He turned from the window and cast a rap_Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

room. It was comfortably arranged, the small wood-fire crackling

merrily, the clothes he was about to wear hanging on a chair beside it

carefully brushed, his bed turned down, exhibiting the whitest of white

linen; but what specially drew Maurice's attention was his portmanteau,

which, after the necessary articles had been taken from it, Karl had

left open, that the expediency of further unpacking might be decided

by his master. It was a large travelling portmanteau, evidently full

of a miscellaneous collection of articles--books, dressing-apparatus,

clothes, curiosities picked up in wandering from place to place. On one

of these curiosities, which was lying near the top of the open side,

Maurice's eyes finally rested.

For a moment he gazed silently, then crossing the room took it up in

his hand to examine it more closely. A case containing a pair of small

pocket-pistols, the barrels of silvered metal richly chased with gold.

One of these Maurice removed from its covering. He handled it with a

certain curiosity, took it to pieces to examine its condition, cleaned

it with the most delicate care, then, after putting it together again,

spent a few moments in listening to its click. It looked more like an

elegant toy than a dangerous weapon. Maurice put it down and returned

it to the case, which contained, besides the companion pistol, a small

flask of gunpowder and some bullets. These he took out, then in a

quiet, leisurely manner proceeded to load the pistol. His attitude was

rather that of a man who is amusing himself, trying to kill time, than

of one who has any serious purpose in view. And perhaps at this moment

Maurice was scarcely serious. In any case, when his work was done he

did not proceed farther; he put the pistol down again. It almost seemed

as if this quiet, ordinary occupation (for Maurice's firearms had

always been treated by him with minute personal care--he did not allow

a servant to touch them) had quieted the tone of his mind and banished

some of his dark thoughts. He put down the pistol then, and turned back

to the fireside to resume his unhealthy musing.

For here lay Maurice Grey's error. Instead of mastering his morbid

feelings, driving them away by stress of hard work and diversity of

thought, he, like many a strong man before and since, suffered them to

master him.

Again and again he would return to the old mystery, bringing the

energy of his soul to bear upon it. Again and again it would elude

him, till, mortified and baffled, tied down to the narrow circle of

self-knowledge, a broad outlook on humanity impossible by reason of

his self-chosen fate, he had come to loathe his very life as an evil

thing.

It is easier to meet a foe in fair fight than a giant formed by a

diseased imagination--blurred, indistinct, but awful with the terrors

of the unknown.

With his small pistol within reach, Maurice set to work once more

thinking over humanity's woes and wrongs, gloomily seeking for the

shadow of a reason why life should be thought worth having--why it

would not be well to pass out from it once and for ever through the

lurid portals of self-destruction. What wonder that his unhealthy

pondering should point out to him no ray of light, no gleam of hope?

But happily for Maurice, and for the many who were interesting

themselves in his welfare, his mind at the time could bear no further

tension. Rather to his own surprise, he found it wandering from

the solemn question of life versus death to the common things that

surrounded him. How strange it is that at the solemnest moments the

trivial and commonplace intrude the most perseveringly! And yet it is a

fact that might be proved by numberless instances.

Maurice's window looked out upon the hotel garden; gradually, as

the tension on his nerves grew less, he caught himself counting and

remarking curiously the very few who from time to time passed up and

down the snow-shrouded paths and alleys. A woman-servant, apparently

looking for some kind of herb; two waiters, who walked rapidly up and

down as if enjoying the keen air and glittering sunshine; the landlady,

in morning undress, crossing to the _dépendance_ in the grounds, and

returning with some utensil which had been left there accidentally;

finally--and this it was that riveted Maurice's attention--a traveller,

probably a new arrival, for the landlord had given Maurice a detailed

account of all those who were in his house at the time, especially

giving him to understand that no English visitors remained. And this

young man was certainly from England. What other country could have

produced the faultless exterior with regard to form, the fair freshness

of face, the well-bred nonchalance of manner?

The young man held a cigar lightly in the tips of his fingers, his

lively whistle penetrated to Maurice's retreat, he walked up and down

on the crystallized snow with a resolute, energetic step; there was, to

the eyes of the jaded man of the world, something peculiarly pleasant

and attractive about his general appearance.

"I wonder who he is?" said Maurice to himself. "It would be rather

pleasant to meet anything so fresh; he has a good face, too. That young

fellow is no scamp."

Inconsistency of human nature, or rather, perhaps, adaptability to

circumstances. Maurice a few moments before had been condemning his

generation indiscriminately, calling men and women by the harshest

names in the vocabulary, longing passionately to escape from them for

ever. Appears upon the scene a young man with a fair, fresh face, and

he endows him immediately with the qualities in which all his kind had

been pronounced deficient! Strange, but true, for such is life, so

complex a thing, driven hither and thither by trifles light as air.

Maurice Grey turned away from the window, looked with a half smile,

half tremor at the loaded pistol, put it in a safe place lest Karl

should see fit to meddle with it, and proceeded to dress himself

carefully for the early _table-d'hôte_ dinner.

And thus, though he himself was all unconscious of the fact, the work

of Margaret's messenger was begun.

CHAPTER VIII.

_A TÊTE-À-TÊTE DINNER AT THE HOTEL._

For how false is the fairest breast!

How little worth, if true!

And who would wish possessed

What all must scorn or rue?

Then pass by beauty with looks above:

Oh seek never--share never--woman's love.

Maurice Grey's costume was as faultless as that of the young man whom

he had admired in the hotel-garden when at the strange hour of two

o'clock P. M. he, in obedience to the summoning bell, peered into

the long dining-room, at the extremity of which was a small table

spread with two or three covers. Karl, his face beaming all over as he

recognized his master, was standing behind the chair destined for him,

the young Englishman was brushing his feet vigorously on the mat before

the door that stood midway in the room, two waiters were hovering about

helplessly.

Maurice took his place at one side, Arthur Forrest seated himself at

the other side of the table. They were Englishmen and total strangers

one to the other, therefore it is scarcely necessary to say that

the places they chose were as far apart as the small size of the

table would permit. And yet the two men were anxious to know one

another--Maurice, because he felt that his companion's freshness would

be a relief to his jaded soul; Arthur, because he had recognized in

Maurice Grey the husband of Margaret, the man for whom he had been

searching through the length and breadth of Europe.

Burning with anxiety to unfold his mission, he could scarcely preserve

his composure now the fatal moment had arrived, now he and the man

he had been seeking were at last face to face. For he could not be

mistaken; he had ascertained from the landlord the name of this only

other Englishman besides himself who had not fled from the valleys at

the first breath of winter, and Maurice's likeness, confided to him by

Margaret, had been too often studied in its every lineament for him not

to be able at once to know its original. With the knowledge came an

excitement that threatened to overpower him utterly; but he controlled

himself. That calm self-possession and a certain amount of diplomacy

were absolutely necessary if he would bring his mission to a successful

issue, he felt most keenly.

Once Maurice caught the young men's eye scanning his face, and as

the eyes met Arthur blushed; he felt, too much for his comfort and

composure, that the slightest false move might be fatal. Maurice was

utterly unsuspicious; he attributed his young companion's confusion to

embarrassment at being caught exhibiting a little too much curiosity,

and ne was simply amused, determining in his own mind to find out more

about the young fellow, so evidently a gentleman, yet so frank and

transparent in his ways.

A few moments of delay passed by; then, as there was no further

accession to the company, soup was served. Arthur, too full of

tremulous excitement to be able to find a single commonplace, began

to eat in total silence; Maurice looked across at him between the

spoonfuls.

"Apparently we are to dine alone together," he said at last with a

pleasant smile; "rather a different scene from the one I looked in upon

a few weeks ago."

"I suppose this place is very full in the season," was Arthur's not

very brilliant reply.

"Especially so this year; it is gaining in renown, and certainly the

situation is good. But to me hotel-life is _so_ distasteful."

Arthur was beginning to gain confidence. "Do you think so?" he said.

"Now, I like it--abroad, that is to say; the people one meets are

off their stilts, and generally inclined to be friendly; there is

no bother, something approaching to comfort, and plenty of life and

gayety."

"I'm afraid present circumstances will scarcely answer to your

description," said Maurice.

Arthur laughed: "No, indeed, you and I seem to be the only sane people

in the establishment. I gather from the waiters--one of whom, happily

for me, speaks English--that the present company consists of an elderly

gentleman, ill or out of his mind, certainly peculiar; his daughter, an

angel of beauty and goodness; a fuming Austrian, scouring the mountains

for his lost wife; attendant brother, similarly occupied; landlord,

landlady, staff of servants."

Maurice smiled: "I think you have omitted nobody, only, for fear your

expectations should have risen too high, even under circumstances so

meagre, I should inform you that the angel of beauty is a child, a mere

baby; but my arrival only preceded yours by a few hours, so, like you,

I speak from rumor. Now, may I venture to ask how long you will be

likely to stand out against such an atrocious state of things? I have

an interest in the question, as I believe I am a fixture for some time."

It was by no means an easy question for Arthur to answer. He might

have said that the time of his stay depended entirely upon Maurice

himself. Not being able to give the true answer, he treated the

question as lightly as possible: "Oh I I can scarcely say, exactly. I

was recommended to come--mountains in winter, snow, and that kind of

thing; they certainly look very well, but, you see, I am not precisely

an enthusiast in that line."

"Was it for your health?" asked Maurice with grave interest, looking

compassionately at the fresh young face, whose brilliant coloring might

possibly hide disease.

This question made Arthur turn as red as fire. The knowledge of

what his errand really was rendered him painfully self-conscious.

"Why, no--yes--no, I mean," he answered, his confusion growing as he

advanced.--"What a fool I must be!" he muttered to himself angrily;

then, as he caught a faint smile, polite but perplexed, on the lips

of his questioner, he controlled himself suddenly. "The fact is," he

said rapidly, "I've been so desperately chaffed about this midwinter

journey--But, you see, I rather like cold weather, and the air here is

bracing."

Maurice saw his questions had been ill-timed, and with true courtesy

proceeded to change the subject: "You would not have said so yesterday.

Then, and for some days previously, it was anything but bracing up

here. We had a fine blanket of cold mist about us--not a tree to be

seen beyond the distance of a handsbreadth."

"I thought you had only arrived yesterday," said Arthur, a tremor in

his voice. He knew perfectly well whence Maurice had come, but it was

his plan to feign ignorance; he wished to draw him on to speak about

himself.

Maurice smiled: "I don't come from very far. You must have heard from

the people about here of the peculiar Englishman who shuns civilized

places--I believe this is the form the rumors take--and lives by

himself in a chalet among the mountains. That strange individual is

before you now."

Arthur bowed, as in acknowledgment of this peculiar kind of

introduction. "I must confess," he replied, "that Mr. Grey is known to

me by fame, and being so far in advance of you I must ask you to be

obliging enough to accept my card. If, as I suppose, we are to dine in

this way tête-à-tête for some few days to come, it is as well that we

should at least know each other by name."

"Thank you," replied Maurice cordially. He was at a loss to account for

the timidity, the hesitation, the evident constraint of this young man,

who was yet, to all appearance, no novice in the ways of the world; but

he liked him and wished to set him at his ease.

"You have just come from England, I presume?" he said after a short

pause, looking kindly into Arthur's flushed face. "_I_ have been a

wanderer for many years. How do you like this kind of life?"

"It has been pleasant enough," replied the younger man, reassured once

more by his companion's friendliness; "but, do you know, I find nothing

to compare with the comfort, the convenience--in fact, you know the

kind of thing that one finds at home. Here one can't get even decent

tobacco; there is nothing to be had in the way of drink but sour wine.

As for the cooking, some people praise it very highly; but--" As he

spoke there came up a little dish of vegetables swimming in butter.

"Bah! they call _that_ an _entrée_, I suppose."

Maurice laughed, and helped himself to the obnoxious dish: "You see

what wandering does. _I_ have become cosmopolitan in my tastes. From

the sauerkraut of Germany to the caviare of Russia I am tolerably at

home, able at least to pick up a living; but come, you are right about

the wine, which I really think grows in sourness with the added degrees

of frost; we might have better tipple than this, and it is an occasion.

I have not done the social for many a long day. The 'Wein kart,' Karl.

Let us order up the best bottle of champagne the landlord has in his

cellar, though I greatly fear his stock is low. Karl, inquire for

me--any first quality champagne left?"

The landlord's cellar was not absolutely empty. In a few moments a

bottle of very excellent champagne stood on the table between the two

young men. Maurice drained a brimming glass; Arthur would scarcely do

more than wet his lips. He had not forgotten his purpose, and to bring

it to a successful issue he knew it would be necessary to have all his

wits about him. Laughingly, Maurice reproached his young companion for

his abstemiousness, and filled and refilled his own glass with the

glittering draught. For after the dull weight of loneliness, after the

terrible experiences of the morning, after the gloomy musing that had

oppressed him with its horror, this return, even transitory as he felt

it to be, to some of life's amenities was a boundless relief to the

man's soul. In the old happy days society had been Maurice Grey's life;

it had intoxicated him like wine. Among his peers, when, soul meeting

soul, the sparkles of wit, the flashes of gay humor had been struck out

in the heat of social intercourse, he had reigned as a king: brilliant,

vivacious, boundlessly hospitable, his society had been courted by

the world, and he had met the world courteously, drawing out from its

pleasures the extreme of good that was in them.

But misery had changed Maurice woefully, and it was only when the wine

was in his blood, when its liquid fire was coursing through his veins,

that he could return in any degree to his former self--that he could

become once more the fascinating, brilliant, cordial man of society. On

this particular occasion he had determined to forget himself. It was

the flying back of the bow that had been bent nigh to breaking. Wine

could make him forget, and he poured out glass after glass, draining

them rapidly, as a man might do who was consumed with burning thirst.

Gradually his eyes began to shine and his words to flow more readily.

The haughty, self-contained man spoke freely of himself, and made a

friend and companion of the youth whom hazard had thrown into his way.

Arthur listened silently, with a tremulous joy. If Maurice would

confide in him his task was half done already. But love had taught

the young man prudence. He would hear before he would speak; he would

earnestly study the character of him he had come so far to seek

before he would determine how and when his object should be revealed.

Maurice, in this mood, was a marvellously agreeable companion. The

younger man, standing, as it were, on the threshold of life, listened,

entranced, to his descriptions of the great world, and Mr. Grey knew

the world better than most men. He had plunged into every kind of

society; he had feigned to be what he was not, that he might gain

access to that which would otherwise have been denied to him; he had

played upon the weaknesses of men and women, only to scathe them with

his biting ridicule. Then too, he had seen the world from a variety of

standpoints. During the first part of his life as a man he had taken

a part in the careers which the great world offers to its votaries;

afterward he had lived as a spectator: holding himself aloof from

the heartburnings, the jealousies, the ambitions, the intrigues, he

had been able more calmly to note and criticise. He had made undying

enemies, he had knit to himself faithful friends, he had been concerned

in strange histories; but all these things had been apart from himself.

As far as his own feelings were concerned, they were nothing, feathers

light as air, incidents _pour passer le temps_--nothing more. He was

in the midst of a brilliant series of anecdotes drawn from his life in

St. Petersburg, which had been fruitful in events, commenting lightly,

even with a kind of sarcasm--for these things could not move Maurice

Grey--on the enthusiasm he had excited in female breasts, and on the

confusion and dismay which his mysterious absence would create, when

the light began to wane, and the waiter came in to set a match to the

solitary oil-lamp which was the hotel dining-room's winter allowance of

light.

Maurice stopped and drew out his watch: "By Jove! young gentleman,

your society is so fascinating that I had altogether forgotten the

time. Do you know we have been nearly three hours at table? Now tell

me candidly, have you any plan for this evening? I need scarcely ask,"

he continued laughing; "amusements are not in this primitive corner;

if you went out to walk you would infallibly lose yourself, and as far

as I can make out there are in the hotel at present no fair ladies to

conquer; but so much the better for you. If I had my life to live over

again, I would flee woman as I would the plague." His brow contracted.

"I wonder why I talk about women at all. They are all alike false and

fickle."

Arthur looked up. He was but a boy, and in presence of this man of the

world, steeped to the lips in cynicism, it was difficult to express

the strong faith of his young soul. But Margaret's face in its calm

beauty came suddenly like a sweet vision before his eyes, and he

answered, trembling slightly, "I am younger than you, Mr. Grey, and

have had much less experience of the world; but I know that in this

thing you are wrong. There may be some women who are bad and faithless,

and all that kind of thing--there are ever so many more who are good

and pure. Perhaps you have been unfortunate in your intercourse with

women--perhaps--" his voice shook, and there was a sudden light in his

blue eyes--"perhaps you have made some terrible mistake."

Maurice was earnestly intent on the business of lighting his cigar from

the solitary oil-lamp, so that the look on Arthur's face escaped him,

but the earnestness, the apparent meaning in the boy's voice, impressed

him strangely. He turned round instantly, a slight appearance of

surprise in his manner; then as he caught sight of the flushed face and

gleaming eyes of his companion, he shook his head and his lips curled

into something like a sneer: "My dear fellow, you are young. Wait a

few years, and your vigorous championship will die down, withered by

circumstances."

He laughed bitterly, and Arthur turned away, a cold feeling at his

heart. He could not understand this cynicism. To him who knew this

man's history it seemed cruel and wanton beyond compare.

But Maurice was good-natured, and he liked the boy; his very freshness,

whose springs he had been trying to poison, pleased him. He took him

by the arm and looked into his averted face. "Have I frightened you

altogether?" he said kindly, "or will you listen to what I was about to

propose?" Arthur smiled his acquiescence, but it was with an effort; he

felt in no smiling mood.

"If you like, then, let us adjourn to my quarters. This great place

looks desolate with the one oil-lamp they generously allow us. There

I have a jar of excellent whisky, and Karl will soon find us all

appliances and means to boot for the concoction of whisky-punch, which,

if you had lived so long in these inhospitable regions as I have, you

would know to be a real luxury."

Arthur smiled: "I have not tasted a drop since I left England."

"Then you agree to my proposal? Come!"

The two men rose, Maurice linking his arm into that of his companion,

and leaving the long dining-room, threaded the ill-lit passages

which led to Maurice's apartment. The door of the room adjoining

his was ajar, and close to its threshold they paused involuntarily

for a second or two. What made them stop was nothing more than a

child's voice singing a child's hymn: an untaught, feeble voice,

thrilling with melody that made it tremble, there was yet in it that

which irresistibly drew and fascinated. Even in its weakness there

was something strange. To the imaginative it would have seemed like

a woman's heart trying to express itself through the feeble medium

of a child's voice. For there was soul and purpose in the quavering

treble that trilled against the air. With one accord the men stopped

to listen, holding their breath lest any of the sounds should escape

them. The voice paused a moment and they passed on, but before they

had reached their destination, Maurice, who had been looking back

toward the door whence the sound had proceeded, caught an instantaneous

glimpse of the owner of the childish voice. A little golden head and

fair face, on which light from within the room was shining, peered out

and looked up and down the passage. Only for a moment, but in that

moment the dark eyes of the golden-haired child and the dark eyes of

the world-weary man met. The child, frightened vaguely, retreated to

the inside of the room; the man staggered as if he had received a blow,

and sank down, to his companion's dismay, pale and speechless on the

nearest chair.

Maurice, it must be remembered, had been drinking pretty freely and in

such a condition as his men are scarcely so well able to master their

sudden emotions as they may be at another time.

The face of his child, the sound of the hymns her mother had sung at

her cradle, was to Maurice like the dim memory of a fair dream. He

did not for a moment recognize the child as his own; he was far from

imagining that the little Laura was near him, and the look in her eyes,

the expression of her features, the music of her voice, constituted a

haunting mystery that absolutely staggered him.

He met her eyes, and suddenly, as in a vision, his wife's pure face,

his child's cradle, all the details in their utmost minuteness of a

home that had once been happy, flashed over his mind. He did not know

how it had come. He scarcely even connected this sudden revulsion of

feeling with the sight of the child's face; he only knew that it was

there, a haunting memory of past happiness, and that his present pain

was almost too great to be borne. Covering his face with his hands,

the strong, cynical man sat for some minutes--minutes that seemed ages

to Arthur--plunged in bitter thought.

When he looked up, Arthur thought his face was more haggard than it had

been, and there was a certain excitement in his manner. He rang the

bell vigorously. "You will say I am a pretty host, Mr. Forrest," he

said lightly; "this is scarcely the entertainment I promised you."

Then, as Karl, who had been in the close neighborhood of the room

expecting some such summons, appeared in the doorway, "Try and get a

small kettle, two tumblers and a lemon."

In a very short time the required articles were in the room, and with

his favorite beverage before him the frown passed from Maurice's brow

and the gloomy abstraction from his manner.

He returned to the descriptions which his adjournment to his own room

had interrupted, and Arthur was by turns convulsed with merriment,

thrilling with sympathy, absorbed in interest; but Maurice's tales

left a sad impression. There ran through them all the spirit of the

preacher's bitter cry, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

"Yes, Solomon was a wise man," cried Maurice at the end of one of his

vivid bits of description. "'One man in a thousand have I found, but a

woman have I not found.'"

He flung down his glass with a laugh so bitter that it made his young

companion shudder.

"You look incredulous," continued Maurice; "when the gray begins to

sprinkle your hair you will come to the same conclusion. Look!" he

bowed his head and showed the deep furrows that lined his brow, the

white that shone out here and there from his dark hair. "I _could_ have

done great things in the world: a woman made me what I am--a wreck in

every sense of the word."

The whisky was rapidly mounting to the man's brain. Maurice's cheek was

flushed, his eyes glistened, but he recollected himself suddenly: "I am

a fool to prate about my own affairs, God knows it were best to hide

them; but, young man, you will understand it all some day." He laughed

harshly. "Lives there a man who has not suffered?"

Arthur listened to his ravings, and as he did so the memory of

Margaret's pure life, the echo of her noble words, shone out to him

like light through the darkness of her husband's desperate words.

At first he felt his heart swell with indignation, but he looked at

Maurice and the indignation changed to pity. "Yes," said the young man

to himself, "to believe such a woman false must be enough to kill a

man's faith in humanity."

He rose from his seat, and stood up before the world-sated man strong

in the pure faith of his young soul. His companion had said he would

understand this some day.

"Never!" said Arthur earnestly; "God grant that day may never come! I

know women on whose constancy and purity I would stake my life." He was

thinking of Margaret and Adèle.

Maurice looked at him curiously. For the second time he saw that in

Arthur's face which made him think there might possibly be a meaning

under his vigorous assertions.

"Life is not very much to stake," he said lightly--"more, no doubt, to

you than to me--but I confess I am curious." The cynical smile which

Arthur disliked was playing round his lips. "I have given you a chapter

out of my experience; return it by giving me one out of yours. I should

like to know more about those fair ladies--but perhaps they are _not_

fair; that would make all the difference--upon whose integrity you

would be ready to stake your life." Then his voice deepened and his

brow contracted: "God knows I would have done the same once upon a

time, but that is past, with other things."

There was silence between the two men for a few moments; then Maurice

looked across at the young face, on which a shade of weariness was

resting, with some compunction.

"Poor fellow!" he said gently, "I have done wrong. Faith is such a

beautiful thing, and it lasts so short a time, I should have left you

yours."

But Arthur looked up almost angrily: "You cannot surely think that _my_

faith is weakened by anything you have said."

Maurice smiled. "Youthful infatuation!" he muttered. "But let me hear

your story," he added aloud, "then perhaps I shall discover that unlike

mine your faith is founded on a rock."

Arthur looked at his companion searchingly. The last words had been

carelessly spoken, for the excitement brought on by wine and whisky was

wearing Maurice out; fatigue and exhaustion were fast taking possession

of him.

The young man read this, and he rose to his feet.

"I cannot tell you my story to-night," he said; "it is rather long,

considering the lateness of the hour."

"As you will, my dear fellow." Maurice's eyes were nearly closed.

Arthur went to his own room, and when Karl appeared a few minutes

later to take his master's last commands, he had great difficulty in

persuading him of the desirability of undressing and lying down between

the sheets like a Christian. He succeeded at last, and Maurice slept

such a deep unbroken sleep as he had not known for days; but he woke

with a racking headache and a general sense of dissatisfaction.

CHAPTER IX.

_A TORMENTED SPIRIT._

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;

The glory of the moon is dead,

Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed:

Thine own soul still is true to thee,

But changed to a foul fiend through misery.

In the mean time, L'Estrange, in his enforced retirement, had not

forgotten to supply himself with a means of knowing everything that

went on in the house. In most places he had an agent of some kind;

where he had not his intimate knowledge of human nature made it not

difficult for him to find out the creature he needed.

He had heard of the Austrian lady's flight. This small episode, which

in days gone by would scarcely have caused him a moment's thought, had

wrought upon his mind to such an extent that a serious relapse had been

the consequence.

It was pretty much as the landlord had conjectured. The proud lady who

had put down her pride so woefully, trampling her own and her husband's

honor in the dust, was one of the many to whom this man had vowed

undying attachment. She had tired him, and he had abandoned her; and

from the day of their parting years before in sunny Italy to this time,

when L'Estrange and she found themselves strangely under the same roof,

they had never met. The fair Austrian had been forgotten, relegated in

his mind to the record of past absurdities, but she had never forgotten

him.

Her life had been uneventful, lived out in a small German town, where

petty gossip is the sole excitement. She had married a man for whom

she cared little, simply because to marry had been rendered almost

necessary by the exigencies of her position. She had had no children.

What wonder, then, that her mind dwelt, ever more morbidly as the slow

years passed by, on this one warm, passionate episode in her otherwise

cold career?

In any case, so it was. She believed that the man who had loved her

then--the man whose tender speeches rung ever in her ears--loved her

still with the same passion, and that only necessity, biting poverty

or unacknowledged ties, had forced him to leave her so cruelly. After

all, it was only a very commonplace and every-day matter. To the woman

this summer-day's love-making had been that one great epoch from which

everything past and future should thenceforward be dated--the era of

an awakening into life of feelings that had before lain dormant and

unsuspected in her being. To the man it was nothing more than one sweet

out of many--a sweet which, when it should cloy upon his fastidious

taste, could be put away without a sigh to the memory of its sweetness.

With the idea in her mind of his continued faithfulness, the Austrian

lady had persuaded her husband to travel, only that she might search

for her lost lover through the length and breadth of Europe. But for

the greater part of two years they had been wanderers, and still

they had come upon no traces of him who had formerly seemed to be

ubiquitous. She had begun to mourn for him as the dead, when suddenly,

in this out-of-the-way corner, at this strange season, she saw his face

once more.

It was seldom that this proud lady betrayed the emotions of her soul.

It may be that her inner consciousness of want of rectitude of purpose

had been one great agent in the formation of those barriers of steel

with which she sought to surround herself. But this time there was no

help for her. The pent-up torrent had grown in force and intensity,

until no bounds could restrain its impetuous overflow. She was a woman,

and the haggardness of the face of the man she loved, the stooping

walk, the whitened hair, spoke so powerfully to her imagination that

she could scarcely be calm. Was it for her he had been sorrowing?

And yet in that flash of recognition at the dinner-table she had

read nothing but cold indifference. She knew him to be a consummate

actor: was this, then, put on? In her hungry desire to know the whole

truth she prepared an interview for that evening; but before it her

measures had been taken. There was a person in the house--one she had

met before--who, her woman's instinct told her, would willingly lay

down his life in her service. She would take him into her counsels;

and if the presentiment which lay cold at her heart as she looked upon

the well-known face that evening should turn out to be true--if she

could never be consoled with this man's love--she would flee from the

place, leave her husband, give up her position in society and hide her

humiliation in a convent.

And so it had all happened. What could L'Estrange say when she spoke to

him passionately of their former love, when she asked him plainly if

there remained any vestige of it in his heart?

He thought to do what was best and wisest; he thought to kill the

madness in her soul by letting her see at once that all which had

passed between them was as though it had never been. For Laura's

unconscious influence and those struggles through which he had passed

had not been altogether in vain; L'Estrange was a better man than he

had been in almost any period of his strange, wild career.

Deeply as he pitied the erring lady, he told her the truth--told her

that in his heart all such feelings as she would have striven to awaken

were for ever dead. It was painful to listen to her wild reproaches,

to hear that it was he who had made her life a desolation--painful,

with only the frail panels of a dividing door between them and the

pure child, to bow his head beneath the torrent of her well-deserved

anger. But it did not last long. In his dark eyes, made brilliant by

fever, in the stern lines written by trouble on his strong face, in

the determined tones of his voice, she read his resolve, and with

the coming on of darkness she fled over the snows to a hamlet in the

mountains, there to stay, under the roof of a poor herdsman, until the

first hue-and-cry should be over. Those who helped her flight were

faithful to her cause; their measures were well taken, and the drifting

of the snow obliterated all marks of footsteps. In time she reached the

distant convent, and the mystery of her disappearance was never solved.

But into L'Estrange's soul the iron entered. At the threshold of a

new life past evil--evil irrevocable--was meeting him, and before the

irrevocable the spirit of the strong man sank. That night he would not

touch the beguiling potion. He almost hailed the bitter physical and

mental pain which this abstaining entailed. It seemed like a kind of

expiation for the follies of his life. He could not close his eyes.

Throughout the long watches of the night he paced his room, body and

soul racked with inconceivable anguish. The pain was beginning to tell

on his strong frame.

When, early on the following morning, the little Laura went into her

friend's room, she found him stretched on the sofa pale and gaunt, like

one who has passed through a death-agony. She noticed the change at

once, and ran to his side: "Mon père is worse?"

"Yes, Laura," he replied; then he took her small face in his hands,

and holding it there for a few moments gazed on it earnestly: "Petite

chèrie, we must lose no time."

"In finding papa?" replied the little one seriously. "Mon père, I think

it will be soon. Last night I dreamt I saw him. Is he here, in this

house, I wonder?"

But her friend turned away: "Little one, you are too much shut up here,

and this makes you imaginative. It is a fine day. We must ask the good

girl who waits on you to take you for a run on the crisp snow."

The little girl clapped her hands. "Yes," she said, "it will be nice,

but mon père must have breakfast first."

She rang the bell and proceeded to arrange everything, to have the

stove lighted, to set out the breakfast-things in their little

sitting-room, and to superintend the preparation of chocolate _à la

Française_, for Laura had become quite a little woman in her ways:

then, as she saw that her friend was still suffering, she sat by his

side and sang to him in her sweet, childish way till his eyes closed.

The little child-heart, by the outcome of its tenderness, had brought

rest to the weary brain, the pain-racked soul.

It was nearly midday when, all radiant with color and life, Laura

returned from her ramble with the good-natured chambermaid. As she

entered the room one of the waiters left it. She found L'Estrange

dressed, and sitting in an easy-chair close by the stove, which showed

a little patch of glowing red.

He called her to his side, and lifting her on to his knees took off her

warm cloak and hood with all the tenderness of a woman, then stroking

back her fair hair he kissed her on the brow. "Laura, petite chèrie,"

he said in a low tone, as if speaking to himself rather than addressing

her, "the time has nearly come."

She put her arms round his neck, and resting her fair head on his

shoulder looked up into his strong, pale face. "What time, mon père?"

she asked in an awed whisper.

"When thou and I must part, fillette."

But the child lifted her head and shook her golden curls. The clear,

bracing air, the brilliant sunshine, the glittering snow had breathed a

spirit of gladness into her heart. She could not see the necessity for

such sad forebodings.

"Mon père," she answered eagerly, "you should not say things like that;

indeed, indeed, it's very wrong. You are going back with me to mamma,

who'll be ever so glad to see us; and my own papa is to be found: he

will thank you, mon père, for bringing me, and then we shall all be

_so_ happy together."

For this was always the end of the child's plans. She could not

imagine anything else. Her friend smiled, and then he sighed. "Soit

donc, petite sage," he replied enigmatically, and Laura was perfectly

satisfied.

Once or twice during that day the mysterious waiter interviewed

L'Estrange, and each time Laura was condemned to be mystified. They

spoke in a language which was a jargon to her; but she was accustomed

to mystery where this strange friend of hers was concerned.

The waiter was keeping him _au courant_ in the most trivial details

that concerned those inhabitants of the house in whom L'Estrange was

interested. He heard of the hue-and-cry that followed the Austrian

lady, and of her husband's despair; he heard of the several arrivals,

first Maurice Grey's, and then Arthur Forrest's; he knew that they

had dined together tête-à-tête and sat a long time over their wine,

evidently in deep converse; finally, when the two men were closeted in

Maurice's room, his confidential emissary was hovering about, ready to

report the slightest extraordinary demonstration. For L'Estrange did

not credit Arthur Forrest with so much diplomacy as he had hitherto

used in his treatment of the delicate mission with which Margaret had

entrusted him, and he knew that fire lay hidden under Maurice Grey's

cold reserve. The name of his wife blundered out by a stranger, who

would appear to know the sad details of her history and his own, might

very possibly cause an explosion of some kind; indeed, during that

long evening, whose tedious hours not even Laura's gentle ministries

could beguile, the Frenchman was on the alert. From moment to moment

he expected to hear the door of the neighboring room pushed violently

open, and to understand from his well-feed observer that the young

peace-maker had been thrust out from the presence of the proud

Englishman, who would feel himself doubly injured by this interference.

Laura did not tell her friend about the strange look which had met hers

that evening, though the child pondered it in her simple heart, trying

to find out what there was in it that had affected and fascinated her.

She would have asked L'Estrange if he thought that this man who had

looked at her with a kind of yearning in his sad face could be, indeed,

the father they were seeking; but one of his dark moods was on him, and

for the first time in all their intercourse she feared to break it.

Since their dinner in the afternoon he had not stirred from the one

position, except when the mysterious informant had come in to report

progress, and then he had looked at him from under his shaggy eyebrows

with a glance that would have killed deceit at its very birth. At other

times he remained silent, his hands clasped over an ancient staff, on

his strong face a look of pain--but pain crushed down by indomitable

will--his lips and nostrils faintly quivering as any sound came

from outside, his eyes fixed on the small patch of glowing red that

was waning and fading out as the day passed away behind the western

mountains.

But though Laura feared to break in upon his silence, she did not fear

him. She sat at his feet, curled up like a kitten wearied with play,

on a crimson cushion that belonged to the heavy-looking couch, trying

by the shimmering firelight to look over a book of very gaudy pictures

which the landlady, who pitied her apparent isolation, had lent her.

Evening deepened into the early night of the season. Candles were

brought by Laura's friend, the good-natured Swiss chambermaid, and

before the little girl had succeeded in tracing a history for half of

the wonderful pictures in her book, she grew so sleepy that her friend

was moved from his abstraction to ring the bell and give her into

the care of Gretchen, after a most loving good-night and many tender

recommendations to the waiting-maid to take every care of his little

treasure.

He did not leave his place by the fireside till his delicate ear told

him that there was nothing stirring in the house but himself.

CHAPTER X.

_PEACE, BE STILL._

But what time through the heart and through the brain

God hath transfixed us, we, so moved before,

Attain to a calm. Ay, shouldering weights of pain,

We anchor in deep waters, safe from shore,

And hear, submissive, o'er the stormy main

God's chartered judgments walk for evermore.

Was he to pass another night of racking pain, another night of restless

wandering? The little chest which held the only means by which

this question, to him so awful, could be answered in the negative,

lay at his feet; his very soul was yearning for rest. Outside, the

white mountains were sleeping, pure as angels undefiled, beneath the

moonbeams; from the next room, the door of which he had opened, came

the light sound of the child's regular breathing; in the house was

silence absolute.

And his rest might be as absolute as any--nay, not only so, it might be

filled with sensuous pleasure, such pleasure as his brilliant youth,

that had gone by for ever, had often afforded him; it might be clothed

with images of beauty and delight. But, on the other hand, had he not

chosen suffering--suffering instead of delight--to be a soul-purifier,

to atone, if atonement might be, for some of the self-seeking of his

ruined life?

And he could delay no longer; an act of expiation was to be wrought

which would demand all the force of his soul to carry to a successful

issue; the father of the child he loved was at hand; with all the

strong energies of his soul awake he must meet him, and make him own

that his enemy's words were the words of truth.

Then--L'Estrange acknowledged it to himself with a sigh--the suffering

whose ravages he dreaded did not overcloud his intellect, did not

bewilder his brain, as its antidote had done; rather, like the purging

fire, it seemed to draw out and develop the greatness of the soul that

was in him.

The strong man shivered as he turned from his only hope, and began

once again in the unhealthy activity of his heart and brain to

think and reason, to live an inner life that was gradually, by its

overpowering force, drawing away the life from his body.

He bowed his face in his hands. Where was all this to end? he asked

himself. Was he to go down to the grave with the burden of his own

ruined life and of the lives he had ruined hanging like a millstone

about his neck, dragging him down to the nether hell, without a hope

save in the last vague dream of the infidel--an utter death, an eternal

sleep?--and this, in his very darkest moments, L'Estrange had never

brought himself to believe.

So intense was his mental life during the first part of that night that

his physical sufferings were almost forgotten, but at last, as the

slow hours went by, pain came, twinge after twinge, that would not be

denied, and panting and exhausted, his great strength failing in the

struggle, the man threw himself down upon his bed, moaning faintly.

A wild impatience followed. The spasms he experienced were of that

gnawing, craving kind more difficult, perhaps, than any other to be

borne.

Not the sharp stinging which rends the frame, and then, spent by very

force, allows it to rest; but the dull, ceaseless throbbing that

nothing can stay, that gives no moment of respite to the overwrought

nerves. L'Estrange at the moment felt as if it would madden him. His

blood was coursing like liquid fire through his veins; his hands and

feet were burning; drops of agony stood on his brow. He crossed his

room suddenly, and throwing open the window leaned out into the night;

but first--for through everything this strange man did ran the tender

thoughtfulness that could only have been prompted by a fine soul--he

shut noiselessly the door of communication between his room and Laura's

lest the chill night-air should touch his darling. He looked out upon

a strange scene--the white earth, in shadow save where the moon had

touched it with an unearthly radiance; the mountains looking verily

like giants in the uncertain light, yet glistening and transparent

where the night-born light was resting; cloud-shadows, whose depth

seemed infinite as the outer darkness of despair, blotting out here

and there the transparent whiteness; behind one of the distant peaks

a pale line, faint and tremulous, that told of coming dawn; over all a

weird unreality.

The face that looked out into the dim night was as strange as the

scene could be, though it lacked the utter stillness of the shrouded,

moonlit earth. The eyes were wild and wandering, with an impatient,

hungry look in them, as though they were searching, seeking, striving

to draw from the visible the secrets of that which no eye beholds; the

mouth quivered with the storms of feeling; the brow was contracted

by a mortal agony, and from time to time the pale lips moved as if

in pitiful appeal to some hidden power. But after a few moments of

earnest gazing some of all this passed by. It would almost have seemed

as though the influence of Nature's eternal calm had been breathed in

upon his soul through the medium of sense, or rather perhaps it was a

thought from within that swept over the tumult of the man's brain, so

that suddenly his agony was stayed.

Was it so very strange? Long ago, in the far ages, a Man to whom

conflict and storm were known in all their fulness stood up on a dark

night and said to the angry billows and raging winds, "Peace, be

still." Was it altogether for the sake of that terror-stricken crew,

or was it not also a sublime parable? For, evermore, it is the same.

The Man, present in the midst of the soul's tumult, bids in His own

time--the best time for the stricken--that the storms which overwhelm

it shall sink to rest.

Thus it was with L'Estrange. In the silence and solitude he was finding

the great Father, who, though we know it not, is never very far from

any one of us. "God is here" was the thought that swept over him

through the stillness of Nature, through the profound silence of the

night. He knelt before the window and stretched out his hands to the

midnight heavens. Who shall say what dreams, what possibilities, passed

in that moment through his soul? For with his errors and imperfections,

his falseness and his folly, this man was one of the mighty few, a son

of divine genius. Will they be judged by another code, I sometimes

wonder, than the common herd to whom their gigantic struggles, their

vast temptations, their agonies, their failures, must for ever be a

life unknown, a sealed-up book?--such a man as Shelley, peering in

his spirit's misery through the ages, then when nothing but the aching

void, the yawning nothing, answered his wild search, giving himself up

to the proclamation of a dark infidelity; or Byron, dying for a dream;

or Keats, breathing out his young life with the cry of a disappointed

soul? Will the misguided, distorted greatness find in the Hereafter a

better sphere? Have they, these mighty dead, even with the last breath

of a life tortured with earth's blackness, received as by inspiration

the fair beauty of undying truth into their souls? Who shall say? In

the presence of mysteries like these we can only bow our heads and pray

that so it may be.

To L'Estrange a moment of such inspiration had come. He had prayed

before. Often during these last days, when gradually the fetters of

self-love had been falling off from his soul, he had cried out in the

darkness to the Father of spirits. But _then_ He had been a grand

abstraction; _now_, for the first time, He was near and real.

First happiness, then vengeance, then atoning suffering and

self-abnegation, had been looked for as the life of his spirit's life.

In that hour of awful sweetness they all fell off from him. God looked

down into the man's heart; God was what, all unconsciously to itself,

that heart had been seeking, and there was a great calm.

Sweetly the daughter of his affections had sung to him that evening

about the Crucified; to the man of the world her hymn had been an idle

tale; now all was changed. In the great stillness of God's calm upon

his heart he was able to listen more truly.

Bowing his head, the stricken man wept as the Gospel-story in its

simple beauty surged in upon his heart. He had often reasoned about it.

Calmly and coolly he had torn to shreds the arguments which men weaker

but better than himself had brought to bear upon its truth. In this

transcendent moment reasoning was not--it could not be.

True, in the craving need of his own heart, in the sudden, awful

revelation of his spirit's darkness, _there_ he read its truth, and

like a little child he wept before its unspeakable beauty and pathos.

L'Estrange could never have told how long the time was that he passed

on his knees before the open window looking out upon the snow. It was

like a dream, but when he rose the white dawn was beginning to rise

over the mountains.

The spasms had left him; he scarcely dreaded them now, for the mental

struggles that had rent his very being had merged into a great calm.

But as he shut the window and tried to cross the room his knees

trembled and he staggered strangely.

Weakness as of a little child seemed to have come upon him, and

weariness too--a blessed weariness. He threw himself down upon the bed,

and for the time forgot all his woes in sleep.

CHAPTER XI.

_HAUNTING MEMORIES._

I am digging my warm heart

Till I find its coldest part;

I am digging wide and low,

Further than a spade can go,

Till that, when the pit is deep

And large enough, I there may heap

All my present pain and past.

It was late on the following morning when L'Estrange awoke. He felt

strangely refreshed, and wondered for the first few moments what was

this change which had come upon him. Then the remembrance of that

night's conflict and conquest returned. The calm was still in his

heart, drowning in its depths all earthly yearnings.

But more urgently than before he felt the necessity for action. He rang

the bell, and his special attendant answered it. From him he learnt

that the child, fearful of disturbing him, had taken her morning run

with Gretchen while he slept, and that the two Englishmen had started

from the hotel with alpenstocks and knapsacks, stating that they would

probably not return that evening. From scraps of their conversation the

man had gathered that the elder of the two was desirous of showing

the younger his home among the mountains. It was therefore more than

probable that the chalet usually inhabited by Mr. Grey was their

destination.

Mr. Grey's servant, somewhat to his own displeasure, had been left

behind at the hotel.

To all this intelligence L'Estrange listened silently. He was

surprised, for he had not imagined Maurice Grey would have taken so

kindly to the young man who was interesting himself in his affairs;

he was disappointed, for on this very day he had determined to meet

Maurice, and now another necessary delay must intervene. But he did not

express any of his feelings to his attendant. He was accustomed to make

use of men, but to all whom he made thus useful himself, his motives

and his emotions were a sealed book.

He rose, dressed with the help of the complaisant waiter, and went into

the hotel-garden to wait for the return of his darling, and to try, by

diligent exercise and exposure to the keen bracing air, to regain some

of his old strength.

In the mean time, Maurice Grey and Arthur Forrest were finding their

way over the mountains to the chalet, which Arthur was curious to see.

They were drawn together by a kind of mutual attraction that neither of

them could explain to himself. Arthur was occasionally very indignant

with Maurice's cynicism; he was almost afraid of his superior knowledge

of the world; he shrank painfully from his ready sneer, and while he

was with him lived in a constant state of agitation in his fear of

letting out anything before the time, and thus widening the breach

between husband and wife; yet he liked Maurice Grey, he admired his

fine proportions, endowed him with all kinds of knowledge and wisdom,

and was impatient of the hours that divided them. Maurice, on the other

hand, was inclined to despise this boy's rawness and simplicity, and to

despise himself for in any sense making a confidant of him, and yet he

liked him; he enjoyed his society; the bright expressive eyes of the

young man had the power of drawing him out, of making him talk about

himself and the troubles of his life.

Perhaps the secret of this strange attraction on his side might have

been found in the young Arthur's sympathy and frank admiration, for

few men are above the pardonable weakness of liking to be admired and

sought out.

The paths that led to Maurice's dwelling-place were tolerably steep,

and in some places the snow was soft, in others the frost made the

paths slippery; therefore during their walk Maurice and Arthur were

too much engrossed with the one necessity of keeping their footing to

find much breath for conversation. But they were both good walkers

and strong, stalwart men; therefore, although they had started

comparatively late in the morning, the sun had not dropped behind the

mountains that shut in the valley before they were seated in Maurice's

little room, a jug of whisky punch between them, and on the table the

white bread and the meat with which Maurice had taken care to provide

himself before leaving the hotel that morning.

They found everything in first-rate order. On the previous day Marie

and her little grandchild had arrived. The stove had been kept alight

all night, according to Karl's strict orders, lest the books and

manuscripts should suffer from the damp, and the old woman had just

finished a general cleaning up when her master and his visitor arrived.

The dinner was certainly plain, but the two Englishmen did justice to

it--Arthur perhaps appreciating it all the more for the absence of any

suspicious-looking _entrées_.

"What do you think?" said Maurice when they both paused at last from

sheer exhaustion. "This is a very rough place; can you manage to put up

with it for a night or two? If so, I will undertake to show you some of

the finest points of view in the Alps, seeing which at this season, you

know, will render you for all the future a respectable traveller."

Arthur laughed: "Put up with it! I should just think so. I never saw

anything so delightfully primitive. I quite envy you your little

snuggery."

A sad smile played round Maurice's lips, it softened his face

marvellously: "I am scarcely a person to envy, and yet this had been my

dream for many a long day. I thought it would make me happy."

There was a bitter ring, a kind of irony of self, in the last words. He

looked out meditatively over the snow. "Men are strangely constituted,"

he continued sadly; "the dream and hope of to-day are the weariness

and disgust of to-morrow." He turned to his young companion: "People

will always insist upon buying their own experience at any cost, or

else I should prove to you, as a lesson that I have painfully gained,

how foolish it is to set one's heart too much on anything under the

sun. 'Light come, light go;' if we hold to our possessions lightly, the

loss of them grieves us little. I see in your eyes that my philosophy

is repugnant."

For Arthur read all Maurice's cynicism in the light of his history. His

face flushed. "Depth of feeling is never wasted," he said earnestly; "I

ought to know that."

Maurice had cleared away the remnants of their simple meal. They were

sitting, one on each side of the small stove, discussing some famous

cigars, a stock of which Arthur always had on hand.

His remark made Maurice turn round to him suddenly: "That's rather

a deep doctrine for one of your age; but it reminds me you were to

tell me something to prove that Solomon, who professed, by the bye,

to understand human nature, was altogether wrong in that impolite

statement of his about women. Stop, let me see! I drank rather too much

last night; still, I don't think I am wrong."

But Arthur turned away. His heart and courage had fallen suddenly.

It had been easy enough to think and plan, to imagine how with

heart-eloquence he would describe the woman he loved--how he could

tell of her quiet, self-denying life, of her constancy, of her undying

memory of the past--how, when his story had been triumphantly told, he

would give her name, and so dispel for ever the mist of falsehood which

had risen in dark clouds about her husband's idea of her. The moment

for all this had come, and he found that the heart-thrilling words

would not answer to his summons, that his feelings were too intense,

that the fear of failure paralyzed him.

"Not now, not here," he said to himself, and then he rose and looked

out of the window.

The sun was setting over the mountains, and on their summits a dark

cloud was resting, but above it and beyond in a vast circle of rays the

golden glory shone. It irradiated the pure snows till they blushed into

beauty, it lit up the heavens, it glistened from the torrents. The

whole landscape was transfigured--changed from the still fixity of the

snow-bound North into the voluptuous warmth of an Oriental dream; the

dark fir trees showed crimson stems; the reaches of billowy snow looked

warm and inviting under the golden radiance; the distant peaks glowed

and shone till to the excited fancy of the gazer they might have seemed

hewn out of fire. Arthur looked, and the narrow roof seemed to press

him down, the four walls of his friend's chalet were a prison.

"I cannot tell it here," he said to himself; "out there under the

witness of the sky, in the presence of the pure snow-peaks, it may

perhaps be easier."

Maurice was looking at him curiously. "I fear I have been showing

impertinent curiosity," he said lightly, "but you drew it on yourself.

Why did you interest me so strangely?"

"I spoke impulsively," replied Arthur in the same light manner, "and,

I think, rather underrated the difficulties of what I was attempting.

For this once you must excuse me. I have a certain disinclination, for

which I really am at a loss to account, to telling my story (a very

simple one, after all) in this place. If you can preserve your interest

till to-morrow, I will promise not to disappoint you. Take me to the

point you mentioned just now, and there I will tell you as well as I

can."

As he spoke the last words the young man's voice deepened, and

there was a certain solemnity in his manner which aroused Maurice's

curiosity; but he said nothing more on the subject, and the two men

smoked on in silence till the golden glory had passed from the earth,

and the snow lay pale once more under the gray mystery of a northern

night. Then Maurice looked at his young companion across the interval

of shadow, and saw, by the light which gleamed fitfully from the open

stove, that there was a deep thoughtfulness on his brow.

Perhaps it was this that drew him on to speak as he did. "You have only

begun life," he said, "I have lived out mine, at least all the good

that is in it, and yet, I scarcely know how it is, I have been drawn

on to speak to you as I seldom speak to either men or women. I don't

say I have no friends. I have made many, and good ones too, in the

course of my wanderings, and I have appreciated their friendship, but

to the best of them all my life has been a sealed-up book." He paused

a little, puffing away silently, and Arthur did not speak, only the

earnestness on his face deepened as he literally trembled with hope.

For Arthur's heart was as true as steel. He had thrown himself with a

self-denying ardor that nothing could curb into Margaret's cause. She

was still the queen of his heart, but since those first days, when her

regal beauty and apparent friendlessness had driven him nearly mad

with longing and desire, his queen had risen to a far loftier place in

his thoughts and dreams. There was something very beautiful and rare

in this unselfish devotion. Margaret _for himself_, even if he had

found that her husband was dead, Arthur never imagined for a moment;

in so far he had gained full victory over his own heart. Margaret

happy, Margaret raised to her true position, restored to her undoubted

rights, and by _his_ instrumentality,--this was the proud desire of his

soul. Therefore it was that he hung upon Maurice's words that evening,

rejoicing with trembling that so far he had been successful.

Young and inexperienced as he was, he saw the world-weary man trusted

him. This was something gained, a step in the right direction.

Arthur scanned his companion's face curiously during the silence that

followed his last words. It was a mobile face, though for years it had

been trained to express nothing but cynic indifference to life and its

concerns. On this special evening Maurice had given way, and emotions

for which few of his friends would have given him credit were writing

their impress on his brow.

He got up suddenly, and crossing to the window shut out the pale snow.

"It is desolate," he said in a low tone; "it makes one shiver." Then he

lighted a small reading-lamp, that cast a warm yellow light over the

room, and sat down again. "I saw a picture once," he continued in the

same low voice, "and the snow out there makes me think of it. It was an

English scene, a bit out of a village, the church lit up from inside,

a house near it, the pleasant firelight shining from within crimson

curtains; outside, snow and desolation. There was a solitary figure

amongst it all--a woman with thin tattered clothes and haggard face in

which could be seen the remnants of beauty. She was shivering alone in

the cold and darkness, looking piteously in at the light. Some moral

was tacked on to it, for, if I remember rightly, I came across this

long ago in a book or magazine. The whole runs strangely in my mind

to-night."

"And what was the moral?" asked Arthur.

"An unloved life or some such sentimental rubbish."

He tried to laugh off the impression, but Arthur, who was deeply

interested, said nothing to change the subject, and almost in spite of

himself, as it were, Maurice returned to it.

"Strange how this haunts me!" he muttered. "'An unloved life!'--poets'

trash. Women can always console themselves, and the misery of the fair

is given rather to reclining on velvet and down than shivering out in

the snow."

He laughed aloud, and raising his glass drained it at a draught; but

there came a sudden change over his face, his brows knit, his hands

worked convulsively. "If I had been mistaken--" he murmured, and

his head sank upon his breast. Then, as the futility of his vague

thoughts flashed over him, he raised it again. "There is no peace but

in forgetfulness," he cried, and pouring out a glass of raw spirit he

tossed it down his throat.

There followed a few moments of silence which Arthur feared to break,

then Maurice looked across at him with a sad smile. "Young man," he

said, "it is a good thing to be happy. Misery and remorse change a

man woefully. Ah, it is wonderful," he continued, and there was a

plaintive ring in his voice--"wonderful to think how entirely they can

change us--how we become morose, dark, fretful--how we look for the

old landmarks and find them gone, vanished like a dream--how we become

absolutely others than ourselves!"

Arthur's voice was husky as he questioned: "Remorse! what have you to

do with that?"

"I once thought nothing. Great God!"--he lifted his gleaming eyes; in

the agony of the moment he seemed to have forgotten his companion--"we

cannot all have patience like to Thine; and I _thought_ I acted for

the best. I took away my obnoxious presence, I left her to her chosen

pleasures, I fled from my own disgrace."

His head sank. Emotion, fatigue, strong drink had combined to unnerve

him utterly. "The face in the picture is hers," he continued in a low,

broken voice; "last night I saw her so--pale, wasted by misery, an

outcast--and I opened my arms to take her to a shelter, but she fled

from me with horror."

Arthur was listening with an interest so deep and earnest that for

a moment he forgot his self-imposed caution. He started forward

impulsively, and gazing into the bloodshot eyes of the man who faced

him, "It was a lying dream," he cried. "She--"

But he broke off suddenly, for Maurice looked at him in a strange,

questioning manner. He could have bitten off his tongue for its

betrayal. "I mean--I mean--" he explained falteringly, "it was a

strange dream."

His explanation could not mend matters; the mischief was done. Maurice

was sufficiently himself to be able to detect a certain reality in

those first hasty words. He looked at Arthur with suspicion. Could it

be possible that the young man knew something of his history? The bare

idea made him hastily resume his cloak of proud reserve.

He drew himself up, composed his face, and threw out his hands with a

yawn: "I really should crave your indulgence. Something has come over

me to-night. I feel as if I had been talking a considerable amount

of nonsense." He shook his fist at the whisky-bottle. "There's the

traitor. Then," bending his head courteously, "it is long since I

have enjoyed anything so pleasant as an evening gossip with a friend.

Really, the worst of this kind of life is the difficulty of passing

one's evening. Come! a recipe for killing the time: what do you advise?"

"I know no means but endurance," replied Arthur, trying to speak

lightly, though his heart was full, for the earnestness had left

Maurice's face, the smile of the cynic was playing round his lips.

Indignant and disappointed, Arthur turned away, in case his less

manageable features should betray him. The sphere of his experience was

narrow, and therefore it was that in this relapse to his indifferent

mood he failed to sympathize with Maurice.

It is only when the world has given thrust upon thrust to the heart,

it is only when the dreary cry, "Vanity of vanities!" has written

itself in all its desolation on the spirit, that these rapid changes

from grave to gay, from deep earnestness to bitter cynicism, can be

understood; for they are the product of the world's harsh lessons,

the carrying out into practice of a creed taught by repeated

disappointments. They speak of the soul's fear of revealing itself.

Its best and its highest it would cover over with the frost-work of

frivolity and cynicism, lest the pearls of its spiritual being should

be trampled under the feet of swine.

Too often, unhappily, the result is that the pearls are buried

irrecoverably and for ever, that the soul gains the indifference it

assumes--an undying heritage of bitterness.

Ah! it is sad, infinitely sad, to think of a soul torn, ruined, in its

struggles with wayward fate--too sad, if there were no beyond. But if

man be weak, God is merciful. It may be that for the disappointed there

is a haven, after all, in the great Hereafter to which all humanity is

hastening.

CHAPTER XII.

_TOLD AMONG THE SNOWS._

Oh, she was fair: her nature once all spring

And deadly beauty, like a maiden sword--

Startlingly beautiful. I see her now!

That was the end of anything like confidential intercourse between

Maurice Grey and the young Arthur, so far as the evening passed in the

chalet was concerned. They were both tired, and Maurice had once more

allowed himself to take rather more strong drink than was good for him.

It was a new fault. Hitherto, in all his dark moods, through his dreary

solitude, and, to him, almost as dreary times of gayety, he had always

respected himself so far as to refrain from drowning his sorrows in

so contemptible a way. Now, it seemed as though a crisis in his fate

had come, as though he were destined to be swept away utterly in the

numbing torrent of misery and loneliness.

Arthur had to assist him to bed that evening, for he was almost

incapable of doing anything for himself. The young man recovered very

soon from the indignant displeasure into which Maurice's cynicism had

thrown him. He saw the weary man, overcome as much perhaps by emotion

and fatigue as by what he had taken, sink into a deep sleep, and a dim

idea of the truth dawned in upon his mind. It softened him so much

that he could scarcely keep from tears as he looked on the face of his

new friend, so fine in all its outlines, yet so evidently wasted by

care. And this was the long-sought, the earnestly-desired--Margaret's

husband, the arbiter of her destinies, the object of her changeless

love.

Arthur felt a new love stirring in his heart; he treated his companion

with a tender reverence.

He had some difficulty and met a few harsh words before he could

rouse Maurice so far as to half lead, half drag him, into his small

bedroom. When at last his efforts had been successful, when he saw

him resting in the death-like immobility of sleep upon the pillow, he

half trembled about the effect upon Maurice's morning mood of this

little night-episode. Would he be humiliated at the remembrance of the

weakness into which he had been betrayed, and shut up his heart still

He turned from the window and cast a rapid, hungry glance round the