A Hero of the Pen

This was too much! The deep, deadly contempt in her words tore away the mask under which, hitherto to his own self and to her, he had feigned indifference. He gnashed his teeth in rage; still he controlled the storm of passion; but it was only for a few moments.

"Not my equal! You are very honest, Miss Jane. In your eyes, Professor Fernow has perhaps no equal in the world, and you would never have dared approach him with the proposal to sell his bride for money. Keep your indignation to yourself, I see that your whole nature rises in arms at the very thought. You dared not propose it to him, but you have to me!" Here the self-mastery ended, and the old, uncontrollable passion broke forth fearfully from its depths.–"You have dared make this proposal to me! You suppose that I would take part in such an infamous transaction! You dare treat Henry Alison as if he were an extortioner, whose word and honor were to be sold for dollars! Jane Forest, by Heaven you shall answer to me for this insult!"

Jane drew back, she gazed at him in consternation. She had not been prepared for such a reception of her proposal.

Henry snatched the paper from the table, and furiously tore it in pieces. "With this wretched bit of paper you would purchase your freedom, and hurl the money and your contempt after me. Forever and eternally you have seen in me only the moneyed man. It may be that it was calculation that led me to you, but you soon enough taught me to reckon with another factor than the dollar. I have loved you, Jane loved you to madness, and I loved you only the more ardently the more coldly you repelled me, up to the moment when that blue-eyed professor crossed my path, and I learned to hate you both. You know nothing of my interview with him, only what I have told you myself; you do not dream what passed between us that night your brother died. Well, then, I meant to murder him because he denied me the duel. This money lover had carried his calculations so far that he forgot all, that he risked life, honor and future, for the sake of one treasure they sought to wrest from him. Do you now understand, Jane, what you have been to me, and why I now hold you fast? I know that I have no happiness to expect from you, that my house will be to me a hell; but I also know that no power on earth can tear you two asunder unless it is my arm. And my arm shall do it; let it cost you your whole inheritance, let it cost me my last dollar, I fling both from me, but he shall not have you!"

He tore the paper into bits and threw the pieces scornfully away; then he strode excitedly to the window and stared out with face turned away from her.

Jane stood motionless, horrified, bewildered, by this wild outbreak of an emotion she had never suspected in Henry. For the first time he showed her this aspect, and deep in her heart she felt it was the true one, and she felt also with burning shame the wrong she had done him; but through it all, this shame and horror, broke softly and faintly a ray of hope; she knew that the woman is all-powerful when she is beloved.

Henry felt a light touch on his shoulder; when he turned around, Jane stood right before him, but the obstinacy and the contempt had vanished from her manner; she had lowered her head as if conscious of guilt, and her glance was fixed upon the floor.

"I did you wrong!" she said softly, and almost an entreaty lay in her tone as she added, "I did not think that you could love."

Henry drew back; there came over him a suspicion of what was before him, and his brow grew yet more dark, his features yet more hard, his whole manner expressed grim, icy repulsion.

"Enough of confession!" he said roughly. "I request you once more, Miss Forest, to name the day of our nuptials. I expect your answer,–expect it immediately."

Jane yet stood before him with downcast eyes; now she suddenly laid both hands on his arm.

"Henry."

He trembled, and turned away.

"You have set a cruel choice before me, and fearful was the threat with which you forced me to silence, him to inaction. His life and my future now lie in your hands alone, Henry.–Give him back his unfortunate promise, and me freedom!"

With a violent movement he flung back her hand. "What do you mean by that tone, Jane? Do you think to compel me with it? Have you gathered nothing other from my words than that I would now play a magnanimous role and lead you to his arms? Not a word further, not a single word more, or–I forget myself!"

The forbiddal sounded wild and threatening enough, but it remained without effect; Jane was now conscious of her power; she felt no further fear.

"I no longer offer you my wealth, and all else I have to give, belongs to another. I can compel nothing from you, purchase nothing from you; well, then, I now entreat you; Henry, for your own salvation and for mine, release me from my promise!"

She had fallen on her knees before him, her voice trembled in anguished entreaty, in soft, moaning supplication, such as he had never before heard from these lips; the large dark eyes gazed upon him full and steadily, they were full of burning tears; her whole manner was so entirely changed, so different from the Jane Forest he had hitherto known, that for the first time, at this moment, Henry felt what he was to lose with her.

"At my feet! I might be proud of the triumph did I not know too well whom I must thank for it! Miss Forest once would sooner have taken upon herself a whole life full of torture and wretchedness, would sooner have died even, than allow a word of entreaty to fall from her lips. But his happiness is at stake, his future, and here she can take a thousand humiliations upon herself; and even if her pride bled from a thousand wounds, she could entreat, kneel even–and this she would never have done for herself.–Would you, Jane?"

This time, Jane remained proof against his irony; she felt only the infinite bitterness whence it came, felt that through all his grim resistance, her triumph was fighting its upward way.

"Yes," she said softly, still keeping her eyes fixed upon him.

He bent down to her, and lifted her gently in his arms. Those arms clasped the slight, delicate form as if they would hold it fast forever, and with strong, irresistible might he pressed her to his heart. His face was again distorted by all the tempestuous passion that had raged through its lineaments on that autumn night; his breast rose and fell as if in fearful conflict; but it was something nobler than fury or revenge that now plowed up the very soul of this man; it was a dumb, torturing sorrow, pulsing through his whole being, and stirring it to its inmost depths.

Jane saw the conflict, and had no heart to go on with her entreaties. She felt that a word from her would decide all, and yet she was silent. Her head sunk unresisting, upon his shoulder, but two heavy tears rolled slowly from her eyes down upon his hand.

Then suddenly, she felt Henry's lips, hot and burning, against her forehead; it was a kiss so unlike that first kiss she had received from him; it burned like a fiery brand upon her forehead. "Farewell!" vibrated in a half-stifled, yet ardent tone, through his voice. Then he let her loose from his arms. With this one word, he had freed her, renounced her forever!–When she glanced up, he had already left the room.–She was alone.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

An Unexpected Meeting

Spring upon the Rhine! How many a heart with fond, irresistible longing reverts to this thought! The spring comes everywhere. In the storms and billows of the ocean, in the soft, aromatic breath of leafy forests; in raging, devastating freshets from the mountains, in the blossoming splendors and jubilant lark-songs of the plain;–but nowhere does it so smile as here, by the cradle of German romance, where a breath of poesy hovers overall. The spring glides through the Rhineland, laying lightly her hand in blessing upon field and vineyard; and the blessing becomes a consecration. She floats sun-kissed, over forest and rocky cliff, and glances smiling down from hoary castles, gray with age. But never had the German spring been so greeted, so enjoyed as now, when she came bringing to a united people the festival of resurrection and of victory;–and peace to the world.

This spring had come to the land prematurely and unannounced, as if in haste to greet the new empire with its sunshine and its flowers. B., that "learned nest," was to-day full of joy and exultation, for it was to receive its university professor, Fernow, as a military hero; but the town being the centre of all rejoicings, its environs were silent as the dead. The day was magnificent, and yet the gentleman and lady who were climbing the path to the Ruènberg, seemed the only pedestrians far and near. Was it through accident or intention? Jane Forest had to-day, for the first time, laid aside her deep mourning; her dress was still sombre and without ornament, but it was no longer of that sable, hopeless black, and it almost seemed as if with the gloomy dress had vanished that stony, melancholy expression which, during the whole winter, had shadowed her face. There brooded over this face something like a breath of the spring; a tender, longing hope timidly ventured forth from beneath the scarce-broken icy covering, but had not as yet courage to look happiness and the future full in the face. There was a strange, wholly new expression on these once proud, resolute features, and it gave the face something which despite its beauty had hitherto been wanting–gentleness.

Mr. Atkins, who trudged along at the young lady's side, looked very grim and morose to-day; he seemed to feel this splendor of the spring a personal affront. Everything he saw annoyed him, and he was still more annoyed by what he did not see. He could not understand why this tender green had started forth so soon; it must certainly be destroyed by the night-frosts. This preposterous shining of the spring sun with a real June heat, only portended speedy and violent rains, and the Rhine, just now, was the object of his utter and supreme aversion. As Mr. Atkins walked along its banks, it had taken the liberty to wet his boots through and through, and had also shown an ardent longing to draw his whole person down into its watery depths, things which naturally excited the American's bitter ire.

"Your blood-thirsty Rhine grasps after every strange nationality that ventures near it!" he growled, and at that moment, he made up his mind to remain no longer upon this hated soil. "The sooner we return to America the better!" muttered he.

Jane paid little heed to Mr. Atkins' outbursts of ill temper, and she made due allowance for them all. She very well knew that their sole reason lay in the hollow thunders whose reverberations were heard even here, and which announced the return of Walter Fernow, the university professor and hero.–But as Atkins began to groan anew over the difficulties of the path and the excessive heat, Jane said with a touch of impatience.

"You should have remained in the town. My mourning excludes me from all share in the festivities. I did not wish to force my uncle and aunt to remain at home on my account, and so I undertook this walk. But no such consideration restrains you, and I need no escort to-day."

Atkins drew down his face. "I cannot say that I feel myself irresistibly drawn toward the city," he said, "where every little urchin you meet on the street is babbling of the 'new power,' and every student demands that I shall make my most humble obeisance to the genius of united Germany. These people are lost in admiration of themselves? Their beloved Rhine has become to them the one river of Germany, and they dream of enlarging its boundaries still more. German idealism is really beginning to become practical; but for these last weeks I have been so persistently entertained at all the clubs and societies with the prospective greatness and glory of the new empire, that I feel as if I would like, just for a little while, to hear something else spoken of. I wish–" Happily, just here he recalled the sharp reprimand he had once received from Jane, so he changed his pious wish into a sigh–"I wish I was back in America; but after all that has happened here in the fatherland, our Germans there will be so puffed up with conceit and vanity, that there'll be no getting on with them!"

Jane smiled at this outbreak of bitterness, and calmly replied:

"You will have to make up your mind to recognize the new power, Mr. Atkins, difficult as it may be to you. Nothing can now be changed, and you will at last reconcile yourself to paying some homage to our newly awakened German genius in your own land."

"Our? Your land?" drawled. Atkins. "Ah, yes! I keep forgetting that you have wholly and entirely gone over to the Germans, and are full of enthusiasm for your new countrymen. Well, just here we differ. I don't understand, Miss Jane, how you can enjoy the prospect here, the sun dazzles one so horribly, that one can see nothing but its beams; the river glares up at you so as to give you pains in the eyes, and this old wall glares at me just as if it would afford it an especial pleasure to fall down and crush us both. Just look before you!"

Jane made no answer; she sat down and left it to her companion to rail at the sun, the river and the ruin as much as he liked; but as Mr. Atkins found nothing more in his surroundings, over which he could growl, he came to her side.

"I only regret," he said, and the expression of his face betrayed how maliciously he rejoiced over it–"I only regret that B. must to-day be deprived of its principal hero. Lieutenant Fernow is really not with his regiment; the garlands with which Doctor and Mrs. Stephen have taken such a world of pains must wither, the stupendous reception which the students had planned must, like their enthusiasm, result in nothing; the learned salutation speeches of his colleagues will become somewhat antiquated. I am convinced that one of these evenings the professor will step quietly in at the back door, and the next morning will be found sitting at his writing-desk, pen in hand, placidly as if nothing had happened. That would be just like him, I think; he is the only German who now seems to have the least bit of sense left him."

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."