The Sacrifice of Blood.
An hour had passed, the fight had proved shorter and less serious than
had been apprehended. The enemy, proceeding from the forest and
gathering in small numbers at the grotto, had intended to surprise the
castle in which the German officers were quartered, and by capturing
them to leave the force in the village without leaders, and an easy
prey to the attack of their main body. Frederic's cry of alarm had
broken up their plan of moving on in perfect silence to the castle, and
the hand-to-hand fight in the grotto had been of short duration. A few
French fusileers had fallen, half a dozen had been taken prisoners, and
the others had fled in wild disorder to the forest. By this movement
the secret way of egress had been discovered and guarded. A few of the
Germans were more or less seriously wounded; none mortally but
Frederic, who was to be the only sacrifice.
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?