Chapter XV: 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."