The Hero of the Pen.
The doctor was right. Miss Forest troubled herself very little as to
whether the people of B. thought her solitary wandering proper or not.
Not that she had any especial inclination for solitary dreamy roamings,
but she wished to become acquainted with the environs of the town; and
as, after Atkin's departure, she found no one she thought worthy to
accompany her, she went alone.
One day, after a longer walk than usual, which took her some hours'
distance from B., she ascended the Ruenberg, from whose summit there
was a view of an ancient castle. Wearied with the long walk, she sat
down upon a relic of the old wall, and leaning against the rock, gazed
far out into the landscape. The misty veil which, on the day of her
arrival, had so densely enveloped all, had now lifted, and the beauties
then hidden from her view, now bathed in golden sunlight, lay outspread
at her feet.
She leaned farther back into the shadow of the wall. This German
landscape had an unwonted effect upon her; around it hovered a
something which at sight of the grandest natural scenery she had never
experienced, a breath of melancholy, of longing, of home-sickness.
Home-sickness! She had never understood the word, not even when she had
seen her mother die of the malady,--not even when it had so overpowered
her father in his dying hour. Now, when she trod the soil, to which
she, a stranger in all else, still belonged by the sacred right of
birth, there rose within her soul, dimly and mysteriously, as it were a
distant, half sunken remembrance of that early childhood, when her
father had not watched over her education, but had confided it entirely
to her mother, who, with old songs and legends, had awakened in the
child that longing which later the father's influence had so entirely
obliterated or changed into bitterness.
It was a strange, almost uncanny feeling for Jane; and she knew the
very moment when it began. Not at sight of a magnificent prospect like
this, not at the rich landscape-pictures of a tour up the Rhine, which
she had a little while before made with her uncle and Atkins, had this
feeling first awakened. No, it was amid the swaying mists of that
country road, at the edge of that willow hedge, from whose buds the
first green of spring burst forth, when that gray veil enveloped all
around, and only the murmur of the river broke through the silence;
then it had for the first time awakened, and, in an unaccountable
manner, it always attached itself to the form of the man who had at
that time stood near her. Jane thought only seldom, and always with a
sort of aversion, of that meeting. In spite of the ludicrousness
of the hero, there lay in it something of that romance, which the
matter-of-fact daughter of Forest so much despised; and now, just as
she was about to repel the intrusive and ever-recurring remembrance,
this became impossible;--she caught the sound of an advancing footstep,
and Professor Fernow himself came around the angle of the wall.
For a moment, Jane almost lost her presence of mind at the sudden
apparition which so peculiarly responded to her thoughts; but the
professor seemed really frightened at so unexpected a sight of her. He
started back, and made a movement to turn around, but all at once, the
impoliteness of such a step seemed to dawn upon him; after a moment's
hesitation, he bowed silently, and walked to the other side of the
wall, where he took his stand as far as possible from the young lady;
and still, from the narrowness of the space, they were none too far
apart.
It was the first time since their meeting upon the suburban highway,
that they had found themselves alone together. Their casual and
unavoidable meetings in the house and garden had always been signalized
by the professor with a shy bow, which Jane had coolly returned; they
had both shunned all conversation, and it seemed that they would
preserve the usual silence to-day. The professor had arrived,
exhausted, and out of breath; neither the weariness of the long
pathway, nor the exertion of climbing, which he had so conscientiously
undertaken in response to his physician's order for moderate exercise
in the open air, had sufficed to redden his cheeks, upon which lay the
same ashy pallor they had worn that afternoon; and the deep lines on
the young man's forehead, the dark rings around the eyes,--all these
only too well confirmed what Jane had often heard from her uncle, that
the professor was working himself to death, that his days were
numbered.
And still,--her thoughts must keep reverting to that moment when he had
stood with her before the flooded pathway. Those had not been the arms
of a consumptive which had so vigorously lifted her, so easily and
safely carried her; and that quick flush of excitement at her question
of his strength, had been anything but an indication of illness. She
could not resolve the contradiction between that moment and the usually
delicate appearance of the young man, which today was more plainly than
ever revealed to her eyes.
"Do you often climb the Ruenberg, Mr. Fernow?" began the young lady at
last, for the obstinate silence of the professor left her no choice but
to open the conversation, and she had heard enough of this eccentric
man to be aware that nothing offensive lay in his silence.
At the sound of her voice he turned hastily around, and it seemed as if
he made an effort to retain in her presence, his usual dreamy, absent
manner.
"It is the most beautiful place in the environs of B. I visit it as
often as my time permits."
"And that is perhaps very seldom?"
"It is so, and especially this summer, when I must dedicate all my
strength to an arduous work."
"Are you writing another learned work?" asked Jane in a slightly
ironical tone.
"A scientific one," returned the professor with an emphasis that
equalled the irony.
Jane's lips curled in derision.
"You think perhaps, Miss Forest, that this is both a thankless and
fruitless effort," he said, with some bitterness.
She shrugged her shoulders. "I must confess that I have none too great
reverence for book-learning, and that I cannot at all comprehend how
one can lay his whole life, a free-will offering upon the altar of
science, and write books which, like yours, Professor Fernow, are of
interest only to the learned, and which to the rest of mankind, must
always remain dead, fruitless and valueless."
This was another specimen of Jane's horrible frankness, which had so
often thrown her uncle into despair; but the professor seemed neither
surprised nor wounded. He fixed his large melancholy eyes on the young
lady's face. She already half regretted having begun the conversation,
for if she could better hold her ground before these eyes than at that
first interview, they still called forth that torturing, anxious
sensation she could not control.
"And who tells you, Miss Forest, that I do it of my own free will?" he
asked in a peculiarly emphatic tone.
"Well, one does not allow himself to be forced into such a direction,"
replied Jane.
"But supposing a homeless, orphaned child, thrown out upon life alone,
falls into the hands of a learned man who knows and loves nothing in
the wide world but science?--As a boy I was chained to the book-table,
as a youth I was restlessly impelled onward, to exert my capabilities
to the utmost, until at last the goal was reached. Whatever I in youth
possessed of health or poetry, was irretrievably lost in this process,
but he whom this useless book-learning has cost such sacrifices, is
bound to it by indissoluble ties for the rest of his life. For this, I
have sacrificed every other longing, and every hope."
There lay a sort of despairing resignation in these words, and the
melancholy glance into Jane's face which accompanied them, awoke in her
a feeling of resentment against the professor, and against herself. Why
could she not remain calm under this glance? Surely if anything could
have lowered this man in her eyes it was the confession he had just
made. And so, not even from conviction or from inspiration, but from
habit, from a vague sentiment of duty, he was working himself to death!
To Jane's energetic nature, this passive endurance and persistence in a
half-enforced calling, appeared supremely pitiable. The man who did not
possess the strength and courage to rise to his proper place in life,
might just as well sink into nothingness as a bookworm!
With a hasty excited movement, the professor had turned away from her,
and Jane too soon found herself gazing upon the landscape now all aglow
with the last beams of the setting sun. The roseate halo transfigured
earth and sky; the blue mountains in their clear, transparent outlines
caught a new lustre from the rosy light which enwrapt all the towns and
villages lying at the mountain's base; which flashed and flamed in the
green and golden waters of the Rhine as they flowed on calm and
majestic, far out into the illuminated plain, where against the western
horizon, distant and scarce discernible, like a giant mist-picture, the
mighty dome towered upward, the pride and crown of the old Rhenish
stream.
The reflection of this same fiery glow lay upon the gray,
weather-beaten stones of the old castle, upon the dark ivy which had
woven around it its thick green meshes, while the wild, luxuriant vines
hanging over the abyss, fluttered to and fro in the evening wind; and
it lay also upon the faces of the two up yonder.
Jane was for some minutes so lost in gazing at the wonderful
illumination, that she had not remarked the professor standing close by
her side, and now, she was almost frightened at the sound of his voice.
"Can our Rhine also win a moment's admiration from you?" he asked in a
tone of peculiar satisfaction.
"From me?" The thought suddenly occurred to Jane that he might have
divined something of the weakness of which she had been guilty in this
respect. She had certainly always retained a mastery over her features,
it could be only supposition; but the supposition vexed her.
"_From me?_" she repeated, in an icy tone. "You may be partly right,
Professor Fernow, I find some very charming features in this landscape,
although upon the whole, it seems to me rather narrow and poor."
"Narrow! poor!" repeated the professor as if he had not rightly
understood, while his glance, incredulous and questioning, rested upon
her face.
"Yes, I certainly call it so!" declared Jane with a tone of haughty
superiority and a touch of vexation. "To one who, like me, has lived
upon the shores of the great Mississippi, who has seen the magnificence
of Niagara, who knows the majesty of vast prairies and primeval
forests, this German landscape can appear but narrow and poor."
The professor's face flushed--a sign that he was beginning to be angry.
"If you measure a landscape by space, you are right, Miss Forest. We
are apt to employ other standards, which might perhaps seem petty to
you; but I assure you that your landscapes would appear to us supremely
empty and desolate; that we should think them tame or dead."
"Ah! Do you know them so intimately?"
"I do."
"I really wonder, Professor Fernow," said Jane with cutting irony,
"that, without having seen our landscapes, you are able to give so
positive a verdict in regard to them. You appear to think our
Mississippi region a desert, but you should at least know from your
books, that the life which rules there is infinitely richer and grander
than by your Rhine."
"An every-day life!" cried the professor growing still more excited; "a
hive of bees in a restless struggle for success, a life directed but to
the present moment! Your giant river, Miss Forest, with its thousand
steamers, with its thriving populous cities and luxuriant shores, can
never give you what the smallest wave of the Rhine brings in enticing
murmurs to us all; the spell of the past, the history of nations, the
poesy of centuries."
"To us"--here the professor suddenly and unconsciously dropped the
English in which he had been speaking, for his native German--"to us,
this chimes and echoes through a thousand songs and legends, it is
wafted to us in every rustle of the forest, it speaks to us in the
voiceless silence of every rocky cliff. From our mountains, from our
castles, the mighty forms of the past descend; in our cities, the old
races rise again in their pristine might and splendor; our cathedrals,
memorials of imperishable magnificence and power, tower heavenward; the
Loreley entices and beckons us down beneath its green waves, in whose
deepest depths, sparkles and glitters the Niebelungen horde,--all this
lives, and enchants us in and around our Rhine, Miss Forest, and this
certainly, no--stranger can understand."
Jane had listened, first in surprise, then in wonder, but at last in
utter consternation. What had all at once come over this man. He stood
before her erect and tall, his face almost transfigured by an inner
light, his eyes glowing with excitement. She listened to the deep,
fervid tones of his voice, she yielded to the spell of his eloquence,
where word crowded upon word, picture upon picture, and it seemed to
her as if here also a misty veil had been riven, and she caught a
glimpse out into infinite space--gleaming with golden light. The
chrysalis had suddenly fallen from the pale, suffering form, which so
long under a ban, now came forth into its true light, and soared to its
true place.
Jane Forest was not woman enough to remain long under such an
infatuation, without exerting all her strength to break from it. Her
whole inner being rose in arms; the whole pride and obstinacy of her
nature arrayed themselves against this power, which for some moments
had held her in willess control, against this influence that had so
oppressed her. She must break the spell, cost what it would, and with
quick determination, she grasped after the first weapon that stood at
her command--remorseless irony.
"I did not know you were a poet, Professor Fernow!" she said,
mockingly.
The professor shuddered, as if a shrill discord had met his ear; the
flush in his face died out, his eyes fell to the ground.
"_A poet?_--_I?_" he said in a half-stifled voice.
"What you have just been saying did not sound at all like prose."
Fernow sighed deeply, and passed his hand over his forehead.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Forest, for having ennuyed you with poetry.
Ascribe it to my ignorance of the rules of society,--whose first
precept is, that one must not speak to a lady of that which she cannot
comprehend."
Jane bit her lips. This "learned pedant," as she had called him this
very morning, was revealing himself in strange ways. Poetic at one
moment, he could be cruelly sarcastic at the next; but she was better
adapted to this tone; here she could meet him as equal meets equal! The
young lady in her vexation, quite overlooked the deep and painful
excitement which had goaded the professor to a bitterness so unusual
with him; and she did not cease her thrusts. She could not deny herself
the dangerous satisfaction of calling forth those lightning-like gleams
of anger from the calm, dreamy, superficial being of this man;--gleams
which betrayed passionate depths perhaps unknown to him. She felt that
only in moments of the highest inspiration or of the highest
exasperation, was he capable of these, and as it was beyond her power
to inspire him, she resolved to exasperate him.
"I wonder so much the more, Professor Fernow, that you have guarded
this susceptibility in so extraordinary a way; but really, in dreaming
and poetizing, the Germans were always in advance of us."
"In two things which stand infinitely low in your esteem!"
"I, at least, am of the opinion that man was created for deeds and not
for dreams! This poetizing is only listless dreaming."
"And consequently you despise it!"
"_Yes!_" Jane was fully conscious of the cruelty with which she uttered
this rough _yes_, but she had been challenged, she resolved to wound;
and it seemed indeed as if she had succeeded. A deep red flush mounted
to Fernow's forehead. Strange--he had taken it so calmly when she
sought to disparage science, but her attack upon poetry he would not
bear.
"You ought to be less prodigal of your contempt, Miss Forest," he said,
"and there are things which deserve it more than our poetry."
"Of which I have no conception."
"For which you _will_ have none, and which will yet assert its right,
like the home-bud at that very moment when you called it poor and
narrow."
Jane was for a moment speechless with pride and anger. What had taught
this man, who in his revenge and absence of mind often forgot the
simplest, most familiar things, to glance so deeply into her soul,
although her features never betrayed what was passing there? What
induced him, with such exasperating clearness, to bring to light
sentiments which she herself would not confess? For the first time that
indefinable oppression she always experienced in his presence, found a
decided reason; she felt dimly that in some way danger threatened her
from this man; that she must at any price hold herself far from him,
even on account of this one provocation.
Miss Forest drew herself up with her utmost dignity, and measured the
professor from head to foot. "I regret, Mr. Fernow," she said, "that
your penetrating glance has so deceived you. I alone am accountable for
my sympathies and antipathies; besides, I assure you that I thoroughly
detest sentimentality and revery in whatever form and that to me
nothing in the whole world is so antagonistic as--a hero of the pen."
The word was spoken, and, as if he had received a wound, the professor
trembled under this irony. The flame again flashed up in his face, and
from his blue eyes darted a lightning glance that would have made any
other than Jane tremble. For an instant a passionate, indignant reply
seemed to quiver on his lips; then he suddenly averted his face, and
placed his hand over his eyes.
Jane stood immovable. Now she had her will. The storm was invoked. She
had made him angry, angry as he had been that day when he had so
hastily lifted and carried her in his arms to disprove her insinuation
of his want of physical strength.
What now?
After a momentary pause, Fernow turned to her. His face was pale but
perfectly calm, and his voice lacked that peculiar vibration it had
possessed during the whole interview.
"You seem to forget, Miss Forest, that even a lady's privileges have
their limit," he said. "If the social circle in which you move, allows
you so free an expression of your opinions, I beg leave to remind you
that I do not belong to that circle, and will not tolerate direct
insults. I should have answered a man otherwise. As for you, I can only
assure you that it will henceforth be my especial care that our paths
do not again cross."
And with a bow just as cold and distant, just as haughty as Miss Forest
herself had at her command for persons not agreeable to her, he turned
away and vanished behind the wall.
Jane remained standing there motionless, in a sort of bewilderment,
which gradually yielded to the consciousness of what this man had
presumed to say to her. He had mortified, chided, repulsed her! Her,
Jane Forest! This pitiable scholar, upon whom until this hour she had
looked with sympathetic contempt! The contempt indeed was over, but who
could have dreamed that this man, so timid, so helpless in every-day
life, could in a moment, when the conventional barriers fell, become so
unmasked! In the midst of her resentment, Jane experienced something
like a deep satisfaction, that he to her and to her alone, had shown
himself in this light; but that did not lessen her exasperation,
neither did the consciousness that she had driven him to extremities,
and that the rebuke was just, in the least console her.
In one thing at least this German professor had succeeded, a success no
one had before achieved; he had broken through the icy coldness with
which the young lady had thus far met all, and had brought to the
surface an ardent glowing passionateless, which rose in arms against
him. She hated this man, who had forced upon her the first humiliation;
hated him with the whole energy of a proud, spoiled nature, which had
deemed itself unapproachable, and now for the first time had found its
master. The costly lace of her handkerchief had to atone; it lay torn
in pieces on the ground; but she did not care. Neither did she care
that the twilight was falling, that she was two hours' distance from B.
and must go back on foot; for nothing did she care after this quarrel.
With a passionate movement, she lifted her hat from the ground, and
scornfully thrust aside with her foot the ivy twigs that came in her
way.
"'It will henceforth be my especial care not to cross your path again!'
Well, Professor Fernow, you may rely upon it that I shall not cross
yours, and so I hope we have parted forever!"
Jane gave her head a toss that indicated her contempt of the whole
world in general and Walter Fernow in particular, and then with rapid
steps she swept along the path leading down into the valley. There,
dense shadows already lay, while thicker and thicker the twilight wove
its gray veil around the ruins of the old castle, around the place
where two human hearts had come so near, and had parted so far asunder.