Following the Clue.
Weeks and months had passed, since that first call to arms had echoed
through the land, and still the storm of war raged with undiminished
fury; but the arrow had recoiled upon its sender. Upon the Rhine the
vineyards were ripening, the purple grapes gaining richer hues day by
day; golden harvests moved in the fields; over the cities floated the
nation's victorious banner; but yonder in France, the vineyards were
laid waste, the blooming meadows were trodden under the feet of men and
horses, the flames of burning villages rose to heaven. All the horrors
which had been destined for the Rhineland, now fell upon French soil, a
late but fearful punishment for the once so frivolously devastated
Palatinate. Even the victors could no longer restrain their rage: the
ruin, now unfettered, took its course, alike visiting the guilty and
the guiltless, and the trembling land now at last itself experienced
the full, terrible import of those words with which it had often enough
absolved itself from every responsibility--_C'est la guerre!_
Onward, still onward, marched the victorious columns of the German
army, from the Rhine to the Moselle, from the Moselle to the Meuse,
from the Meuse to the Seine, throwing down all that stood in its way.
City after city opened its gates, citadel after citadel yielded after a
shorter or longer resistance. The fiery August sun blazed down upon
seven battlefields, saluting at the same time, countless trophies of
victory; and the first cool breezes of September swept that soil, where
the wavering enemy, surrounded, hemmed in, pressed on every side, had
at last yielded. A whole French corps, the once formidable head of the
army, now indeed held the vaunted entrance to Germany; but without arms
or resources;--and meantime the conquerors pressed on, with restless,
unyielding persistence, to the heart of France--to Paris!
At N., the capital of one of the departments, in spite of the
war-billows that had long since swept over it, reigned an active,
military life. This town was the principal station on the great
military and travelling highway which led from Germany into the
interior of France. Marching regiments, endless provision and munition
trains, here crossed the path of the returning transports of sick and
wounded soldiers, ambulances, and couriers; all the streets were
crammed with men, carriages and horses; all the quarters were
full to overflowing. In this state of things, two travellers,
apparently English or American, who had arrived yesterday, although
they undoubtedly belonged to the richer class, still deemed it
a lucky accident to obtain, at an extravagant price, a pair of
miserably-furnished attic rooms in a hotel of the second grade.
Upon the morning after their arrival, the stronger gentleman sat upon a
sofa, while his young companion stood at an open window and gazed up
the street, where a confused multitude of pedestrians and vehicles
of all sorts blocked the way, while the tumult and excitement, in
ever-increasing murmurs, fell upon her ear.
"I do not comprehend how you can endure those deafening noises down
there, Miss Jane! Are you not at least weary of this eternal hurrying
and surging to and fro?"
"No!" was the curt, somewhat ill-natured answer of the young lady, who,
bending far out of the window, at this moment was gazing intently into
an ambulance full of wounded men. Her glance fixed itself immovably on
the pale wan faces, and she looked after them until the ambulance
vanished around a corner.
"Well, you have better nerves than I," said Atkins resignedly. "I
confess that during these last eight days I have become really morbid.
We were a whole week on this journey to N. which is usually made in
twenty-four hours; we have had our night quarters in the most wretched
villages, such food I never in my life tasted before. For hours and
days, we have had to lie over in half-ruined places on account of
broken bridges and impassable roads, and always in danger lest a battle
might be fought in our immediate vicinity, and we borne onward with the
wave of victory or flight. I should think all this must at last have
convinced you how impossible it is to trace out family relationships
upon the theatre of war."
During this speech, Jane had closed the window; she now turned around.
"Impossible?" she asked calmly. "I thought that in spite of all, we had
arrived in N., and that, in any event, a decision awaited us here."
"Or a new deception! This clue misleads us in the most exasperating
ways. Scarce do we think we have it, when it suddenly snaps asunder,
and darts away to some other quarter of the heavens. At present, we are
in France, and I should not wonder if the next thing, we had to direct
our course back to America, only to go from there to the Rhine again,
and so on."
"It is all the same!" declared Jane energetically. "I promised my
father to find my brother if still alive, and to yield only to
impossibilities. I shall keep my word!"
"If it were only a direct clue we are following?" began Atkins again;
"but whom do we seek? A man who by some remote possibility may be able
to give us information of the principal character in this drama."
"And perhaps the only one who can give it! The direct clue is lost;
that clergyman is not to be found, neither in his former parish nor
anywhere else; all our efforts in this direction have failed; but we
have found the artisan who adopted the other boy."
"And from him have received the joyful tidings that his nephew went to
France four years ago, and at this moment may be here in N. For the
theatre of his highly respectable efforts at the planing bench, he has
chosen a place right in the midst of all these accursed military
operations."
Jane's eyes flashed half-angrily. "You forget the most important
thing," she said, "the one which alone leads us here; the assertion of
that man that the former playfellow of this young Erdmann is still
living, that the two, after a separation of years, met again during
their term of military service. Certainly, he could tell us nothing
further; his nephew was at that time on duty far away from him in a
large garrison city; but this much he remembered distinctly, having
heard it from Erdmann's own lips. I have learned that my brother still
lives, that there is some one in the world who knows him, who can tell
me his abode. Does this not seem to you a step gained on the path we
seek? It is more than I had hoped!"
"I do not dispute all this," replied Atkins; "I am only of the opinion
that it would be better to defer our investigations until after the end
of the war."
"Until the end of the war," echoed Jane. "When all present associations
are severed, and the soldiers are scattered here and there! These
tidings have not come too late; I hope not, at least, but we ought not
to delay a moment, to make the best possible use of them, and as an
epistolary correspondence was not to be thought of, there was only one
resource; I must enter personally into the investigation, and follow
the clue. If you suffer from the dangers and deprivations of the
journey, Mr. Atkins, it is your own fault--I could have come alone!"
"Yes, God knows you would have done so!" said Atkins, with a sigh.
"Jane, you are sometimes terrible in your restless energy! I certainly
do not belong to the indolent and the irresolute; but this tireless
rushing onward toward one single goal, has at last quite exhausted me."
"But not _me_!" replied Jane, with cool determination. "I am resolved
to go on, I repeat it, to the utmost limits of the possible!"
"Well, we have one certainty at least," began Atkins after a brief
pause; "the German master with whom young Erdmann was at work when the
war broke out, is still here. You know that yesterday, I went from the
mayoralty, where I received this intelligence, directly to the
designated house. But I found it closed, all its inmates fled to the
just arrived Prussian regiments, among whom they hoped to find
countrymen. This information I obtained from a very peculiar
conversation with an exceedingly talkative neighbor; peculiar, I may
well say, for she understood no English and I no French, and we were
forced to call a very expressive pantomime to our aid, by means of
which I made her comprehend that my visit was designed for Monsieur
Erdmann and his master, that I would return to-day, and that I should
be infinitely obliged to her if she would hand my card to the latter.
Thus far our pantomime brought us, and now I am curious to know what
sort of unavoidable confusion Madame has made out of the slang."
Jane glanced at her watch. "It is now half-past nine, and I think we
ought to get ready to go out."