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 cherie," 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.