A Hero of the Pen

by E. Werner

"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.