But this time they had all been too weak. The hatred had been nourished in her heart till it had grown into a master-passion; fear of her treachery being discovered, indignation and disgust at the new happiness that seemed to be opening out before the object of her hatred, had added their fearful impulse to her heated soul, and then came the storm, the darkness, the opportunity.
In the cool clear morning Jane shuddered. If she had carried out her dark purpose, what would she have been that morning? In all probability a hunted criminal. She was thankful for her escape, but not yet truly penitent for the sin. The soul from which one baffled demon has been banished is ready for the seven if it be not occupied and filled with some better guest.
Jane obeyed Margaret's call after a few moments' delay. She knocked at the bedroom door, opened it and stood on the threshold, a quiet, respectable-looking person, but there was a sullen frown on her brow. "Did you please to want anything, ma'am?" she asked. Her broom was in her hand—a hint, as it were, that she was in no mood to be delayed.
"Only to speak to you, Jane," said Margaret. "Come here; Mrs. Foster seems to be fast asleep and I have shut the door, or if you like I can speak to you in the next room, but we may not have so good an opportunity again."
Jane looked down: "What might you wish to say to me, ma'am?"
There was a forced unconcern in her manner that was not particularly encouraging, but Margaret would not despair. She held out her hand with a smile: "I fear you distrust me, Jane. Why," she continued in a tone of such deep sadness that the landlady's heart, in spite of herself, was touched—"why will you persist in being my enemy? God is my witness that I would do you good."
"You ain't got nothing to do with me," said Jane, in a stifled voice. "If I choose to go to the bad, what's that to you or anybody else? I won't try to hurt you again, if that's what you want to know, and only that I was mad I wouldn't have done it last night."
"I know you were mad—I felt it then; and then I resolved that I would save you from yourself. You are mistaken, my poor woman; it is much, very much, to me, whether, as you express it, you go to the bad. Jane, I believe it has been given to me to save you, and, God helping me, I will do it."
She spoke with a quiet determination that had marvellous power. Her dream was with her once more. She seemed to see the wild, unholy tumult; she seemed to be holding, clinging to the wretched life that death in death was swallowing up.
And Jane watched her with a curious emotion, very strange and utterly incomprehensible to herself.
The hard, selfish side of life had chiefly presented itself to the landlady, both as regarded her own nature and the nature of those with whom she had come into contact. This divine self-forgetfulness, this pure love of the erring even because of its miserable errors, was something so new as to be a kind of revelation to her soul. A good she had conceived impossible seemed to be opening itself out as not only possible, but real. And the revelation had a renovating power. There came over her a remembrance of the time when she had been "joyful and free from blame."
It brought a sudden softness to her heart. But she would not give way to it. She seized her broom and half turned, so as to hide her face from Margaret's gaze. "What's the use of talking?" she said in a stifled voice; "talking won't make me no better. I hated you; why can't you hate me and be done with it?"
"Because I do not hate you, Jane; because, on the contrary, my soul is filled with earnest longing for your good. It came to me here in last night's darkness as I thought of your words that perhaps I had given some cause for these feelings of yours. I have wrapped myself up in my own sorrows and have neglected to enter with a woman's sympathy into your troubles and joys. For—I know it—we must not and cannot live to ourselves. Selfishness brings its own punishment."
Jane looked down: "I have no troubles in particular, not to interest anybody but—"
It had come over her in an irresistible flood, the remembrance of her one happy time. Ah! it is a great fact, mysterious but true—misery and hopeless wretchedness make half the criminals that fill our jails, that prowl undetected about our streets. To the happy goodness is easy.
Jane broke down suddenly, and throwing herself on her knees buried her face in the bed-clothes: "If he had been true to me I'd have been another woman. Oh! God was cruel. I was getting soft when he was coming and going with his pleasant ways: it was too short—" Her voice was choked with sobs. "I've been bad—bad from that day. I'm getting worse, and God has left me. What'll I do? what'll I do?"
Margaret's eyes filled with tears. She stooped down and drawing one of the woman's reluctant hands from the hidden face, held it in her own.
"I thought so," she said gently, as if speaking to herself: "there is always a background." Then to the weeping woman: "Think of it—you and I, my poor Jane, living here together, and shutting up our troubles in our own hearts. No wonder we grew hard and selfish. But it is over, is it not? You will help me to bear, and I will teach you to love. This is what you want to take you out of yourself. Look up, Jane; be of good courage."
But she only wept the more bitterly. "I can't," she said; "my heart is like stone."
Margaret touched the heated face with cool, soft fingers.
"What do these tears mean?" she said gently. "They come from a heart that is becoming soft, if it is not soft already. Yes, I feel it too. We ought to be drawn out of ourselves. It is necessary to our happiness, to the healthy life of our souls. We grow morbid here in our solitude, with our thoughts toward inward. Since my darling little one was taken from me I too have been getting hard, Jane, or perhaps you and I might have understood each other better. But I thank God there is still time before us. You must let me into the secrets of your life. I will tell you what my sufferings have been, that there may be a true sympathy between us; then we must look out from our own sorrows to the great world of suffering around us, and whether the future bring happiness or grief, it need not be altogether bereft of the treasures of love and sympathy."
Jane listened, and her tears ceased. The words of Margaret were like oil on the troubled waters. They brought hope, they suggested possible comfort in a future that but a few moments before had been black with the utter blackness of despair.
For humanity is not ever entirely bad. I think no living, breathing creature can be said to be hopelessly depraved. Sin, it is said, brings its own punishment, but the heaviest punishment sin can bring is the agonizing suffering it inflicts upon the soul. To be without hope of that beautiful attribute we call goodness would be misery unimaginable.
Yet this was what Jane had been feeling that morning, and Margaret's words were like rays of light pointing to a possible redemption. "If I'd aught in the whole world to care about," she said, "I'd try and be better, but—"
And then she stopped suddenly, for Jane was eminently practical, and an idea had flashed in upon her brain.
"Have you no friends?" asked Margaret.
"I was thinking of the child," she said.
"What child?"
"He married my young sister," she answered, speaking slowly and with apparent difficulty, "and I hated him and her too; but afterward I was glad, for he treated her bad. She died of a broken heart, they say. I never went nigh her, though she sent to beg me hard. That's three years agone next Whitsuntide. They had three or four children; all died but one, a boy two years old when sister died. The father, he went off, no one knows where, and Willie—that's his name, they say—was put in the workhouse. I seen him once"—her voice grew broken again—"a fine little chap, like his father, and for a bit I felt inclined to bring him home, but that look of his made me hard and I came away."
Margaret smiled a brooding, motherly smile: "God is good to you, Jane. He has not left you, as you said. He has given you little Willie. You must find him, and I think he will soon teach you to love."
Jane had almost forgotten, in the new sweetness of speaking about her own feelings, to whom she had been addressing herself. Margaret's words reminded her, and she was struck with a sudden sense of wonder, almost of awe.
"Why do you care for me?" she said in a low tone. "I've insulted you, I've acted wrong by you, I've tried to do you a mischief, and you listen to me, you take an interest that nobody ever did before, and you're not afraid of me, either," she continued confusedly. "There's them, I believe, as won't allow a hair of your head to fall. There must be a reason for it."
"Only the reason that I told you, Jane. I want to save you from yourself; but Mrs. Foster is moving, and I don't wish our conversation to be overheard. I must hear more about little Willie at another time." She held out her hand: "We are friends, are we not?"
Jane took it in an awkward, bewildered kind of way. Then, as she looked into her mistress's face and read nothing but forgiveness there, her feelings became quite too much for her. Throwing her apron over her head, she rushed out of the room crying like a little child. For the spirit of a little child had come into the hard heart.
Her night had been dark as pitch, but already the fair dawning had gleamed out of the east.
CHAPTER XIX.
GOOD-NIGHT AND GOOD-BYE.
Behold in yon skies
This wild night is passing away while I speak.
Lo! above us the day-spring beginning to break!
Something wakens within me, and warms to the beam.
Is it hope that awakens?
"My bairn was unco' fashed aboot naething," said Nurse Martha to herself as she trotted about the cottage that day, trying to be very busy, but finding the process hard.
The fact was this: Martha was considerably perplexed. She had been sent to Middlethorpe because her young master was anxious about this lady, in whom he had taken so deep an interest; he had given the old woman as a reason for his anxiety that he had a strong suspicion about her landlady—the only other person in the house—believing her to be not only an untrustworthy person, but specially antagonistic to Mrs. Grey.
Martha Foster had been requested to watch this person. She had watched, and what had she found out? Only an almost superfluous devotion on Jane Rodgers's part.
Through the whole of that day Mrs. Grey had been suffering from a kind of nervous depression. The thoughtful kindness of her attendant, which seemed to be offered as a tribute of affection, could not possibly be exceeded. Nothing was left for Martha to do. The landlady was even inclined to resent her interference in any personal attendance on Mrs Grey.
Her cold, quiet way of saying that, having known Mrs. Grey some time, it was only natural she should understand her ways better than a stranger, quite surprised the old woman.
"Gang yer ain gait, my gude woman," she had answered. "I'm blithe to hear ye ken your wark and love yer bonny leddy sae weel."
And then the landlady had looked at her with a kind of suspicion. Turning away, she had said in a low, constrained voice, "I should love her if any one should."
What, perhaps, appeared still more mysterious to Nurse Martha was that Mrs. Grey seemed thoroughly to understand, and even to return, the feelings her landlady cherished for her.
When she was at her worst—and in the early part of the day the pain in her head had been maddening—she could look up with a smile that was almost one of pleasure at the anxious, hard-featured face leaning over her, and receive with a sweet gratitude services which to the old woman, experienced in nursing, seemed unnecessary and obtrusive.
The landlady and her lodger appeared, in fact, to understand each other so perfectly that in the evening Mrs. Foster began to think herself de trop. Not that Mrs. Grey was anything but most kind and hospitable; she was even too grateful for her obedience to her young gentleman's wishes; but there was nothing for her to do. Jane kept her house in excellent order, and certainly, as far as Mrs. Grey's personal requirements went, it did not seem as if she could have a more devoted attendant.
Mrs. Foster made up her mind to write to her young master and point out to him that her further presence would be unnecessary. But the next morning brought a change. There were two letters—one for Margaret and one for the old woman. Adèle and Arthur had both written to announce the pleasing fact of their arrival.
Margaret was in bed when her letters came, but the sight of them revived her. Her new champion was more active than the lawyer; he had news, Adèle said, and he would bring it. For although the strange events of the last few days had had the effect of dividing Margaret's thoughts in a measure, yet this was still her one haunting desire—to see Maurice once more, to let him at least hear of her, to have him know that she was faithful to him in heart and conscience. Even the recovery of her child was second to that.
"They will be here this evening," she said to old Martha, her face radiant with hope. "I wish the evening were here."
And the old woman wondered, thinking within herself that this eagerness was rather suspicious.
But further remarks were stopped by a knock at the door. The landlady was there holding a fair-haired child by the hand. "Excuse me, ma'am," she said in that constrained tone which was always a puzzle to Martha; "but I thought you might perhaps like to see my nephew."
A light which was very like most unfeigned joy spread itself over Margaret's face. "Bring him to me, Jane," she said softly. "There, put him up on the bed; he won't be frightened." For the child was looking round bewildered at the strangeness of the scene.
"He's not properly dressed," said the woman falteringly.
Willie still wore the coarse workhouse suit, but his fair skin was as white as snow, and his yellow curls might have been the pride of any mother's heart.
"Never mind his clothes. Give him to me for one moment," said Margaret pleadingly.
"If you really wish it, ma'am," said Jane, and her harsh voice was husky, but she stooped over the child, and no one knew that the cold, gray eyes were dim with tears.
"So this is little Willie?" said Margaret, passing her hand caressingly over his curls, while the child looked up with blue eyes of wonder. "Should you like to live with us, dear?" she said, in her soft motherly voice.
The little boy had never taken his eyes from her face. "Stay wid you," he replied decisively.
"So you shall," said Margaret smiling; and then to his aunt, "I have some little things that will almost fit him, Jane. My child's frocks and petticoats two or three years ago would suit Willie very well. We could alter them a little, and you might easily get a belt of some kind in the village to keep him from looking too much like a girl."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Jane. She could not have spoken another word.
"How pleasant!" said Margaret almost gleefully. "I wanted something to help me to pass the tiresome hours of this long day, and now my pretty little Willie has come, and we must help him into prettier clothes. Come, Mrs. Foster you know all about little ones. We must press you into the service."
"Willingly," said the old woman, producing a monstrous thimble from her pocket and popping it on her finger. And soon, united by the pleasant mutual interest, even awkwardness was forgotten among the three women as they worked together with a will to clothe the little one suitably. They were all benefited: Martha had found an occupation, and she began dimly to understand Mrs. Grey's tactics; Margaret was happy in seeing the fruits of her efforts come even more fully than she could have hoped; and Jane felt all the hardness melting away from her heart. Mrs. Grey insisted she should join them in the afternoon to give her advice and assistance in the serious task of changing a girl's clothes into a boy's, but once or twice she was forced to make her escape. These outbursts of feeling, however, made her better. They taught her that she was not all bad. They showed her that in the heart she had thought past redemption were yet the seeds of good; and unconsciously she rejoiced, blessing the kindly hand which out of misery and blackness had brought light, and even a measure of peace.
The day passed rapidly in this pleasant work, but Willie had long been asleep before the welcome sound of wheels notified the approach of the travellers.
The cottage and its surroundings certainly presented a more smiling appearance than on the preceding evening. Indeed, the contrast could not have been greater, for this was a kind of gala, and Jane Rodgers, in deference to the wishes of her mistress, determined nothing should be wanting that could produce a pleasing impression on the mind of the visitor.
Jane was not, and never could be, a person of many words. She was naturally self-contained. The business of preparation, from which she spared neither labor nor thought, was a kind of outlet for the feelings which could not find expression in words. If she could say nothing about her gratitude, she would prove it.
She knew Margaret's love of flowers, so she had gathered them together from every available corner. Roses, geraniums, fragrant heliotrope and mignonette were literally scattered in the rooms, which were full of an abundance of light. Some of Jane's cherished savings had been expended in plants that lined the hall and peeped from the windows. The cottage, indeed, looked very pleasant. The front door, thrown wide open, showed the lighted hall, and even allowed a glimpse of the small sitting-room, in which a substantial tea-table, spread with all kinds of dainties and decorated with Jane's wealth of plate and china, seemed to invite the entrance of the weary travellers. Outside was the moon, throwing its white beams on the little plot of grass as it shone persistently through the branches of the stately cedar which flanked the little house on one side, while through the fragrant limes on the other side came the glimmer of the starlit sea.
"How pretty and quiet it all looks!" said Adèle to her cousin as they approached the cottage. "And that's the place, I feel sure; it is just what I expected to see. Now I know I shall get well soon."
She leant back in the carriage with a little sigh, for Arthur was paying scarcely any attention to her words. She could see his face in the moonlight rapt and eager, and Adèle felt almost sick for a moment with the longing that she might ever be able to call that look into his face. He turned to her at last. "It is all right," he said in a tone of intense relief; "I see her."
Adèle looked at him in simple wonder: "And whom did you expect to see, Arthur?"
Arthur turned away in slight confusion. He did not wish Adèle to know that the kind of uneasiness aroused by the storm had never left his mind—that he had been haunted by a certain inexplicable fear which nothing but the sight of Margaret herself could take away. He did not answer Adèle's question, but proceeded to gather together the bags and parcels.
The landlady was at the gate, with curtseyed welcome, ready for any consignment; Margaret was on the steps of the front door; the old woman was behind her. Arthur for the first few moments had to be contented with her and with a nod and a smile from Margaret, whose warmest welcome was for Adèle. "Come in, come in," she said, holding out both her hands; "I thought it almost too good to be true when I read your letter this morning. But you have come, my poor, pale child, and we must take care of you and make you strong." She drew her into her own room: "Will you share this with me for the present, dear? I can look after you better so."
Adèle was weak and tired. She could scarcely keep from tears as she threw her arms round Margaret's neck in her impulsive girlishness. "I am so glad to come," she said. "And oh! I wanted to thank you!" Adèle was thinking of the little scene in the library.
"Thank me, dear!" replied Margaret, gently removing the young girl's hat as she spoke, and smoothing back her hair with a loving hand. "What shall I say to you, then, my faithful friend, who has believed in me through everything?" She spoke lightly, but there was an undertone of deep emotion in her voice. "We shall have plenty to talk about, Adèle, but this evening is to be given to rejoicing. I feel as if it were the opening of a new era in our lives—as if happiness, that capricious little deity, were hiding somewhere very near us. Come into the dining-room; your cousin will become impatient if we shut ourselves up too long."
They went together into the little parlor; and when Arthur saw Adèle's glistening eyes and noted Margaret's loving little attentions to her guest, he felt sorely inclined once more to be jealous of his cousin; but he did not allow this to be seen, and the evening passed away very happily. Harmony, that sweet, rare guest, seemed to reign in the little household. Every one was comfortable and happy. The undisguised satisfaction of the old woman, who began dimly to see through some of the mysteries that had been perplexing her; the happiness of Adèle, wavering between smiles and tears, and taking a final refuge in the former; the confidence and peace which seemed for the moment to have taken possession of Margaret; Arthur's apparent contentment and overflowing merriment; the quiet, respectful attentions of the landlady,—made a pleasing whole.
When the tea-things were cleared away, and Jane and Martha had finally retired for a gossip in the kitchen, Arthur got up and closed the door with great care. "Now, Mrs. Grey," he said, crossing over to where she sat looking out upon the moonlight, "I must really have it out with you. Are you a magician? Please give us the secret of your power?"
Margaret smiled: "A serious accusation, Sir Knight. Before committing myself in any way, I must hear upon what it is founded."
"You have bewitched that wretched old landlady of yours. Why, I declare I never in my life saw the like of it. When I was last here I felt once or twice an insane desire to say something that would astonish her, I was so angry at the cool impertinence of her manner. Now, good gracious! no humble slavey could be more obsequious. She seems actually affectionate—has the appearance of a devoted family servant. What have you done to arouse enthusiasm? Come, Mrs. Grey, confess!"
"You must confess, first," answered Mrs. Grey, more gravely, it seemed, than the occasion warranted, "that such a thing is possible as to be mistaken, even when we think our observation has been of the keenest. You thought and I thought that Jane Rodgers was wholly without a heart. I have discovered my mistake, and found a way to her heart; that is all the mystery. Thank you, a thousand times, for your kind thoughtfulness in sending Mrs. Foster. She is a charming old woman, and I was delighted to receive her, but my landlady and I are perfectly d'accord."
Arthur shrugged his shoulders: "The mystery remains a mystery still, however; even in her changed attitude your landlady is not a lively subject, to me especially, for she was the cause of a severe nightmare which kept me awake for hours only a very short time ago. We'll change it. What I want to tell you is, that all being well I start for Moscow to-morrow night."
Margaret clasped her hands and looked straight before her into the night. "Then you have heard of him?" she said in a low voice.
"I have heard something, dear Mrs. Grey." Arthur spoke slowly, a certain sadness in his voice. It was as it should be. She loved her husband. He was nothing to her but an intermediary, an instrument. "But do not raise your hopes too high," he continued. "It may be a long and tedious business. The last address given by Mr. Grey to his solicitor—who, I suppose you know, is not the same as yours—for letters and remittances, was that of an agent in Moscow. It is more than probable he has left that place himself. He seemed to wish to keep his ultimate destination a secret. I shall go to Moscow myself, and see this agent. He will probably be able to give me some information."
"And what if he refuse?"
"I have a key. Russians are proverbially open to bribery and corruption."
Margaret shivered a little: "It seems almost wrong, but I can't help it. Oh, if I only knew!"
"We are working for him as well as for you," said Arthur quietly. He felt for the moment an insane inclination to do something desperate to this "him" for whom he was working so disinterestedly. For Margaret looked more beautiful than ever—at least he thought so as she sat there in the moonlight. The young man in his boyish enthusiasm could have fallen before her, and, holding her feet, have worshipped her. But she was so utterly unconscious. Adèle meanwhile was lying on the sofa, listening and watching. She was trying to acquiesce in it all, trying to feel it right that her Arthur should take so deep an interest in another woman—for she knew his face well, she had read that sudden longing—she was trying to rejoice in Margaret's unconsciousness and her cousin's truth; but the little aching was at her heart. Margaret had been, for the moment, absorbed in her own hopes and fears; as Arthur spoke the last words, however, she thought suddenly of Adèle, and crossing to the sofa she sat down by her side.
"Forgive me," she said softly.
"What for, Mrs. Grey?"
Adèle lifted her eyes to her friend's face, and Margaret saw that tears were not far off.
"For sending your Arthur away on this wild search," she whispered. And Arthur, who had been standing at the window gazing regretfully at the stars, and thinking with some discontent of life's contradictions, heard what she said. The words were like a reproach. They made him think of Adèle's self-forgetfulness; they brought back to him the gentle scene of that stormy night.
He turned resolutely from the window, and placing himself at the head of the sofa looked down upon his cousin's young fair face. She put out her hand with a smile; he took it and held it in both his own. "She is not to be pitied, Mrs. Grey," he said lightly, "for this is all her own doing. I am only obeying, like a faithful knight, the orders of my liege lady. She filled my mind with her grand poetic ideas about doing good, and the rest of it; she was always making me ashamed of my idle, aimless life; then after we first met you, and she and I had made up our minds you had some great sorrow, she tried to bring me near to you; and finally, the other day, when, as I told you, part of your history came to us, she sent me off to see you and find out the truth; her orders were—Shall I repeat them, Adèle?"
He had succeeded in making her pale cheeks a "celestial rosy red."
"You have said quite enough, dear, and too much. Have you discovered, Mrs. Grey, that my cousin is rather given to exaggeration?"
"Am I to believe all this is exaggeration?" replied Margaret. And then she stooped and kissed the young girl's glowing face. "It is so very like the truth, Adèle, that you must allow me the happiness of believing it. I shall take the services of your knight as your gift, and we shall watch together for his safe return."
"And remember, Adèle," said Arthur impressively, "no flirting in my absence. Mrs. Grey, I shall make you responsible."
Margaret laughed, and Adèle answered gayly, for her bright spirits were rapidly returning, "Pray, sir, with what am I to flirt? As far as I can see already, there are no objects but stones and waves, and I fear that on them my fascinations would be thrown away. Mrs. Grey, have you many visitors in this place in the summer?"
"Principally nurses and babies; I fear it will be dull for you."
"Dull!" said Adèle rapturously, "with you and the sea! Why, this is the kind of dulness I have been craving for. If you only knew how delightful it is to escape from soirées and dinner-parties, and, more hateful still, afternoon callers! But have you nothing else to tell Mrs. Grey, Arthur?"
"Very little more, Adèle. I think I told you, Mrs. Grey, that we had traced your little girl to Southampton. We sent an agent there, and to-day my solicitor, Golding, had a telegram from him. Travellers answering exactly to our description seem to have taken tickets to Paris. A sailor in one of the steam-packets remembers the child perfectly. He seems to have been struck with her beauty and the peculiar appearance of her companion. Paris is a large city, but I do not despair. Our man has his wits about him. We have communicated with the French police too, and they are on the alert."
Margaret sighed: "It is so difficult to be patient. I long to be off myself—my poor little darling!—but I suppose it would be useless."
"Worse than useless. You see we must proceed with great caution, and the man we suspect knows you. If he found out that you were personally on the track, he might take alarm and hide the child; but our agent is unknown to him. By the bye, have you a picture or anything of the kind of either or of both of them, your little Laura and this foreigner? If you have it may be useful."
Margaret turned pale: "Wait a moment," she said. She went with her candle into the next room, and opening a drawer took from it a little old leather box. The key was on her watch-chain, but her hand trembled as she fitted it into the lock. The lid flew open, revealing a little velvet-lined case, which seemed to contain only two or three yellow envelopes, a withered flower and two likenesses.
Sitting down, Margaret leant her head upon her hand, and two or three tears fell into the box. It was like the opening of a grave. The likenesses were miniatures, delicately painted and set in gold. She took up the one that lay uppermost, and looked at it through a mist of blinding tears. It was the portrait of a young girl; the face was not so beautiful as that which looked down upon it, for the features were irregular, but the artist had hit happily upon its principal charm: it was in the eyes, which were dark and lustrous, and in the low, broad brow, from which the hair swept back in soft waving lines.
"My Laura," said Margaret half aloud, "forgive me—he is unworthy."
She laid down the miniature softly, and taking up the other looked at it silently, then turning it she touched a clasp at the back. Between the gold and the ivory lay a scrap of yellow paper. With a sudden impulse she crushed it in her hand, then smoothing it out carefully she read it by the candlelight. The words written were few and simple: "A Mddles. Marguerite et Laure, des amitiés bien sincères—L'Estrange;" but the strong man's hand that had traced them had trembled visibly, and as the woman whose dignity he had outraged, whose treasure, as she believed, he had stolen, looked on them that night, she remembered how her heart had warmed at the thought of those trembling fingers, and of what that trembling told.
It was not this, however, that brought the softness to her face at that moment. Slowly she put down the paper and the opened miniature; taking up the other, she held it against her heart. "Laura, my darling, forgive me!" she murmured; "I would have kept your treasure; I cannot." With the other hand she took the piece of yellow paper and held it in the flames till it was consumed. Then replacing the first miniature, she shut and locked the box, put it back in its place with scrupulous care, and returned to Adèle and Arthur.
There was no trace of agitation in Margaret's manner as she held out the miniature.
"This was a common treasure of my cousin's and mine," she said with a sad smile. "I kept it only in obedience to her dying wishes, but I must find my child, and my poor Laura would forgive me."
Arthur took it. "I think you are right," he said; "but about your child?"
"I have plenty of likenesses of her. You had better take the last; it is wonderfully good: I have never seen a better photograph of a child. But, Arthur, before you send this miniature away, look at it carefully; you may possibly come across them."
"If I do—!" said Arthur from between his clenched teeth.
Margaret laid her hand on his arm and looked at him anxiously: "You would do nothing rash, I hope, Arthur; you know my history; you will be able to understand me when I say that for the sake of those old days, for my darling's memory, I would not have a hair of his head touched. I only want my child."
"Be of good courage," said Arthur cheerily; "if she is in the land of the living, we shall find her, Mrs. Grey, and bring her back to you in triumph. Thank you for these; they will be of great use to us. But now, ladies, it is getting late, and I shall have to be up early to-morrow, so I think I shall say good-night and good-bye. I have taken a room at the hotel, and as I find the first train to York leaves this—or rather the station—at half-past seven in the morning, it will be best to make my adieus to-night."
"How soon shall we hear from you?" said Adèle, her lip trembling.
"As soon as ever I can send a letter. I mean to travel night and day, therefore you must not be surprised if some days pass."
Arthur was himself again; the thoughts of action had been invigorating. He shook hands with Margaret, kissed his cousin and then took his departure. They stood together under the moonbeams silent, for their hearts were full. He, with never a backward look, walked steadily away along the sounding sea.
PART IV.
AT WORK WITH A WILL.
CHAPTER I.
LAURA'S TASK.
O source of the holiest joys we inherit!
O Sorrow, thou solemn, invisible spirit!
Ill fares it with man when through life's desert sand,
Grown impatient too soon for the long-promised land,
He turns from the worship of thee.
It will long ago have been suspected that Margaret was wrong in her suspicion about her husband. Maurice Grey was not the person who had taken forcible possession of her child. Jane, in her new capacity of friend and protector (for the landlady had never done anything by halves; hers was one of the world's strong natures—great in good as in evil), had opened out, with much shame and contrition, everything that concerned the transactions of that fatal day.
Her story was this: In the course of the afternoon a gentleman had come up the garden-path, and proceeding to the back instead of to the front door, had requested to have a few words with her. He had begun by asking some trivial questions about her mistress, and Jane said that as he asked them he looked at her in a searching kind of way. Apparently it did not take him many minutes to discover a certain amount of animus in her state of mind, and with the more readiness he revealed to her the object of his visit, persuading her that the service she was desired to render was very small. He was careful enough of her conscience not to tell her in so many words what he intended to do. All he asked her was to keep the fact of his having been there at all a secret as long as possible, and if she should be questioned to give a certain description of his personal appearance.
L'Estrange's revenge was perfect in its kind. In his angry bitterness he had determined to punish, and not only to punish but to humiliate, the woman who had kept him at arm's length, who offended him by her dignity, who openly showed her contempt and loathing for his character; and he had succeeded.
It was a bold scheme. Had it been deliberately planned, it might have been said to be diabolical in its clever wickedness; but the fact, though strange, was true: it was not deliberately planned.
When L'Estrange found Margaret's address and followed her to Middlethorpe, he had not the vaguest idea of being in any way inimical to her. He had a passionate admiration for her beauty, and he believed her to be weak. Even the persistent way in which she had hidden herself from him had nurtured this idea in his mind. He thought she was afraid of him, and his aim was to conquer this fear, to persuade her by his specious reasoning that it was foolish and vain.
He was a man who believed he understood women perfectly, and as, unhappily for himself, his experience had been rather with the weak and erring than with the strong and pure, he had a rooted contempt for the female character. The height and purity of such a soul as Margaret's it was impossible for him to understand.
It must not be supposed that L'Estrange was any monster of wickedness—he possessed, on the contrary, many good and noble traits—but his foreign training, the wandering life he had led and the strange notions he had picked up from modern sectaries had sorely impaired his moral sense. Truth was a mere name to him. To cling to it at an inconvenient season he would have considered the supreme of folly. And yet he had a kind of honor of his own. To help the weak and defend the oppressed were articles in his strange creed. If Margaret had given herself up to him and followed him in his wanderings, he would have been faithful to her even unto death.
In fact it was only tenderness for her, an instinctive feeling of unfitness, that had prevented him from marrying the warm-hearted, impulsive English girl who had given him her love so unreservedly.
Fortune had come to L'Estrange late in life, and unexpectedly; with it came the desire for the renewal of old ties. He did not look upon marriage as the insuperable barrier which it is happily considered here. He believed Margaret's marriage to have been one of convenience, not inclination, and that she would be rather thankful to him than the reverse for interfering with its smooth tranquillity. Hence the scene at Ramsgate, which, in reliance on Maurice's impulsive character and his English repugnance to anything approaching a scandal, he had deliberately planned.
It had succeeded beyond his hopes. Margaret was separated from her obnoxious husband, and L'Estrange believed that all he had to do was to go in and win. But for a long time she baffled him, and, as it has been seen, he misinterpreted her motives, attributing to superstitious fear of an unknown evil what really arose from disgust and horror. The success of L'Estrange with women had been so unfailing that he could not but have unbounded confidence in his own power of fascination. That the heart which had once been unreservedly his could have been transferred—and, above all, transferred to a husband—was a thing the Frenchman failed to realize.
When he fell upon the traces he had been so long seeking, his determination was this—to enlighten the fair Englishwoman, to lead her out into what he looked upon as the true land of freedom, to destroy her foolish prejudices, and then when the education was fairly begun—what? The usual fools' paradise.
It was in his surprise and indignation at finding himself utterly baffled, in the light, hateful to him, of her last strong words of contempt and loathing, that he hastily formed the scheme of cruel revenge which he carried out so cleverly. The idea was flashed in upon his brain by the very inspiration of madness.
It will be well, perhaps, to return to that afternoon when, penetrating into Margaret's sanctuary, he carried away her treasure.
The little Laura was unsuspecting. When L'Estrange entered the parlor he found her curled up, with her favorite story-book in her hand, in a corner of the sofa. She recognized him instantly as the stranger whose kindness to her on the sands had made her think he might be her lost father. His appearance confirmed her in the idea. Throwing down her book she ran to him and took his hand with confiding frankness "Then you are my papa after all?" she said.
"Who told you I was your papa, Laura?" he asked gravely.
"I told myself," replied the little one; "but come, poor mamma will be so pleased. I left her sitting on the sands, for she wanted to find you too, and now you've come here instead. Shall we go out and tell her?"
She did not wait for denial or assent, but dashed out of the room for her hat, while L'Estrange, rather astonished at his reception, sat and pondered for a few moments.
"She has taught her child to love him, the man who wronged and doubted her," he thought with a growing wonder. "I must have been mistaken. Does she care for him, after all?"
But the bare idea made him clench his teeth and knit his brows, till the reappearance of the child forced him to dissimulate. L'Estrange was a consummate actor. He could be all things to all men, but I think that never in his life had he set himself a harder task than this. The child was so confiding, so simple in her trust. Not much dissimulation was necessary, however. The strong emotion he felt as he took up the little one and felt her small arms round his neck was very real of its kind. For, she was Margaret's; here lay the spell.
"Laura, my child!" he murmured, and his heart turned with sudden loathing from the deed he was doing. He felt inclined to put her down and to run from the house and from the place.
But as he spoke she smiled. It was her mother's beautiful smile, such as had lit up her face in those bygone days when Margaret and he had been one in heart and mind. He hesitated no longer. "Laura," he said, putting her down and looking at her with a tenderness that was certainly not altogether put on, "I know where your mother is. She is not on the sands; she has walked so far that it would tire her to walk back. We shall have to take a carriage to find her. You are not frightened, little one? See, she has sent her scarf, that you may know I have come from her."
"Is mamma ill?" said Laura with a quivering lip.
"No, only a little tired."
"Well, then, let's go at once! But how funny of mamma to walk so far! I suppose she was talking and forgot."
A carriage which L'Estrange had already hired was waiting for them at some little distance from the house. They got into it and drove away.
For the first half hour Laura was very happy. She did not speak much, for she was a little shy of this new relation of whom she had heard so often, and for whose return she was accustomed to pray at her mother's knees.
She sat by his side, his arm round her, looking up into his face now and then to point out something they were passing or to make a simple remark, mostly about "mamma." He was very silent. But still they went on, up hills and down them, through villages, past trees and fields, till at last all the well-known landmarks had disappeared and Laura grew uneasy.
"Where is mamma?" she asked with a half inclination to tears; "she can't have walked so far."
He drew her on to his knees, so tenderly that she smiled again, and resting her head on his shoulder repeated the question in a quieter tone. Still no answer, and still they drove on, till not even the shelter of those loving arms could do away with the child's uneasiness; she lifted up her dark eyes pleadingly: "Please tell me, shall we soon get to mamma?" Then he took both her small hands and looked at her for a moment. "My poor Laura!" he said, "what will you say to me when I tell you that you are going away from mamma?"
"Away from mamma!" replied the child, and there came a sudden terror into her eyes. But Laura was a peculiar child. The life she had lived with those much older than herself, the shadow of her mother's sorrow and the influence of her mother's life and character, had made her unlike others of her own age.
L'Estrange had been prepared for a passion of tears and cries. It did not come. Only the child drew herself out of his arms, and crouching down in a corner of the carriage looked round as though searching for a means of escape. Her case seemed hopeless, so she clasped her small hands together. "Take me back," she said, earnestly; "oh what will mamma say?—poor mamma!"
And then she cried, but it was like a woman's weeping—a still noiseless grief.
L'Estrange was a disciple of Rousseau's. He could understand the beautiful pathos of a situation, and the child's quiet tears affected him so painfully that he could scarcely refrain from giving vent to his own sentiments in some such way, but they did not persuade him to alter his purpose. He let the child weep for some time, then stooping down he drew the cold little hands from her face, and holding them in his, looked at her earnestly for a few moments.
"Come to me, Laura," he said. She half rose, but, as if bethinking herself, drew back: "It's wrong to take me away from mamma. And why, why did you say we were going to her?"
Yes, there lay the sting. He had deceived her, and the child distrusted him. He drew her to him. "This is a strange child," he thought, "and must be strangely treated."
"Listen to me, Laura," he said gently, "and try to trust me. I know it was wrong, very wrong, but I had a reason. I want to do good to your mamma and to you. Your mother is unhappy."
"Yes," sobbed the child; "but it's only because papa is away; if you—" She looked at him suddenly, then turned away, literally trembling with a new fear. "Are you really my own papa that mamma tells me stories about?" she asked with unchildlike earnestness, fixing her dark, mournful eyes on his face.
There followed a few moments of silence. L'Estrange was thinking. For the first time in all his life he was staggered. Falsehood had hitherto always befriended him, but he had never before been in such a situation as this. Mentally he cursed his own folly, and cast about in his usually ready mind for something to say, for in this pure child's presence he felt as if he dared not lie. An inspiration came. "Laura," he said earnestly, "you are much better and wiser than other children of your age or I should not say this to you. I am not your father. Remember, I never told you I was, but I love you as much as if I were, and I love your mother. I want to make her happy, and you, her little daughter, must help me."
L'Estrange did not mean precisely what he said, but for the moment he persuaded himself that he did. The child held her breath and listened.
"Laura," he continued after a pause, "what would make your mother happy?"
"For papa to come back," she said with a sigh, which he echoed. Only a few hours before he had thought to make her happiness in a very different way. But this should not interfere with his scheme.
"What if you found your father, Laura, and told him this—that your mother was unhappy, I mean, and wanted him back? Do you think he would come?"
The child looked up eagerly: "Oh, I'm certain he would."
"Well, petite, if you consent to come away with me, I will try and take you to your father. Do you understand me?"
Laura understood, certainly. She clasped her hands, but suddenly her face fell. "You said you would take me to mamma, and you didn't," she said; "perhaps this is just the same."
L'Estrange was right. She was a strange child and not easy to manage. As he hesitated for an answer she spoke again: "Take me back to mamma, and we can ask her about it."
"No, Laura," he said as firmly as he could, for he was easily moved and the child had touched him to the heart. And then he took her in his arms again, and smoothing back her hair kissed the tears from her eyes. For the first time he was really in earnest. Instinctively the child felt it and was soothed.
"Trust me, petite, and try to be calm. I do not mean you anything but good, my fair child, for you are dear to me as my own soul."
There was a wonderful power of fascination about this man which had seldom failed him. It had its effects on this girl-child. She looked up into his strong face convulsed with emotion, and she was comforted. Her tears ceased. She lay back silently, and he rocked her to and fro in his arms while they drove on through the gathering darkness. Was the child wrong? Had her heaven-sent gift of instinct failed her in her hour of need? I think not. Rather, in that moment this strange, complex-natured man was what he appeared—good and true. The pure child-presence, the simple words, the dark, searching eyes seemed to have drawn away his evil for the time. It was as though an angel had looked into his soul's darkness and with a ray of living light dispelled it utterly.
It must be remembered that L'Estrange was not an Englishman. There is, I think, a certain oneness of nature about the Anglo-Saxon race that renders it very difficult for its members to understand the emotional, impulsive, two-sided character of the Celt, the Latin or the Greek. An Englishman is eminently straightforward. He does not stop to analyze. Be his object good or bad, he is given to carrying it out perseveringly, leaving to the future thoughts of compunction or self-gratulation. This is doubtless sweeping, as indeed all generalities must be, but possibly a truth underlies it—a truth which may explain the extreme lack of sympathy between ourselves and our southern neighbors. With Englishwomen the case is different. There is always something in the female character that answers to this two-sidedness. Its very weakness challenges a woman's sympathy. Muscular Christianity, strong, manly straightforwardness, is very attractive in its way, but not so dangerous, I am inclined to imagine, to the female heart as this emotional impulsiveness, ready at one moment with tears of sentiment and tender analysis of feeling, and at the next with passionate indignation and deep-breathed curses.
L'Estrange was a son of the South, a pupil of the great philosopher of Nature. From his childhood upward he had indulged in every emotion that ruffled the calm of his strong spirit. From Jean Jacques he had learnt to invert the eternal unity of beauty and goodness, calling that fair which is wanting in truth. Therefore, when involuntarily, as he gazed on the child, who had sobbed herself to sleep on his shoulder, the moisture dimmed his eyes and his heart softened before her fair innocence, he felt a certain glow of self-approbation. "I am certainly becoming a better man," he thought, but he did not make up his mind to restore the child to her mother—the woman he had once loved, the woman he had robbed of every joy.
His heart ached for her sadness as in the soft emotion of that evening her pale face came before his mind; but if he would do her good at all, it should be in his own way.
And so they drove on—Laura, wearied out with her tears and the excitement, fast asleep in the arms of the man who had taken her from her mother; L'Estrange scarcely daring to stir. In his strange way he thanked God for this sleep.
The stopping of the carriage aroused the child. They were at a station some miles distant from the one by which they usually went from Middlethorpe to York.
The night was dark; only a few stars shone through the cloud-rents. Laura started up. "Mamma!" she cried; then looking round her, she remembered and said no more. L'Estrange was watching her narrowly. He had dreaded this awakening, for he feared a passionate outburst of grief, but it did not come.
The child looked out and around her with that far-seeing look that some children have, as if they can see into the invisible, and then, as they entered the dimly-lighted station—for the little lady had insisted upon being put down to the ground—she looked up again into his face. It was the same, mournful, searching gaze that had already touched him so deeply.
Apparently the scrutiny satisfied her, or it may be her woman's instinct showed her the uselessness of resistance, for she gazed away again into the night and said no more till she found herself wrapped up tenderly and laid amongst the cushions of a first-class railway carriage. L'Estrange took his seat beside her and the train began to move.
Then first the child's lip trembled, and there came a look of distress into her small face. L'Estrange stooped over her: "Are you frightened, darling?"
"Not frightened," said the little girl; "but—"
"But what? Tell me."
Then came the trouble with a burst of tears: "I want mamma to tuck me up and hear my prayers. We say them—mamma and I—when the stars come in the sky; and the stars are up there now, and—and I want mamma."
For Laura was only a very little girl, and this want made her first realize what it was to be without her mother.
Her companion did not answer, and the child went on in her simplicity: "God is up there above the stars a very long way away, but I know He hears, for when mamma was in London and Jane was cross, I told Him and He brought her back after a long time. Oh, please, will it be a great many nights before we go back to mamma?"
As she spoke those silent tears so pitiful from a little child began to flow, and her companion once more felt inclined to curse himself for his short-sighted folly. He knelt down beside her in the carriage, and she saw that his face was very pale and that real tears were in his eyes.
"Ma fillette, ma chèrie," he whispered, for in his emotion the English endearments sounded hard and cold, "be patient—trust me."
For a few moments Laura was soothed, but still, as there came the gleam of the stars through the darkness, the childish wail was repeated: "I want mamma! I want mamma!"
L'Estrange was perplexed. Passionate sorrow he had expected, and he had not despaired of curing it by distractions, but this quiet pathos of grief cut him to the very soul. In its presence he was helpless. How could he comfort her?
He pondered, but for a long time in vain. At last his own childish days returned to his mind, and the stories he had learnt at his nurse's knee. "It was in parables," thought this master of human nature, "that the Great Teacher taught the world; and what were the myths of antiquity but parables to prepare the nations in their childhood for the reception of truth? By a parable I may perhaps make this little one believe that her present suffering is for a future good."
By which it will be seen that he still thought, in some vague way, of redressing the great wrong he had committed, and by means of the child, whom he had stolen in an access of bitter revenge, restoring Margaret to happiness by giving her back her husband.
"Laura," he said, lifting her from the cushions and holding her in his arms, "can you listen to a story?"
"Yes," said the child wearily.
"Listen, then, ma fillette, and try to understand me. It is long ago that I heard this story, when I was a little child like you, and perhaps you have heard it many times, for it comes from a book that English people read. There was a man who had a great many sons—twelve, I think—and he loved one of them more than all the others; we do not know why—perhaps he was beautiful and good. This boy was of course very happy at home, because he was always with his father, who gave him everything he wanted. But at last his brothers grew angry—-jealous, I think you call it in English."
Laura drew in her breath with a sigh of contentment. "Why," she interrupted, "you are telling me about Joseph!"
"Yes," he replied gravely, "and ma fillette knows that Joseph was sent to a country a long way off, far from his father who loved him."
"Like me," said Laura sighing.
"And ma fillette knows, too, that Joseph saw his father again."
"After a long, long time," said the child.
"After a long time, it is true; but what did he do then?"
Laura looked away at the stars: "Gave his father bread and a house and sheep, and everything he wanted."
For she knew all about this, her favorite Bible story.
There was a pause then. The child and her companion were thinking.
At last L'Estrange spoke: "And was he sorry afterward, this good Joseph, that he had been taken away from his father?"
"I think he was glad," said Laura in a low tone; "only it was such a very, very long time. But if I thought what you say I wouldn't mind the long time."
"Think it, then, ma fillette," he said, stooping over her with his own peculiar smile, which seemed to shine like light on his dark face. And the child believed him.
It was a strange doctrine to take root in so young a mind, for the subtle parable wrought powerfully. The great fact of self-sacrifice, the suffering of some for the good of others, began to dawn upon the child's mind. It was real suffering to be separated from her mother, to be wandering with this stranger through the night instead of lying in her warm white bed in her mother's room; but Laura neither wept nor complained. Her tears ceased, and her dark eyes grew large with thought. For she had overcome her distrust of her companion; she believed with the simple faith of childhood that what he told her was true. Her strong imagination idealized him into a guide (like Great Heart in the bit of the Pilgrim's Progress she loved the best) come to put an end to her mother's troubles by bringing her father back to them; and for her part in the great work the child, with unchildlike calm and thoughtfulness, was ready.
It was late before they reached York, but rooms were ready at an hotel to which L'Estrange had telegraphed, and the good-natured chambermaid took every care of the little lady. Going to bed so far from mamma was hard work for the poor child, and her sobs and tears and sudden startings from sleep were subject of much speculation to the attendant; but at this time she said nothing, as her services were very liberally remunerated.
L'Estrange passed a very different night. He had been longing for its deep solitude, that he might think out undisturbed the unwonted thoughts to which the experiences of that day had given rise. And the night came—heavy, dark, brooding, suitable to his spirit's mood.
He went to his room, but there he could not rest; under its narrow roof even thought would not come to him; he rose and went out. The town was silent in the darkness, and utterly undisturbed he walked through the quaint, narrow streets, under low-browed gates and arches, till in a few minutes he gained the open country. A wide, grassy expanse it seemed to be, as far as he could see by the faint light that struggled now and then through the clouds—undulating here and there, and bordered in the distance by a fringe of wood, behind which a line of light that told of either twilight or dawn was lying low down on the horizon.
A gate opened on to the smooth turf. He unlatched it, and, after a few more rapid steps, threw himself down on the grass with his face to heaven. A sudden craving for rest of some kind—rest of conscience, rest of heart, rest of soul—had come to him, and in the night's stillness he had set himself the task of thinking out the problem.
In the morning of the long day he had thought to rest in love. That hope had gone by. It did not require so consummate a master of human nature as himself to recognize clearly that this was vain; and strive as he would he could not forget Margaret; her beauty haunted him as the vision of impossible good must follow the lost—a torment, because unattainable for ever. Later, he had imagined that revenge in its bitter satisfaction might rest his spirit. His scheme had succeeded, but this too was vanity, or worse, for the child whom he had looked upon merely as the instrument of his vengeance had opened his eyes, and instead of rest came the stinging pang of remorse to harass his tormented soul.
And thus it had ever been with him. The beautiful "spirit of delight" he had been seeking from his youth up; always with the same result—to find under the beauty, ashes; under the glory, dull despair.
At first, as he lay there under the canopy of cloud, the thoughts of this strange man were nothing higher than self-pity and bitter complaining of wayward fate. His being seemed for the moment a thing apart from himself. He took it in his hand and reasoned on it. Why was it formed to enjoy when enjoyment was a thing unattainable? Why was it tortured with longings which for ever were destined to remain unsatisfied? Why was beauty so fair and good so lovely when always they looked on it from afar? What was this superior fate that fed its slave with mocking visions—removing evermore and ever farther the cup of bliss for which his thirsty soul was panting?
The soft sensualist felt the tears brimming to his eyes as he pondered on his calamities. It was the remembrance of his own parable that first aroused him, for the man was not naturally weak. Brought up in a different school, he might have been different. Education had made him a formalist and from forms he had turned away in his manhood, thinking in the direct opposite to find freedom and truth.
The formalist had cast off every tie of faith, only to fall into the closer bondage of fatalism. And the worst of it all was that there seemed no opening for him into the light. But, though he little suspected it, he had found a teacher, and in the stillness of that night the lessons fallen from the lips of one of God's little ones began to take effect upon his mind.
It was not so much his own parable as its effect upon Laura that struck suddenly to the root of his selfish murmuring. His sensuous soul had been hitherto seeking with all its power for beauty as a resting-place. He had thought to find it in the gratification of his senses, but it had always eluded him. The child's earnest look that night as she took up at his command the burden of suffering for the good that was to come—not so much to herself as to another—made a new idea dawn upon his mind. Was there, then, an unsuspected beauty even in suffering when sanctified by high ends? If so, he had been all his life seeking in vain.
Suddenly as the idea flashed in upon his brain—with the vision of that patient little face, from which something more than a child's spirit seemed to look—he sprang to his feet and walked rapidly forward into the night. Like a dream his former life seemed to map itself out before him in those few moments of intense feeling. The days, the years that had, in spite of his efforts, furrowed his face and sprinkled their gray ashes on his head, how had he spent them? In seeking the good which ever eluded him, in fleeing from the shadow that ever pursued him. The good had been happiness, beauty—the evil had been pain, suffering. Physical suffering, mental suffering, sympathetic suffering, vicarious suffering,—this he had striven to blot out from the story of his life; he would believe that it did not exist, and when in unmistakable evidence it had presented itself to his senses, he would forget its presence or drown its influence in distractions.
And now came this child-messenger to tell him that all this time he had been banishing a holy thing, a soul-purifier. It had ennobled the young face that night till an angel's pure beauty seemed to rest upon it. Even his peerless Margaret had gained in calmness and strength by those years of desolation; and he who had cast it aside as abhorrent, what was he becoming?
He asked himself this with an involuntary shudder. He had always rejoiced in the tenderness of his heart. His very objection to the sight of suffering had been laid to this account in the self-analyses which with him had been so frequent: and now what did he find himself doing? Coolly inflicting torture on a woman and child—two of the weakest of God's creatures—and all for the gratification, not of the best but of the worst feelings of his nature. Once more L'Estrange threw himself to the ground, but this time his face was turned earthward and buried in his hands, while wave after wave of bitterness passed over his troubled soul.
When he looked up the white dawn was beginning to struggle with the darkness. Gray clouds and intermediate patches of pale blue had become visible, and heavy, bead-like drops of dew stood on the blades of grass. His face was wan, like that of one who had passed through a death-agony, but it looked better. He rose to his feet and paced slowly back to the town. At the railway-station he stopped, knocked up a telegraph-clerk, and sent a message apparently to London, then returned to his room at the hotel, arousing the astonishment of two or three sleepy waiters who were up in expectation of an early train.
There he sat down before the table, opened his desk and taking from it a sheet of paper began a letter. It seemed a difficult one to write, for sheet after sheet was destroyed before he could satisfy himself. It was accomplished at last, however, and the words written seemed to be very few, but a smile flitted over his face as he read them. Then he pressed the paper to his lips, enclosed it in an envelope, and wrote the address with a trembling hand.
L'Estrange's method of spelling English words was very eccentric. He could speak the language well enough, as he had lived long in England, but he could never bring himself to write it. Why words should be spelt in such an arbitrary way he could not or would not understand. All he could suppose was that the English would keep in this, as in everything else, to their national characteristic of eccentricity.
English eccentricity had always been a fruitful theme with L'Estrange. On the point of spelling he was obstinate. He persisted in spelling phonetically, and as a natural consequence his letters very often went astray.
It will be as well to say at once that this was the unhappy fate of the letter in which his mental struggles culminated. It was written in French and addressed to Margaret. She never got it. Three weeks later, after vain endeavors had been made to procure it some destination, it was returned to the hotel from which it had been written. There it awaited the return of its writer.
CHAPTER II.
A WASTED LIFE.
A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain,
That did love Beauty only (Beauty seen
In all varieties of mould and mind),
And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good,
Good only for its beauty, seeing not
That Beauty, Good and Knowledge are three sisters
That doat upon each other—friends to man,
Living together under the same roof,
And never can be sundered without tears.
The heavy rings round Laura's eyes and her general languor when she appeared in the private sitting-room her protector had taken deeply grieved him.
For a few moments he felt inclined to act upon his natural impulse of kindliness—to take the child back to her mother, and pursue his strange scheme of setting Margaret right with her husband by himself. But a remnant of selfishness withheld him. Laura, in her sweet, childish innocence and in the unchildlike development of her inner life, was a beautiful problem, the like of which had never before, in all his wanderings through the fields of humanity, been presented to him. He longed to study her more closely, and this could only be done by following out his original scheme. He determined, therefore, to leave the decision to her.