CHAPTER III.

_THE HOUSE IS EMPTY._

All within is dark as night, In the windows is no light, And no murmur at the door, So frequent on its hinge before.

And in the mean time what was _she_ doing, the object of all this solicitude, the unconscious origin of so many storms of feeling?

We left her on the sea-shore, the wide ocean before her, the cool sands around her, with a white face and quivering nerves, and a heart that was sick with aching. For the interview had tried her sorely, and it left behind it no luminous trail, but rather a deep shadow that seemed for the moment to kill even the faint hope which her spirit had cherished through all its woe.

What she looked upon as her own miserable weakness terrified her--filled her with a certain vague fear of such depths of darkness before her as hitherto she had never known. Pitfalls seemed yawning on every side. She was to herself like one who was drifting on alone, unprotected--not even shielded by her woman's weakness--to meet some terrible fate. Sitting there, her head buried in her hands, she shivered and moaned, for the remembrance of that moment of weakness, when, as it seemed, only a trifle had saved her from listening to the honeyed words of the tempter, and putting herself partially, at least, in his power, filled her with the bitterest humiliation.

Another remembrance agitated her cruelly as she cast her thoughts over the interview. His last words had implied a mystery which her tortured brain strove in vain to fathom.

Her husband, Laura's father! had the child's instinct been true? Could he be near them? and if so, what did the threat mean? Could he, her Maurice, have sought her with any but a friendly object? Yet this was what her tormentor had foreshadowed in his mysterious words. She could not cast them aside as unmeaning, the poison thrown out in the anger of disappointment, for she knew L'Estrange. He never spoke meaninglessly, and therefore his words had weight. Besides, he was one who understood his kind--who could trace with the keen eye of a master the purposes of those with whom he came into contact.

Observation and deduction had been carried by this strange man to such an extent in the course of his ceaseless wanderings, that at last they had reached almost the rank of a science. In ancient days his acuteness would have earned for him the unenviable notoriety of the wizard; men would have imagined that he had dealings with the powers of darkness. Indeed, as it was, Margaret and her friends had often been perfectly astounded by the accuracy of his predictions, based on grounds to them undiscoverable, for they never failed of verification.

Connecting the past with the present, Margaret's brain--unhealthily active in this her hour of deepest misery--began to trace for itself a theory to account for the mysterious words, which clung to it like a subtle poison. He had met her husband, she said to herself; he had found out, by the marvellous power he possessed, that no friendly purpose had brought him to the vicinity of his wife--that he was hostile to her still, that some new misery was in store for her.

But what could it be? _Could_ her sufferings be increased? She had risen from her seat. In the restlessness of her spirit movement seemed a necessity. She had walked with unconscious rapidity to some distance along the shore. Suddenly, as she reached this point in her theory of possibilities, she stopped; covering her face with both hands, she uttered a low cry and sank down upon the grassy edge of the cliff. There had come to her mind, like a fatal knell, one sentence of her tormentor's speech--"In all hearts there is _one_ assailable point"--and it brought a picture to her mind.

She seemed to see the pensive, half-melancholy eyes, the golden curls, the graceful, childish form of her little Laura, and as she saw she realized what her affection for the child had become during the last few weeks--how the little one was her hope, her joy, the sheet-anchor of her soul.

But Laura was his. Could it be that he would take away her treasure and punish her afresh by an added loneliness--by letting her know that he felt her unworthy to be the guardian of his child after the age when the young soul is plastic and open to impressions? It was unlike Maurice. Ah, how unlike! pleaded the weary heart; but misery had been known to change men utterly was the answer of the brain, grown morbid by lonely pondering; and that Maurice, with his earnest craving for sympathy, could have been anything but miserable through those long months was impossible.

But he could not remove her without warning. He would see his wife, he would speak to her; Heaven, in its mercy, would give her one more opportunity. This she said to herself as she sat almost helpless by the cliff, crushed by the dreary possibilities which this new presentiment of evil had brought to her mind. And with this idea came a desire for action. Even at that moment, as she sat there inert, he might be at the cottage waiting with impatience for her return, wondering at her long absence from his child.

She sprang to her feet and began rapidly to retrace her steps, skirting the sand-cliff that rose up from the shore. By this time evening had come. The little ones were being marshalled by their nurses for home and bed, two or three loving pairs were pacing the yellow sands, the sun was stooping down in ruddy glory to the rest of his ocean bed, there was a fragrant steam from the fields of clover and cowslip, a hush as of coming repose upon everything; but what can stay the tumult of the soul?

Like the fabled Io of the Greek, she may wander hither and thither, the lulling sounds and the restful sights of Nature may wrap their calm around her, but only externally. When the gad-fly of stinging misery follows evermore in her track, what are all these? Nothing, less than nothing, or a mocking echo of that to which she can never attain.

Something of this Margaret felt that evening as, through the torturing consciousness of a new possibility of anguish, she looked upon the fair outer world. Nature was too calm, too fair--she was antagonistic to the mood of the lonely, suffering woman.

Margaret had wandered farther than she thought, and the sun had already dipped below the western horizon before she saw her cottage. It was lying in the shadow, not touched by the sunset glory. To her imagination, distraught by the experiences of the day, it looked cold and blighted.

She stopped when she saw it. Almost it appeared to her as if she could not go farther to meet the realization of her dread. Everything looked so still--no little white fairy at the garden gate watching for mamma, not a sound among the trees. How could she go on into the desolate solitude? But, after a moment's pause, her strength returned. If the blow had indeed fallen no delay could avert it. On then, up to the little gate, through the garden, with still the same chilling silence. No little face at the window, no sound of merry laughter, no light bounding steps. The hall door was open; she passed in. With haggard face she peered into the rooms, hoping against hope for a sight of that tiny figure.

The child would be asleep perhaps, wearied out by the pleasant fatigue of the bright day: she would be found behind sofa or ottoman or curtains, curled up like a kitten, or tired out with watching for mamma, she had thrown herself down on her little bed. Like one who seeks thirstily for hid treasure, Margaret looked, her soul in her eyes, into every nook and corner of her little domain: corners possible and impossible she searched, for the mother's heart within was crying out, and she could not despair until nothing else would be possible. She was so absorbed in her hopeless task that she did not know she was being watched, that a pair of lynx eyes, in which cool triumph was shining, noted her every movement; that when at last, worn out and despairing, she crept, like one who has received a death-wound, into her sitting-room and threw herself down, almost lost to the knowledge of what she was doing, upon hands and knees to the ground in her exceeding agony, her servant was glorying in her fall, triumphing at her expense; but so it was. Jane Rodgers's hour had come. Her lodger was paying, and paying dearly, for her insolence.

She did not wish to be discovered, and she had seen enough to assure herself that the blow had told. Retreating softly from the hall, with a smile on her lips that was not a pleasant one to look upon, she returned to her comfortable kitchen, leaving her mistress alone in her agony.

Jane Rodgers had one anxiety. She muttered its import to herself as she stooped over the fire to turn a piece of bacon which was frizzing merrily for her tea. "Trouble _do_ sometimes kill people; it wouldn't do to have a death in the house, and she looked queer; but there! _she'll_ get over it, and perhaps be a trifle civiller for the future."

So even this anxiety, as it appeared, did not affect Jane very severely. She lifted the frying-pan carefully from the fire, placed its contents in a plate that had been warming in the oven, and sat down to enjoy her tea in peace.

To Margaret it seemed as if all the glory had gone from earth. True, her desolation had been grievous at times, but she had ever possessed _some_ consolation; now in a moment all seemed rent from her. _Hope_, for if he had ever wished to see her again in this world he would not have taken away her little one; _love_, for the clinging affection which had become so precious would nevermore surround her--Laura would be taught to forget, perhaps even to despise, her mother; _peace_, for if her husband was so terribly changed, how would he bring up their daughter? and, doing his very best, _could_ he surround her with the watchful care of a woman--a mother?--Laura, as her mother had learned, was so sensitive and tender; _joy_, for she was alone, uncared for, a widowed wife, a childless mother.

One after another came these cruel thoughts to crush her as she crouched down upon the ground, plucking with nervous, aimless fingers at the sofa-trimmings. For the last stroke had told. The poor heart was incapable of bearing more. Margaret's mind was in danger. She was standing, though she knew it not, on the border-land which skirts the dark region of insanity. A little more of this heart-dissecting torture and that numbing, more to be dreaded than the keenest pain, would of necessity be the result, and the beautiful, fair-souled woman be changed, by the mysterious action of disease, into a maniac, a pitiable object in the sight of God and men. Was this last, this bitterest woe reserved for her?

No: suddenly the consciousness of the new danger dawned upon her. She caught the wild, wandering thoughts and sternly brought them to bay; then, shuddering, she threw herself on her knees.

"My God," she cried piteously, "send me death in thy mercy--death before madness--for I can bear no more, no more."

Her voice sank to a sobbing sigh, but the prayer seemed to have stayed the fever of her brain. The white terror left her face; she even smiled to feel the pain deadening, though with the deadening came a chill that froze the warm life-blood in her veins. Her satisfaction was but momentary. She staggered to her feet. Was this, then, the death she had craved? And with a pang she recognized her folly, she would fain have recalled her prayer; for life, sweet life, is precious, even to the wretched, when they are called upon to face the dark reality we call death. Life cannot be utterly reft of hope. To the most forlorn it holds out a future, and what is this future but the possibility of better things to come? The time might yet come when Margaret would be able to look for another and more certain future--a future to which death is but the prelude. That time had not yet arrived. Her treasures, though swept from her grasp by the hand of a wayward fate, were still in the warm lap of earth; and warm is that lap to the heart when its withdrawal is threatened as a something not vaguely distant, but near and certain.

It took but a moment for these thoughts to flash through Margaret's brain, for stealthily the chill crept over her. She made a few steps forward to gain the window, but it was too rapid for her. Gasping, she fell back heavily to the ground.