upon the highway, or frightened at the duty of gallantry imposed upon him, was difficult to decide. But his embarrassment was evident, and kept him from all attempts at conversation. Miss Forest did not understand this strange behavior. She was accustomed every where to be an object of great attention, and now this man, in appearance and language a gentleman, showed himself so little susceptible to the honor of accompanying a lady, that he did not even deem it worth his while to address a word to her. Jane measured her companion with a glance of anger, compressed her lips, and decided not to speak a word to him during the entire way.
For almost ten minutes they had walked on in silence, side by side, when the gentleman suddenly paused, and in the same low, musical voice as before, said; "The highway makes a broad winding here. May I conduct you by the nearer path in which I am wont to go?"
"I have confided myself to your guidance," answered Jane, shortly and coldly, and with another silent bow, he turned from the public road and took a path to the left.
The designated path might certainly be nearer, and for a man passable in a case of necessity; but it was not at all suitable for a lady. It led over a swampy soil; through wet meadows, through dripping hedges, through fields and bushes, not only to the injury, but to the ruin of Jane's elegant mourning clothes, which had been designed for travelling, but for travelling in an extra post-chaise. The light cloak was as slight a protection as the thin boots; her dress became wet through and through, while her companion, enveloped in a thick woollen plaid, scarce felt any inconvenience from the weather, and did not think to offer her its protection. But he seemed to take very literally Mr. Atkins' injunction to hasten, for he hurried on in such strides that Jane could keep up with him only through the greatest effort.
Any other woman would have declared that such a path and such a pace were beyond her strength. But Miss Forest had determined to reach the town as soon as possible so as to send aid to those she had left behind, and lamentation and delay were not her business. She therefore, more and more resolutely, drew her shoes from the mud which seemed inclined to hold them fast, set her feet energetically into the tall, moist grass, and kept tearing her veil loose from the hedges to which it caught. But her manner grew more and more morose, and after a quarter of an hour passed in this way, she halted suddenly.
"I must beg you to wait. I need a moment's rest."
These words, spoken in the sharpest tone, seemed to awaken–in her companion a sense of his thoughtlessness. He paused, and gazed in terror upon his protegée, who, exhausted and quite breathless, stood at the edge of a dense hedge of willows.
"I beg your pardon, Miss; I had quite forgotten–I"–he paused, and then added apologetically "I really am not accustomed to association with ladies."
Jane bowed as if she would say: "I have learned that!"
The gentleman now, for the first time, seemed to be aware of the state of the young lady's toilet. "Good heavens, you are quite wet through!" he cried anxiously, and then glancing upward, he added in evident bewilderment: "I believe it rains!"
"I believe so!" said Jane, with an irony which happily escaped the stranger; for he gazed searchingly around. They were both standing by the willow-hedge, which rising from a wall of earth, after a rain of several hours, offered no especially inviting resting place; and yet, the gentleman seemed to regard it as such. With a hasty movement, he tore the plaid from his shoulders, spread it carefully on the wet ground, and with a gesture of the hand, invited his companion to take her seat upon it.
Jane remained standing, and looked up to him. It really surpassed all comprehension. For a whole half hour this man, with the most indifferent air in the world, had seen her getting soaked through and through, and now unhesitatingly, just to afford her a resting place for two minutes, he threw into the mud the shawl which might all this while have protected her. Anything more laughable or impracticable had never before met her observation, and still, in this proceeding there lay such painful anxiety, so timid an apology for former thoughtlessness, that Jane almost involuntarily accepted the invitation, and hesitatingly sat down.
For the first time, she now gazed attentively at her companion, who stood close to her. As if heated by the rapid walk, he had thrown off his hat, and stroked the rain-soaked hair from his high forehead. He had noble, delicate features, intellectual in the highest degree, but a transparent, sickly pallor lay upon them, and the large, blue eyes, with their strange, dreamy expression, looked as if they had nothing at all to do with the world and the present; as if they were gazing far out into the illimitable distance. This young lady, with the cold, beautiful features, and the proud, energetic glance, with an interest peculiar and almost indefinable to herself, gazed into the face so infinitely unlike her own.
Over all brooded the fog, and wove its gray veil around the trees and shrubs, which, dim and shadowy, gleamed through it; softly pattered down the rain, the first mild spring rain, which appeared to revive the whole earth with its warm, aromatic breath; lightly murmured through the air those strange voices, those whisperings and echoes peculiar to the rainy landscape, and amid these mist-voices, far away and mysterious, toned the ebbing and flowing of the still invisible river.
The whole situation had something strange, something oppressive, and Jane, to whom these emotions were entirely new, suddenly broke loose from their spell.
"Is that the river, down yonder?" she asked pointing out into the fog.
"The Rhine! We are on its banks."
Again there was a pause. Miss Forest impatiently broke a twig from the willow-hedge, for a moment gazed absently at the opening buds, from which the first green was just bursting forth, and then carelessly threw it on the ground. Her companion bent, and lifted up the twig; she glanced at him in surprise.
"They are the first spring buds," he said softly. "I would not see them perish in the mud."
Jane's lips curled mockingly. How sentimental! But, indeed, she was now in Germany! Annoyed and almost angry at this indirect reproach, the young lady rose suddenly, and declared herself quite rested.
The gentleman was ready to go at once. Jane threw a hasty glance upon the plaid still lying in the mud, but as he seemed to have quite forgotten it, she did not think it worth her while to remind him of it. They walked on silent as before, but the guide now moderated his steps, and often looked anxiously around to see if she could follow. Another quarter of an hour had passed, when the outlines of houses and turrets loomed up through the fog, and the stranger turned to his companion.
"We are in B. May I ask Miss, where I shall conduct you?"
"To the house of Dr. Stephen."
He paused in surprise. "Doctor Stephen?"
"Yes! do you know him?"
"Certainly. I live in his house, and indeed"–he passed his hand thoughtfully over his forehead–"I faintly remember having heard that some one was expected there, a young relative, I believe."
"I was certainly expected," said Jane impatiently, "and you will oblige me if you would shorten the waiting of my relatives as much as possible."
"I am at your command, Miss! May I beg you to turn to the right so that I can conduct you through the garden by the shortest path?"
Jane followed, but she soon found reason enough to execrate this shortest path; for the hedge-way leading through the garden was worse than the deep mud and difficulties of the path they had just gone over. Her companion appeared to realize this himself, for after a while he paused suddenly, and said in evident embarrassment:–
"I forgot that the path was not suitable for a lady. Shall we turn around?"
"I think we are already half through it," answered Jane in a somewhat exasperated tone. "The end cannot be far distant."
"It is there behind the latticed gate."
"Well, then, let us go forward."
They had advanced a hundred steps or more, when a new obstacle loomed up. The deepest portions of the path were quite overflowed by the rain, which here formed a real lake, that, enclosing the whole breadth of the passage, was not to be avoided. The unhappy guide halted in utter confusion.
"You cannot possibly pass through here," he said anxiously.
"I will try!" answered Jane resignedly, and placed the tip of her foot in the water; but he excitedly held her back.
"Impossible! The water is a foot deep. If you only–if you would allow me to carry you over."
The question was very timidly uttered, and with a half sympathetic, half derisive glance, Jane's eyes swept the tall but very slender and delicate form with its bowed shoulders.
"I thank you!" she returned with unconcealed irony. "The burden might be too heavy for you."