SO the House of Lübeling was left desolate. Hugh Graham said to the baron, “Your gallant son was the only one―of all his servants and followers―beside Gustavus Adolphus at the last. In a heroic effort to save him he was wounded mortally. Could you have desired a nobler fate for him?”
And the bereaved father bowed his head and murmured, “It is well with the lad.”
Afterward all was told. Sorrow, dark and deep, enveloped the household like a pall. But it was a proud, patient sorrow. Nor was it sorrow without hope. The mourning father has left on record, with touching simplicity, the story of his son's heroic death, dwelling fondly on the peace and patience of those last days, and the joy with which he gave his young life for his king. “Almighty God,” he concludes, “will keep his soul in His gracious care, and give his body a joyful resurrection at the last day. And to us who remain may He grant as blessed a Simeon-like departure, for His dear Son's sake. Amen.”
All that was noblest and gentlest in the nature of Hugh Graham came forth to soothe and comfort the mourners. His fine tact enabled him to say just what would help and strengthen—no Less, and no more. Bound to them, even before he knew them personally, by gratitude for their kindness to his children, he now added to this sentiment genuine respect and warm admiration.
With Giovana he was charmed, as indeed with such a daughter what father could fail to be? The half had not been told him even by Hugh's boyish superlatives. Still he could not help feeling that this beautiful, graceful girl was a stranger to him and he to her. If the truth must be told, he stood even in a little awe of her. Yet there was a look on her face that thrilled his heart to its very core. Sometimes he would let fancy have her way, and the spirit of old days steal over him; then, for one fleeting, blissful moment, he could think that it was the wife of his youth who stood beside him.
Will it be believed that Jeanie, on her side, did not greatly care for this newfound father? In truth, it was not then in her power greatly to care for anything in the world. Her heart seemed dead within her. She even heard without much emotion of his intended departure after a short sojourn at the Lübeling Haus.
“I ought to go to the Duke of Friedland,” he said, “to arrange for my men, to explain my new position, and to consult his wishes, So much at least I owe him.”
He would have probably found it difficult to explain his position to the Duke of Friedland, or to anyone, even to himself. But he seemed bent upon making the journey, in spite of the remonstrances of his hosts, who were much drawn to him, not only by the strong bond of his sympathy in their sorrow, but also by that undefinable attractiveness which was the distinguishing characteristic of all his family. His children, and even his brother, with all his faults, were sure to make friends wherever they went; and of this kind of magnetism he himself had the largest share. The Lady of Savelburg, far from feeling any rancor towards her supplanter, told Jeanie that she might be well satisfied with the father she had found. She remarked also to Caroline von Lübeling, “This cavalier, who is like a knight of the olden days, is just what I should have expected my Jeanie's father to be. To say the truth, I could never feel that her uncle, Captain Graham, was quite worthy of her.”
Had it been in other days, Caroline would have answered laughingly, “You dislike the poor man because it was easy to see that he dared to admire you.” But now no sound of laughter was heard in the Lübeling Haus; “all joy was darkened, the mirth of the land was gone.”
On the evening of the day when her father announced his approaching departure, Gertrud came to Jeanie's little chamber. It was late, and most of the household had retired to rest, but the young girl was sitting motionless beside the narrow strip of window, from which she could just see a patch of sky and a few stars. There was no light in the room, and she did not seem to be doing anything.
“Why are you not in bed?” her friend asked almost sharply.
“I don't know,” said Jeanie, shivering a little at the words, or rather at the tone in which they were spoken.
“You look cold, and no wonder. Let me feel your hands, child; they are frozen. If you must sit up half the night in mid-winter, with the snow deep on the ground, at least wrap something warm around you.” And, laying down the small lamp she had brought, she took a fur-lined mantle from her own shoulders, and folded it around those of the trembling girl. “There, that is better. What do you say? That you don't want it? Don't talk nonsense to me.”
“Why do you speak so? It is not like you,” said Jeanie, with a great weariness in her voice, and also a faint accent of surprise.
“No, you are right there. It is not like me. Indeed it is not I. I would fain sit beside you, and weep with you. I know all, Jeanie.”
“Oh—no—not now—I could not bear it!” A moan of agony, suppressed but intense, trembled in the cadence of the broken words.
“No, you could not. Nor would it be good for you just now. You have no time now for tears. God is calling you not to weep, but to work. He bids you be strong and to do His will. Jeanie, your father will not leave this tomorrow, nor for many tomorrows.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jeanie, still wearily, though roused a little by her words.
“I mean to say that he has the fever―that fever which has been lingering in our old houses and our narrow streets since last summer's trouble. He ate nothing today, and though he would not complain it was easy to see that he was suffering. His eyes were heavy and his face was flushed.”
“I did not see it.”
“No, you did not. Eyes dim with sorrow sometimes miss things they ought to see. In my time of desolation mine missed much. I do not want yours to do the same. Jeanie, your father's life is in your hands.”
“His life?”
“You know well that, with God's blessing, care and good tendance can work wonders in these cases. Our kind friends here will do everything in their power; still, the work is yours; God has given it to you.”
“To think that, in all their trouble, they should have this too. And after what they did last summer for Hugh!”
“Do not grieve about that. He who sends the sickness knows what He is doing. It may prove an angel of mercy and healing to this house. But your work lies straight before you. Rise up and do it. ‘Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee.’
“May He help me!” Jeanie murmured. Then without another word she got up, and gave the mantle back to her friend, taking instead a woolen kerchief and folding it around her. “I will go in softly to my father's room,” she said. “If he sleeps, I need not disturb him; if he wakes, and is suffering, I may be able to do something. No, thank you, not the lamp now. I will return for it if I need it.”
“That is well. Remember, I shall be at hand should you want anything.”
Thus began Jeanie's long attendance on her fever-stricken father. He was the more easily prostrated by the malady because he had not thoroughly recovered from the effects of his wound; while his rapid journey, and the various emotions he had undergone, told disastrously upon his weakened frame. The fever was low, and he was never thought to be in immediate danger; but one relapse after another disappointed the hopes of his physician, and caused grave anxiety to those around him, especially to the brave and loving watcher who nursed him day and night with the most tender and assiduous care. But strength stole back at last, though by almost imperceptible degrees. When the fever smote him, the snow was deep on the ground; before he was able to look again on the face of the outer world the trees were green and the orchards gay with blossoms.
The morning came at length when, leaning on the arm of his son, he went forth into the garden, to breathe the fresh, sweet air of May. Hugh loved his father dearly, and during the time of his illness had been greatly concerned for him, and most anxious to be of use in any way he could. But Baron von Lübeling, who took an almost paternal interest in the boy who had been the friend of his son, thought it right that he should attend one of the excellent schools of the city, where he was making good progress, especially in the classics, which of course had not been taught him in the Swedish camp. This day he had a holiday for the purpose of escorting his father in his first walk, and was glad and proud to do it; while Jeanie, left at last with the prospect of a full half-hour's leisure, went up to her little chamber in the roof. She meant to kneel down there and thank God, who had heard the cry of her heart. He had brought back her father from the gates of the grave; and He had done much more than that for him and for her. Yet what she meant to do was not done. She thought half an hour was quite enough for this first venture into the open air; and to ascertain the time with accuracy, she glanced at the watch which lay upon the little table near her. It did not tell her what she asked, but it told her much more that she had not asked from it! With an uncontrollable passion of pain, the past swept over her again. She saw August's bright face, she heard his voice, she felt him place the “Nurembergegg” in her half-reluctant hand.
She knew all that was over, that the beauty and the glory of that young life had passed forever from the earth. Never more to see that face, never more to hear that voice!
“Oh, the terror—oh, the anguish,
Of that one word, ‘Nevermore!’”
All that remained to her to show that the past was not quite a dream was this watch and this ribbon stained with blood, the blood shed so gladly for his king—his king whom he could not save. Dead things that remained when the living and the loving were gone forever, how worthless they seemed, and yet how precious! Instead of words of prayer and thanksgiving, only tears and sobs, without measure or restraint, welled up from the breaking heart of Giovana Graham. Nature, long repressed, had her way at last.
In this passion of weeping Gertrud von Savelburg found her. For a long time she did not speak to her. She only put her arm around her, drew her close, and let her weep upon her breast, not now making any effort to check the flow of her sorrow. It was Jeanie herself who first struggled to regain her calmness. “I want to tell you something,” she sobbed; “something good, that you will like to hear, but I know not how it is with me. Everything came back just now. The sunshine―the flowers―our journey last spring,―don't you remember?”
“Yes, dear child, I remember all. I knew that his heart went out to you, and that your own answered silently, I think before either of you knew it yourselves. And now, God knows I am glad for you from my inmost heart.”
“Glad for me?” said Jeanie, surprised. “Glad for me? All my gladness is gone forever. My heart is breaking.”
“Yet I am glad for you. You will be glad yourself hereafter, to your life's end, and beyond it. Child, you are rich. You know it, even in the midst of your sorrow. Would you give up your memories, with all their pain, for all the hopes of happy maidens who have never known sorrow?”
Jeanie shook her head silently, but very decidedly, and her friend went on, “You know that you would rather have the heart of August von Lübeling who is in his grave than that of the best and bravest knight that walks the earth amongst living men. Therefore I say you are rich. You have more, Jeanie, than I have ever had. Few of us women are given so much. Memories of truth and tenderness and self-forgetting heroism—hopes sure and certain of a glad reunion beyond the grave.”
There was a pause; then at last Jeanie tried to speak: “Yes, I believe it all. God is good. I shall see his face again in the morning. I am not unhappy, Fraulein Gertrud. The thought is with me always—but not always, not often―a thought of sorrow. Only sometimes there will come over me that terrible ‘nevermore.’ And then I cannot help”―
“You cannot help these tears, I know that. But more and more, as your days go on, the sorrow will fade, and the pride and joy will grow and brighten. That is how time heals; not by making us forget―which would be death, not life―but by transfiguring memory, and making it a joy and glory instead of a pain. Loss is of the things seen, which are temporal; love of the things not seen, which are eternal.”
“Fräulein Gertrud, I think you have learned much.”
“Then it is you who have taught me, dear child.”
“I! No, indeed. I have never taught you anything.”
“We teach best when we teach without intending it. Do you remember, in Frankfurt, when I knew you first and told you of my own sorrow, how you said to me, ‘Christ comfort you. He can do it, and He will’?”
“I do not remember saying it to you. But I asked Him to do it, often and often.”
“I think He began to do it from the time I came here. Do you know, Jeanie, that an those dark days I had ceased to believe He was at all?”
“I feared it sometimes. But I dared not give words, even in my own heart, to a thought so unspeakably awful. Is not that ‘outer darkness,’ ‘blackness of darkness’?”
“It was so to me. But gradually, I know not how, there dawned upon me a faint glimmer of light. Your faith, that of my poor fellow-countrymen here, that of the hero-king amidst his battles, all these helped me. I seemed to see God working around me, and to feel His hand. That was like life from the dead.”
“In His favor is life,” said Jeanie.
“His favor I knew not yet. Enough at first was the thought that He is, and that He reigns; that this world is not chaos, but a part of His kingdom; not the prey of the strongest, whether the strongest be the King of Sweden, the Kaiser, or the Jesuits, but the platform where He is working out the good pleasure of His will.”
“But the king's death,” asked Jeanie, with interest, “did not that shake your faith? I have often thought it might have made mine tremble, only for that which came with it, and which blotted out all else for me.”
“Strange to say, it strengthened mine. It led me a step farther, from the general to the particular and personal care of God for His creatures. Men thought and talked of the king as an ‘instrument’ in His hands, till they forgot he was not like the rod or the ax in the hand of him that wields it, but a faithful servant, consciously and willingly doing the work of the Lord he loved.”
“Oh, but does not that make the perplexity all the greater? Everyone loved him so. Do you not remember how all along his journey—that journey that led him to the field of Lützen—the people flocked around him, weeping and blessing him as their deliverer, kissing the hem of his garment and the scabbard of his sword? Hugh told me he heard at Naumberg that the king said to those around him there, ‘I fear God will rebuke us for this, and soon teach these foolish people my frail mortality.’”
“And the stroke which taught them that, to their sorrow, what did it do for him? Suppose him alive now, and with the empire at his feet? Beyond a question his was a proud, heroic spirit, full of passionate hopes and lofty dreams, with the ambition that is inseparable from genius, and the love of power which always marks the man born to wield it. Must he not have descended to the level of mere worldly conquerors? Would he not have found work to do of a lower and coarser kind, and would not the hand have taken, as it ever does, the color of what it worked in? But God kept him for better things. He called His stainless knight to come up higher, ere victory or empire had spoiled him, or his bright fame had been tarnished by one selfish aim or act. So far was He from sacrificing His servant to His ‘cause’ or to ‘the interests of Protestantism,’ which doubtless He will know how to provide for some other way. I learned from that kingly death at Lützen that we—we ourselves―are of more value in His sight, not than ‘many sparrows,’ but than many battles, ay, or the rise and fall of dynasties. With Him assuredly there is no difference between great and small; if the king was precious in His eyes, so are you and I. Then, Jeanie,” she added, gently stroking her hair, “then I thought of your life, of your words to me in Frankfurt, of your sorrow, and I said within myself, Will Christ comfort her, as she said He would comfort me? I will own that at first I feared for you, lest the great water-floods should prevail against you. When the tidings came that changed your life, though you shed no tear and made no sign, rather perhaps because you did not, you seemed as one stricken for death. I shall never forget the look in those quiet eyes of yours. It is gone now, thank God; the tears you shed today are but summer rain, which clears the sky and makes the sunshine brighter. It passed away that night when you rose up to go to the bedside of your father. From that hour your courage, your cheerfulness, your faith, your patience, have been a daily lesson to me. No need to say that God was with you; you have been ‘a living epistle known and read of all,’ wherein He has written how well He can comfort and uphold the hearts of those who trust Him. Now, dear child, I too can say He has comforted me.”
“Thank God!” sobbed Jeanie. “Thank God!” she said again more calmly. “Oh, how good He is! Indeed I should be ashamed of these tears. This is a day of joy to me. My father—and now you, my kind friend, who have been as a mother to me”―
“But what of your father?”
“Oh, such joy! Let me tell you about him. He too has found rest for his soul. He is at the foot of the cross.”
“Then the snare is broken, and the captive of Rome set free? He has forsaken her delusions to return to a purer faith?”
“Not so much forsaken them as forgotten them, as the strange forms we fancy in the shades of night are forgotten when the day breaks. He says it was nothing but the hunger of his empty, unsatisfied heart that drove him to Rome; that in his early days he learned a great deal about Christ, but he never learned Christ. He knew the truths of Scripture as a blind man might know by name the colors of the rainbow, their order and their relation to each other. He told me that the Catechism and the Confession of Faith seemed to him like unadorned, unsightly cups, earthen vessels, men taught him to prize because, as they said, they were full of living water, though he had ever found them dry and empty. And that, thirsty in his disappointment, the Church offered him her golden cup richly chased and jeweled, and he took it eagerly. But there was poisoned wine within, and the draft well-nigh slew him.” She paused, trying to recall exactly what followed next, and Gertrud asked her, with a little hesitation, “Do you think he would like you to tell me all this?”
“Oh yes, I am sure he would; you are my best friend, as he well knows; moreover, he holds you himself in much esteem. He was beginning to grow dissatisfied with Rome at the time of his coming here first, and of our sorrow. The chapters Hugh repeated to him helped him not a little. Then the fever smote him, and in the time of his weakness and pain God Himself spoke to his heart. So he tells me now. And he says God used my poor weak words to help him. Is not that wonderful, seeing he is so wise and learned, and I know so little? God showed him Christ as his Saviour and Redeemer. His own words are, ‘Christ answers all my needs and satisfies all my longings.’”
“Truly this is a good day. You ought to thank God and take courage.”
“So I do. Dear Fraulein, can it be wrong to think that the strength to do God's will and to witness for Him has come to me through the presence of that young life spent for Him—and not ended, but going on still in His heaven?”
A step was on the narrow stair, and a clear young voice drew near and nearer, singing a Swedish battle hymn—
“Thy cause is God's―go at His call,
And to His hand commit thy all,
Fear thou no ill impending
His Gideon shall arise for thee,
God's Word and people manfully
In God's own time defending.”
And Hugh entered the room. As he did so the Lady of Savelburg turned to him with an air of mild, almost motherly reproof.
“My dear boy, remember your promise.”
Hugh stood abashed for a moment. “Oh, I forgot,” he said apologetically. “Those words are singing themselves in my heart all day, so my lips take them up without knowing it.”
They were part of the battle hymn which came from the great heart of Gustavus himself, on the eve of the day of Liitzen, and was chanted on that fatal morning by twice ten thousand manly voices. Gertrud, fearing for the effect on Jeanie, had made Hugh promise not to sing them in her presence; but she looked up brightly at her brother.
“No human words are more dear to me,” she said. Then, after a pause, “Where have you left my father?”
“In the library, talking business with the baron, He met us coming in from the garden, and took my father's arm. Then they began upon all sorts of things, and went in together, I suppose, to finish them. But I think, Jeanie, that you ought to go to him, and bring him some wine, or a custard, or something.”
“Yes, I will do so, though I do not like disturbing him. Fraulein Gertrud, do you remember the little book of hymns you gave me when we first came here? I love them all; but these words seem written for no one in the world but me:
“‘Well He knows how best to grant me
All the longing hopes that haunt me,
All things have their proper day.
I would dictate to Him never,
As God wills so be it ever,
When He wills I will obey.
“‘If on earth He bids me linger,
He will guide me with His finger,
Through the years that now look dim.
All that earth has fleets and changes,
As a river onward ranges,
But I rest in peace with Him.’”