CHAPTER I.

_MAURICE GREY._

But the living and the lost-- For _them_ our souls must weep; For them we suffer a yearning pain That will not let us sleep.

A change. From the shores of the gray British seas to those of the grayer Baltic--from the yellow sands and purple moors of Yorkshire to the wellnigh boundless forests and plains of Western Russia--thousands of miles of wood, lake and river, only diversified by some few castles and villages.

It was July, hot and radiant, but in the depths of those woods coolness is always attainable. By one of the broad silver lakes, under a group of birches that rose gracefully from its shores, a young man was resting through the noontide.

He appeared to be a hunter, for his horse was tethered to one of the trees and a brace of fine hounds were baying out their impatience at his side. But for these dumb companions he seemed to be alone, and yet all the accessories spoke of comfort. A kind of table had been extemporized at his feet, and on it a large meat-pasty, some bread and salt, a knife and fork and a flask of sherry were lying. He had not done much justice to the provisions; he was leaning back against the tree and looking out over the lake, a kind of disgust in his fine face. Suddenly, bethinking himself, he raised two fingers to his lips and gave a prolonged whistle.

It brought from the surrounding woods two stately-looking Russians, long-bearded and sedate. Their master pointed to the provisions before him--a gesture which was evidently understood without difficulty, for they carried away the food, retired respectfully to some distance, and soon made a great inroad into both pasty and bread, packing up what was left in a small haversack which one of them carried on his back. The other then approached his master and made a low bow.

"Time to mount?" said the young man, evidently English from his appearance and accent. "Ha! so much the better."

The horse was untethered, wiped down admiringly, and held in readiness by the bearded Russian, his companion in the mean time bringing out two stout little ponies from the trees. And in a few moments the small cavalcade was ranging the woods.

The black eagle was flapping its great wings above them, feathered fowl of a thousand varieties were twittering on the branches of the trees. Many of the coverts might harbor the wolf or lynx; in the reach of meadow to which a forest-glade might lead the gigantic elk would probably be resting with her young.

It was a position to exhilarate the coldest brain, and the Englishman, who took the lead into the forest, did not look particularly torpid.

He was monarch, too, of all he surveyed, for one of the hospitable nobles of Courland had given his guest a free permission to shoot not only through his estates, which were sufficiently vast, but through those of his neighbors; indeed, the whole province was free to Maurice Grey. With gun and dogs he might traverse the wilds of Courland in all their length and breadth.

To an Englishman, a lover of sport for its own sake, could any position be more delightful? He seemed to feel this. Mounted on his horse, a fine little mare of Arab extraction, his keen sportsman's eye scanning the depths of wood, his ear intent on the faintest sound, he looked another man from the jaded, weary traveller resting listlessly on the shores of the silver lake.

But the dogs looked uneasy; there was a rustling in the underwood; the dry fallen leaves crackled ominously. He cocked his gun. Hist! a long, gray-looking animal, gliding ghost-like out of the bush, but not within range. It was a fierce she-wolf--the terror of the neighborhood; this the Englishman discovered, and then the chase began. The wily dogs urged her out into the open; bewildered she fled before them--long, swift, seemingly untiring. With bellies to the ground, and legs that seemed barely to skim it, followed the noble hounds, and after them their master, urging them on by his voice, till dogs, wolf and horseman seemed to fly over the plain.

On, on, leaving the Russian servants and ponies in the far distance, the forest behind, the blue distance before them, till at last the wolf grew weary, her pace perceptibly flagged: she tried to stand at bay, but exhaustion overcame her; the hounds were on her haunches; they pinned her to the ground till the voice of their master called them off, and a shot put an end for ever to the robber of Russian hen-roosts and the terror of Russian babies.

Various other feats were performed that day, each exciting in its kind; and when the young Englishman, who had ridden far into the short, bright night of that season, rested at last in a kind of log-built hunting-lodge, where the hospitable owner of the estate had always a few necessaries in readiness for the guests of the hunt, he was quite ready for refreshment and repose. He partook of the provisions put before him by his servants, bathed in the river that flowed at no great distance, and laid himself down to rest, rejoicing in the glorious solitude, in the freedom from anxiety, in the triumph of having found one pursuit that could put to flight, even for a time, haunting care and cruel retrospect.

But the triumph was short. The few hours of night passed, and kindly sleep would hold his restless spirit no longer. With the gray dawning Maurice lifted his head from his couch and looked around him. The Russian servants, wrapped in sheepskins, were lying on mats at his feet, fast asleep; even the hounds were silent and motionless, wearied with their day of hard work. The neighborhood of the sleepers was oppressive. He rose and wandered out into the little clearing in the midst of which the hut was built.

Yes, this was solitude, true solitude, without excitement of any kind to fill it; and as Maurice looked listlessly at the sun rising over the woods he tried to persuade himself that it was delightful. Far from the babble of false men and falser women, not even the rising of a thin wreath of smoke in the far distance telling of their existence,--this was what he had been seeking, and hitherto seeking in vain. He seated himself on the trunk of a fallen tree to look this great loneliness in the face and realize the comfort of his position, but it would not do.

Insensibly, as he thought and gazed, came visions of the past, dreams of the future, like weird, shapeless demons whom memory had robed in horrors to rob him of his peace and fill his solitude with care. For Maurice Grey had loved as some men can and do love, throwing all the strength of their nature into this one thing. And he had lost, not by the hand of death--so pitiless when put forth to take the loved--but by a something more dread, more pitiless still--the discovery of his lady's falsehood. Oh, he had honored her, trusted her, given her his all; and what had he found? That through the long years they had passed together in such perfect harmony her heart had been not his, but another's. He had given all; she had given nothing--worse than nothing. And in the bitter revulsion of feeling consequent on the discovery he had not waited for explanations; he had left her, vowing, in a vow that came from the very depths of his stricken heart, not to look upon her fair, false face again.

Since then he had been striving after forgetfulness. He would not hear of her, he would not ask about her. In the various business letters that necessarily passed between him and his solicitor in England--for he was a man of some property--_her_ name was never mentioned. He had left amply sufficient for her maintenance. The property she had brought was paid over to her without the slightest reference to him. Thus, he considered, bare duty was fulfilled, and for anything further--bah! woman-like, would she not rejoice in the absence of restraint? It was possible that he might desire to have a voice in the education of his child; about his wife he would trouble himself no further.

But the mind is volatile and independent; it receives not the "Thou shalt not" with which poor mortals would fetter it. Over flood and field, through cities and solitudes, Maurice had been wandering with this one idea--to banish for ever from his mind the beautiful, haunting face of his lost Margaret--and all was in vain. More persistently than ever it returned on this morning in the wilds, looking at him with her lustrous eyes, speaking to him with her sweet, low voice, maddening him with the cruel recollections it brought of loss and shame.

For in a case of this kind the man is, perhaps, a greater sufferer than the woman. True, he can wander hither and thither, throwing himself into the stirring life of the world--business, pleasure, excitement; but in the deep, strong nature the sting remains, bitter, poignant, ever present; not the soft sadness of the weaker sex, which in many cases, stooping down under the stroke, reaps the reward of submission in a certain gradual dulling of the pain; but the fierce, angry plunging of a soul that will not yield to dire necessity--that will not look its sorrow in the face and bear it.

And no trial is fitter to raise this ceaseless tempest in the spirit than that under which Maurice was smarting. He had trusted in her as he trusted in his God; she had been to him the embodiment of all that is good, pure, beautiful in womankind, and the discovery of her treachery was like the breaking away of solid ground from beneath his feet.

From that moment he believed in nothing. Writhing under the bitter pain of the wound inflicted on him, he would yet show no signs of weakness. He would forget; he would cut the ties that bound him to the past; he would tear her from his heart. In the struggle his nature seemed to change. He whom Margaret had loved for his gentle thoughtfulness, his manly courage, his geniality, his bright, joyous spirit, became another man. Irritable, morose, cynical, gayest among the gay at the festive season, though of his laughter it might have been said that it was mad, of his mirth that it was "the crackling of thorns under a pot;" at other times dull and listless, uneasy, changeable, passionate. These were some of his characteristics after many months' wandering. And he felt the change; sometimes he professed to rejoice in it. He told himself that he was getting hardened--that soon, soon, the past would be as though it had not been; but there was a secret consciousness within which told him that this could not be.

Such was the feeling which spoke to him on that still July morning through the solitude till he could bear his own society no longer. He returned to the hut, awoke his servants with some roughness, and intimated to them, in the best Russian he could command, that he was tired of wandering; he would return to their lord's castle that day, and then join him and his family in St. Petersburg.

The Russians bowed simultaneously. They were accustomed to the caprices of their lord, and did not show the least surprise at this sudden termination, after two or three days, of an excursion that was to have lasted at least a fortnight.

They escorted their lord's guest to the castle, and on the same evening Maurice Grey left it for a St. Petersburg mansion.