A Hero of the Pen

They had borne him to Jane's chamber and laid him on her bed. She sat at his side. She had represented her own wound as a very trifling one, which had certainly made flight impossible to her, but was not at all dangerous. Doctor Behrend bandaged the foot but avoided any further treatment, he saw that she was in no mood to heed so slight a wound.

Atkins stood at a window of the apartment and gazed in silence at the group. Jane had hastily told him all, and every trace of the old, mocking irony had vanished from his features; the deepest gravity alone spoke from them now. There lay the man they had so long and anxiously sought, for whose discovery his parent's wealth had been sacrificed, whom his sister had followed over the sea, through the whole Fatherland, even to this place. For weeks long he had been so near to them, and they had both so haughtily looked down upon him; they had wounded the poor fellow by their pride and scorn, they had derided his small abilities and his simple ways. There had fallen to his share none of those rich treasures of knowledge and culture which had been so lavished upon his sister; poor and ignorant, in wretched servitude, he had grown up, and had been thrown upon the cold charities of the world, this heir of countless thousands; and now, the hour that at last revealed the truth, that restored to him riches and a future–was to be but the hour of his death.

Doctor Behrend, to whom Atkins had briefly revealed all this, could give no hope. The wound was undeniably mortal; perhaps it might not have been, if Frederic, immediately upon receiving the ball, had taken refuge in the shrubbery. The terrible effort through which he had carried Jane that long distance, had proved fatal; an internal hemorrhage had ensued, and he had only a short time to live.

The wounded man had been lying in a deep swoon; he now moved, and opening his eyes, fixed them on the surgeon who stood at the foot of the bed.

"It is about over with me, Herr Doctor, is it not?" he asked languidly.

Doctor Behrend stepped nearer him, and exchanged a glance with Jane, whose eyes forbade his giving the true answer.

"Oh no, not so bad as that, Frederic; but you are severely wounded."

Frederic was perfectly conscious; he had seen the glance, and understood it. "You may as well tell me," he said, "I have no fear of death. My master!"–he turned entreatingly to Jane–"did you not say, Miss, that my master was in peril–that he would be lost?"

Jane buried her face in her hands. She was suffering a two-fold torture. The guard doubled, she herself incapable of taking a step forward; her dying brother before her, and perhaps at this very moment Walter had fallen. Her courage was at an end; she yielded to the impossible.

Frederic understood the wordless answer. "Then I do not want to live any longer!" he said calmly but decidedly. "I knew it when he took leave of me, and without him I could not endure life!"

Again he closed his eyes, and lay motionless as before. The physician approached Jane, and bent down to her with a low whisper.

"I can give you one consolation," he said. "The inevitable will happen calmly, almost painlessly. If you have anything to say to him–hasten!"

He left the room to look after the other wounded men, and, at a low word from Jane, Atkins withdrew into the adjoining chamber. The brother and sister were now alone.

She bent over him; his face had regained its wonted expression, only that it was now half lifeless and ghastly pale. He scarce appeared to suffer. The look that had glanced forth at the first mortal danger had vanished, and the family resemblance with it. Jane felt that she must set circumspectly about her task, lest the frail life-tenure be too suddenly riven, and she prepare for him a final anguish instead of a final joy. She had strength for the effort. There was in the whole world but one being who had power to rob Jane Forest of her self-control. Even at the death-bed of her brother, this self-mastery asserted its right. Her decision was made; this brother should not leave the world without the last kiss of his sister.

"Fritz!"

Again he opened his eyes, surprised at the strange appellation; but it seemed to be a tender, melancholy remembrance this name awakened in him, the name Jane had so feared she might hear from Walter's lips. She bent yet lower down to the dying man, and took gently his hand in hers.

"You have spoken to me of your childhood. Have you no remembrance at all of your parents–of the real parents, I mean?"

Frederic shook his head. "Only a little! I remember the great ship we were going to sail on over the water, and how my father let go my hand, and sent me to my mother; how all at once father and mother were both gone, and I stood alone in a narrow street among a crowd of people. I must have screamed loudly and wept bitterly, for I did not become quiet until Erdmann took me in his arms and carried me to his wife. That is all I know."

"And have you never since heard from your parents?"

"Never! They must have died over there in America, or they forgot me. No one has ever cared for me my whole life long–nobody but my master."

Jane clasped his hand more tightly. "Your parents did not forget you, Fritz; they sought for you, and bitterly enough mourned your loss for many years–they–would gladly have given all their riches to have their child once more; but he could not be found."

An anxious, troubled look passed over Frederic's face, he made a vain attempt to raise himself upright in the bed.

"Did you know my parents, Miss?" he asked; "did you ever meet them in America?"

"They are dead!" faltered Jane.

Frederic's head sank languidly back on the pillow.

"I thought so!" he murmured.

She bent close down to him, her breath swept his cheeks, and her voice sank to a whisper,

"When your mother went to the ship, she was not alone, she carried a little child in her arms. Do you remember that child?"

Around his lips vibrated a faint but happy smile. "Yes, my little sister, our Jennie! She must have been very little then, only a few weeks old, but I loved her so dearly!"

"And that sister"–for a moment Jane was silent, voice and strength failed her–"would it give you joy to see her? Shall I show her to you?"

Frederic gazed at her with a foreboding, expectant glance; her eyes, the tone of her voice had already revealed to him the truth.

"Miss Forest–you–?"

"My Fritz! My Brother!" broke out Jane passionately, and fell on her knees by the bedside. She did not heed the pain of her wound, she did not feel it at this instant.

But the effect of this revelation was quite other than she had dreamed. The passionate excitement she had feared, did not come; Frederic lay there calm as before, and gazed at her, but there was something like anxiety, like timidity in his glance; he softly withdrew his hand from hers and turned his head away.

"Fritz–!" cried Jane surprised and shocked. "Will you not look at your sister? Do you doubt my words?"

A peculiar emotion, half pain, half bitterness, flitted over his face.

"No, I am only thinking how well it is I am about to die. If I lived you would be so ashamed of me!"

Jane shuddered,–the reproach was just. When she first came to the Rhine, if she had been obliged to embrace Fernow's servant as her brother, she would have been terribly ashamed of him. What a series of conflicts and sorrows, what a fearful sacrifice at the last had been necessary, to wrest this pride from her heart, and create room there for this sentiment which now solely ruled her being, this mighty, irresistible voice of nature! She did not merely know, she felt that this was her brother who lay before her, the only one of her blood and name, the only one who belonged to her through the holy ties of family; and all the sins which in her imperious pride she had committed against him and others, were punished tenfold at this moment. Her brother himself, at the instant of their reunion, had retained but one remembrance of her; he shrank timidly from her embrace.

Frederic interpreted her silence falsely; he misunderstood even the expression of her face.

"It would be so!" he said calmly but without the least bitterness! "You were never friendly to me, and the very first time I saw you,–I had taken such pains with all those flowers and that nosegay; you wouldn't have a single one of them, and nothing in my whole life ever caused me so much sorrow as you gave me then."

He was silent; but these simple words, with touching, pathetic sorrow, accomplished what all these struggles and tortures, what all this agony and despair had not availed to wring from Jane Forest. A hot stream of tears gushed from her eyes, and she buried her face in the pillows. In loud, heart-rending sobs broke at last the rigid pride with which she had hitherto looked down upon all not her equals in intellect and position; broke the icy strong hardness of her nature, and with it, that masculine strength of will her father had awakened and fostered in her. She wept now as a woman weeps in hopeless anguish and despair, when she sees all waver and fall into nothingness around her. Jane Forest had not been one to be bent–she must be broken.

But these tears, the first since her childhood, had wrought mightily upon her brother's heart, and conquered his painful shyness of her. He saw that this sister was not ashamed of him now; that he had deeply wounded her by such a suspicion, and summoning his last remaining strength, he turned again to her.

"Jenny!" he said softly, and the old-love name fell half shyly, half tenderly from his lips. "Do not be angry with me, dear Jenny! It is all right, my sister. I have at least had one happiness. I have died to save you!"

He stretched out his arms to her, and the lips of the brother and sister met in their first kiss–it was also the last!

When the new day with its first pale beams smiled upon the earth, Forest's son was no longer among the living. Slowly Jane released her brother's lifeless form from her arms, and turned her face to the window. A cold, gray twilight reigned in the death-chamber; but outside, the Eastern heaven was all aglow; the morning, in blood-red beams, was breaking over the mountains.

What sacrifice had fallen there?

CHAPTER XXIX.

The Murderer and the Attack

A clear, balmy autumn night lay over vale and upland. The dark, sharply-defined outlines of the mountains stood in such bold relief against the unclouded sky, that every cleft as well as every jagged peak was visible. Higher up the forests dissolved in a sombre, formless mass, over which rested a fleecy mist like shimmering gauze, but at the mountain's base, every tree and shrub was as clearly defined as in the full light of day.

Upon a low, rocky plateau at the entrance of the defile, close by the foot of a giant fir-tree, stood Henry Alison. He had gained some distance upon his rival, and had found the path clear. Nothing of all the wild excitement that ruled there an hour later, now disturbed the silence. Insuperable obstacles often arise in the way of duty and rescue, while crime unrestrained, goes on its way, as if guarded by demoniac powers.