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.

He said very little during breakfast-time, only watched her with a certain curiosity. He was grateful to this child who had opened a door of light in his soul, though he was not near enough to her in purity and beauty to know how great was the service she had rendered him.

Breakfast was something of a pretence to both of them. The longing for her mother, and the brave determination to choke it down in her heart till she had done what was required of her--found this unknown father and brought him back--made the child too excited for eating to be any pleasure to her; and L'Estrange at the best of times could not eat so early.

When it was over the child got up. "Please," she said hesitatingly. She was in a great perplexity about what she should call her new protector.

He read her thought: "Come here, Laura."

She went quietly to his side, and he drew her on to his knees. "I knew another Laura once," he said quietly, stroking back her hair; "she was the sister of your mother; but she is dead now, pauvre enfant!" And then he continued, as if talking to himself: "Comme elle etait gentille, la chere petite!"

"That must be my aunt Laura," said the child; "mamma has a picture of her, and I kiss it sometimes."

"Yes, she would be your aunt, ma fillette; you are like her. Ah! I remember now--it is of her that your eyes make me think. Turn round to the light."

"But why do you talk about Aunt Laura?" said the child impatiently. "Please, I want a sheet of paper. I can only write big letters, but I think mamma would understand."

"Patience, ma mie. _I_ have written a letter to your mother. See, it is here, all ready to be sent, and if you like some of your big letters can go inside. You shall put it in the postbox yourself, that you may trust your old friend as the other Laura did. I told you about her because of what she used to call me. I should like you to do the same. It was _mon pere_. Can you say that?"

"Mon pere," said Laura, in her small childish voice. Then she thought a few moments: "That means my father, doesn't it? But you are not my papa."

"I must be your father till you find your own, Laura," he said gravely. "Shall it be so?"

"Yes, mon pere," said the child, smiling up into his face.

And from that moment she never doubted her protector. He on his part became more determined than ever in the pursuit of his new object. Little by little the child was doing childhood's Heaven-given work, drawing away selfishness and bringing pure love in its place. It was this that brought him to try his experiment. He watched the child as she sat down before a large sheet of paper with a pencil, writing painfully her letter to her mother. L'Estrange had all the innate delicacy of a refined mind; he would not attempt to see what the words were that the child was tracing.

She brought the paper to him when the letter was done, and stood beside him as he folded it up; but before it was finally put away he hesitated: "Which would you rather, Laura--for this letter to go to your mother, or to go back yourself?"

For a moment the child's face looked bright and joyous, but only for a moment. The flush faded, she clasped her small hands together: "We must find papa first; but, oh, I hope it will be soon!"

The strong man turned away; he had difficulty in keeping himself from weeping like a child. When he spoke again his voice was calm: "We must lose no time then, Laura." He rang the bell, and the waiter appeared. "Send the chambermaid here."

When after a few moments the soft-hearted Jane came in, he gave her money, ordering, in those imperative tones which always gained a hearing with his inferiors, that the little lady should be supplied without delay with every necessary for a long journey. He did not deign to explain, nor did Jane venture to remonstrate. She went to an outfitter's, procured all that was necessary, and in half an hour from that time they were ready for another start.

There followed a long and wearisome day, for the heat and dust were excessive, and before it was over, L'Estrange for the hundredth time repented as he looked on the patient little flushed face that would yet show no sign of weariness.

Arthur had been right in his conjecture. They were remarkable travellers, and many were the comments of those who journeyed with them--the man, with his dark face and foreign appearance and imperious conduct, and the fair English child, at the very sight of whom his face seemed to melt into tenderness and his manners to take the softness of those of a woman. And no woman could have watched over her child more lovingly or tended it with greater care than he watched over and tended his little charge. Food and drink he brought her with his own hands when it was possible to obtain them; whenever her position grew wearisome she rested in his arms, the imperious voice sinking to lulling murmurs as he told her long nursery-tales which he made out of everything they passed. A house, a stream, the cows in a meadow would be sufficient material for his fertile brain. Once even, when the black grimy dust had literally overpowered the fastidious little lady, and her timidity prevented her from appealing to the attendant in a waiting-room, he took her himself to a kind of pump, and dipping his cambric handkerchief into the cool water washed her hands and face so effectually that she laughed for pleasure. It was her first laugh since the moment when she had discovered that she was going away from her mother, and it caused L'Estrange as sincere a throb of gladness as he had ever known in all his life, for this child was gradually becoming to him something more than a child--something more even than the offspring of the woman who through all his lovings and longings had most entirely held his heart. He began to look upon her, in his strange fatalistic way, as a mysterious thing, sent to him at the very darkest hour of all his dark career to touch his blackness with fingers of light and bring good near to his soul.

And perhaps it was partly the truth. There is, for those who can understand the mystery, something divine in childhood; certainly, if not nearer to God than we, children have the power of drawing out the divine that is in us. L'Estrange felt this in a very peculiar way; he treated the child with a loving reverence, watching jealously her every word and movement as one who looks for an inspiration.

And so the long hours of the day wore away. When they reached London it was already late in the afternoon. Laura was tired, but she would not hear of remaining there for the night, she was too anxious to press on.

They were met at the Great Northern Station by a gentleman who appeared to have been expecting them. This man gave them a boisterous welcome, shook hands warmly with L'Estrange, who did not seem to reciprocate his cordiality, and, chucking Laura under the chin in a familiar way, asked her where she was going. The child's lady-like instincts were offended. She answered quietly that she did not know, and clung to her protector's hand.

The stranger laughed in a peculiar way, and turned to L'Estrange: "I didn't know you had a daughter, mossou."

"_Monsieur_," replied he, emphasizing the French word, "was mistaken, as he very often is."

"Well! well!" answered the other rapidly--he was our friend Mr. Robinson--"I can't stand here wasting my time. I gather from the telegram, which duly arrived this morning, that you sent for me about a certain subject. I _may_ have information for you--I _may_ not."

"It shall be worth Monsieur Rob_ee_nson's while to give me his information," replied L'Estrange quietly, but with a kind of sarcastic courtesy.

The courtesy struck Mr. Robinson's mind, the sarcasm glanced over him harmlessly. "Of course, of course!" he protested volubly. "You foreigners put things strangely, mossou; ignorance of English ways, no doubt. Allow me to explain myself. In expectation of this (you gave me reason a little while ago to believe it might possibly be wanted) I have kept myself acquainted with the movements of the party discussed between us. You will doubtless remember the occasion. Naturally the firm is slightly out of pocket. These investigations, you must understand, are costly, but everything shall be done in due form between us. In the mean time, if I can be of any service--"

"Oblige me," said L'Estrange with the same manner, that might be either courtesy or its semblance, "by taking this as an instalment." He handed him a paper packet. "The firm I can settle with when your lawyer's bill comes in. _Your_ services, monsieur, are for the moment personal."

Mr. Robinson bowed. His fingers itched to get to the inside of the packet, but it would have been unprofessional to show anxiety, so it rested quietly in his palm. L'Estrange looked at Laura to see how much of all this she had understood. The little girl was still holding his hand, but her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, and he addressed himself again to the lawyer: "Tell me, in as few words as can be, where was he heard of last?"

"The last remittances were sent to Moscow. A few weeks ago he was certainly there--probably is so still."

"Moscow!" L'Estrange repeated the word in a dismayed tone, looking down as he did so at the child whose hand he held.

Mr. Robinson guessed his thought, and broke in volubly: "You surely don't think of going there yourself, and with that child too! Why, it would be preposterous, and not the smallest necessity. Give us time and we can gain further information. If necessary, I could go there myself, though of course it would be an expensive business. In any case, leave your little girl. My wife would be delighted to look for a nice school--conducted, you know, on Christian principles--where every care would be taken, both in the way of physical and mental training."

Mr. Robinson would have his say out. He affected to consider that duty required him to give salutary advice in season and out of season; and as duty, in his sense of the term, was always closely connected with business, he had already in his own mind fixed upon a temporary residence for the child. A lady who owed him a long outstanding bill was anxious to take in pupils. This new client was evidently a liberal payer; through the profits made out of the child a part, at least, of that just debt might be paid off.

But his client did not look at matters in the same light. He tried to stop his voluble utterances, for the little hand he held was trembling. Laura, hearing herself discussed, had taken a sudden interest in the proceedings. She looked up at her protector and saw that his brows were knit angrily. This alarmed her. She burst into tears. "Oh! please don't leave me with him," she sobbed; "take me with you or let me go back to mamma."

How his face changed as he heard the child's cry! It became suddenly soft as that of a woman. He stooped down to her and wiped away her tears, whispering all kinds of gentle assurances. Then he turned again to the lawyer with that ominous frown: "You see what you have done. Be so good, monsieur, as in the future to preserve business relations in our necessary intercourse, nor presume to advise me at all on matters that do not concern you."

Another man would have been struck dumb or else have retired offended, but the lawyer was of the tough sort. This was too valuable a client to be sacrificed to feelings. "No offence meant, I assure you, sir," he hastened to say--"only interest; but" (seeing the frown gather) "to return to business. I have a few more details that may be useful--the address of an agent in Moscow, the--"

"Write them out for me, and send them to the usual address in Paris by to-morrow morning's mail. At the present, monsieur, we have no more time for delay. It is necessary to dine before taking the train again to Southampton."

"You leave, then, this evening? Can I be of any further--"

"No, thank you, Mr. Robeenson." He bowed in his stately manner and turned away to the refreshment-rooms with Laura, leaving the lawyer on the platform, still grinning his contentment.

As they distanced him the child gave a sigh: "I'm so glad he's gone!"

"Why, then, did you not like him, ma mie?"

"No, mon pere, not at all; he doesn't look good."

"I think the bebe is right," he said in a low tone; "mais que faut il faire?--Little wise one," he continued aloud, "we must take the people as we find them, some good and some bad, making our own use of them all. Is that too hard a philosophy for the little brain?"

Apparently it was, for the child made no answer.

In the mean time L'Estrange had seated her at one of the marble-topped tables, and before thinking about his own dinner was trying to find out what would best suit her appetite. The well-feed waiter was flying about to supply all her wants; dainty after dainty, which she scarcely touched, was put upon her plate. It was such a new scene to Laura that her appetite fled with the excitement.

Many looked at her curiously in the crowded room, for Laura was a peculiarly beautiful child. Her golden curls and her dark, lustrous eyes, with the transparent delicacy of complexion she had inherited from her mother, and the childish grace which is the gift of God to her age of helplessness, made her very attractive. She was rather embarrassed at the attention she excited, noticing which her protector stood up and folding his arms looked right and left so haughtily that the most compassionate and least curious of the many beholders felt as if their admiration of the fair child had been an indiscretion.

After dinner the wearied little one fell asleep in his arms, and only awoke to find herself in the train, which was far on its way to Southampton. She was getting accustomed to her new friend and to these sudden wakings; so this time, to his great relief, she did not cry out for her mamma, but clung to him still more closely. They stopped at Southampton. It was a lovely night, the sea still as glass and the dark blue sky alight with moonshine and studded with stars.

Laura and her protector stood together on the steamer's deck. "Will ma fillette go to bed?" he asked.

The child shook her head. "Oh! _please_ let me stay out here," she pleaded. "I promise not to be a trouble, and the stars are so nice."

Without another word he wrapped her up in his own fur-lined overcoat and made a bed for her on one of the seats, himself watching beside her.

But this time Laura could not sleep, the position was too strange. "What is that noise?" she asked nervously as the plash of the water against the great paddle-wheels came to her ears.

"The water and the wheels," he answered. "The wheels are rolling along through the waves, taking us over the sea."

The child raised herself on her elbow and looked round: "Where are we going? There's only sky and clouds out there. But, oh!" clasping her hands in delight, "look at the moon on the water. I see it like that at home sometimes. Once, when I could not go to sleep, mamma took me to the window, and a little bit of the sea was all white as it is to-night. She said it was the moon, and now we're going to catch the moon in the water. Oh! _why_ didn't mamma come?"

For this was the ever-recurring trouble of the child. Her love for her mother was stronger and more enduring than it generally is among those of her age. A mother gives; but very often years pass before she receives any return to her devotion. Laura's love was strong, because, in the first place, there was nothing to divide it: her young life had never held another affection. Then her love and childish sympathy had for some time been partially checked, and, it may be, had therefore grown stronger in their secret place. Only during the last weeks had her young affection had its free course in the light of her mother's comprehending love.

Her plaint made her companion wince, but he would not answer it. After a few moments he looked at her again and saw that tears were in her eyes. They were reflecting, in their moistness, the white shimmering moonlight; in its pure unearthly shining the little face seemed almost transfigured.

L'Estrange had been superstitious from his youth up. He was the very creature of those dreams and inspirations to which the glowing South gives birth. Perhaps they had weakened his strong intellect. At any rate they had kept it in the shadowy twilight, giving little chance for living truth to make its entrance into his soul.

The look on the child's face startled him. "_Does_ she belong to this earth?" he asked himself.

"Laura," he whispered, "look away from the stars. Doubtless they are thy sisters and brothers, little one, but look for one moment from them to me, and say what thoughts are in the busy little brain at this moment?"

The child smiled: "I was thinking about the moon and about mamma, mon pere. I was wondering if she is looking at the moon now, and if she got my letter, and if she misses me very much."

Her simple reflections did not satisfy her friend. I think at the moment he would scarcely have been surprised if the child had developed budding wings and floated away into the sympathetic moonshine; his superstition, it may be, specially as displayed by one whose sex might have been supposed to lift him above such weakness, will seem strange and improbable to the majority of readers. A _man allow_ himself to think seriously of such follies? Yes--a _man_, and not the first nor the last, by a great many. The inhabitants of our island are not alone on the face of the earth. In the glow of the sunny South, where generations have lapped their souls in sunshine and indolently lived on the abundant gifts of lavish Nature, where life can be sustained by a little, and the struggle for existence is less painful and bitter, there has been time for dreaming; and perhaps this has enervated the moral sense and loosened the sinews of mind, till pleasure has become a god and the mind receptive of strange things.

In the early days of civilization, before these things had wrought fully on the character, pure reason, law and its cold abstractions, divine art and severe philosophy made the South their centre, for when we think of these first Athens and then Rome come before the mind. And at that age in the gray formless North the legend flourished, with many a wild superstition. But all that has changed. A light dawned upon the mighty tribes; their superstitions fell, and they girded themselves with strength, while evermore in the sunny lands dreams gained ground, and weakness followed in their train, till at last what is it that we see? In the city where Pericles ruled, where Socrates taught, where Plato reasoned, they dream and do not; in imperial Rome a shadow, an old mediaeval fiction, has kept the people from freedom as they gloried in the past and dreamed about the future, and in the mean time we of the gray North are rapidly casting from us almost everything but what we can see, taste, hold and understand.

Be practical! is the watchword of the age, and sentiment is repudiated, and imagination cried down or relegated to extreme youth and the weakest of weak womanhood. Are there many, I wonder, who find the medium--whose strong souls are strong enough to allow that there is something which passes their ken--who think it no shame to be at certain moments swayed by sentiment, governed by a dream of ideal loveliness, and yet who work on in their daily calling unsickened and undismayed?

There are some such souls, and to no climate are they peculiar. L'Estrange might have been one of them. There was in his imaginative faculty, in his receptivity to beauty and sentiment, in his sympathetic tenderness, a something that marked him out as one born to a higher life than that of self-gratification. His success among women was chiefly owing to this. For it is the good, not the bad in a character, that draws and enchains the loving worship of womanhood.

Where a man reads weakness a woman's keen eye beholds what underlies that weakness, and if _it_ be lovable she is ready to adore.

What L'Estrange wanted was this: A soul to understand the beauty and glory of truth--truth on the lips and truth in the life. To indulge his love of beauty he had wrapped himself in the rose-colored mists of dreams; to preserve himself and others from pain he had never hesitated to resort to falsehood. He might have been very different. Some of the misery of that "might have been" was in his soul that evening as he turned from the child and paced up and down the steamer's deck, for a dark hour had come and he could not bear to face his good genius. With arms folded and brows knit, his dark face looking forward into the moonlight, he thought until thinking was pain. But the influence of the child had begun to work. He would not, as he usually did, cast aside the painful thinking because of the pain that was in it; rather he looked it in the face, trying to touch its centre, and so, it might be, find a cure.

Oh, it was a hard task! For his was the misery of a wasted life, and a life that had brought desolation. True his innate refinement, the self-respect of a high intellect, had kept him tolerably free from what is gross and degrading, but that midnight retrospect was bitter notwithstanding. Pleasure sought and taken at the expense of truth; blighted lives, to which he had brought the warm beauty of love, leaving them when the mood had changed to find it where they could; good that he might have done and did not; wasted talents, used-up powers,--these came before his conscience in an accusing throng. And there was no help for it. He had one life only, and the best of that life had gone. L'Estrange, though he professed to believe in a futurity to the soul, was that saddest of all beings, a practical infidel. In the misery of self-communion his thoughts turned suddenly to the memory of his boyhood's faith, to the days when heaven had been a reality and the saints robed in white, the pure queen of the skies, the fair infant in her breast, had formed part of his hopes and dreams for the future. They had vanished like myths born of the early vapor. They had been too shadowy to bear the inroad of hot, lurid noon. Tried, they had been found wanting, and what had he left in the hour when his heart and spirit craved for something unearthly as their rest? Nothing. All he found within, as he ventured shudderingly to lift the curtain that hides the unseen from the seen, was a "certain fearful looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation," which no man, if ten times over an infidel, can escape when the hour comes.

His dark face darkened. If all were hopeless, then why should he pause? Why had the good that was in him made him hesitate at last? He would crush it down and gain his own ends, even through suffering itself. He stopped in his rapid walk and looked over the vessel's side. It was a real blackness, for clouds had covered the face of the moon, and had gathered here and there in heavy masses on the horizon.

A moaning wind swept across the sea, ruffling the waters till the vessel rocked to and fro. Then the dark face relaxed. The desolation of the watery waste had been responsive to his mood. "So be it, then," he muttered, looking out into the darkness. He was for the moment like the grand creation of Milton, that ideal Lucifer, when his last struggles after goodness have culminated in the fatal cry, "Evil, be thou my good!"

But L'Estrange was not yet absolutely God-forsaken. As he spoke something touched his knees. He looked down impatiently. But suddenly his impatience changed. He drew himself away with a murmured exclamation and a strange contraction of heart. Was it a miracle? For this was what he saw. The kneeling figure of a child, the hands clasped and the eyes lifted up to his. On the face was a bright shining that made the golden hair like a saint's halo, and brought out the picture in every small detail--the tremulous lips, the fair soft brow, the lustrous eyes under their silken fringe. The face was Laura's. In her companion's mood it seemed transfigured, like that of an angel lamenting over his sins and follies. Involuntarily he bowed his head. The strong man trembled like a child at the evidence of all he had imagined, and yet the phenomenon was very commonplace. This was what had caused it. The faithful child had read his trouble, and as she had already allowed him to find his way to her heart, it made that little heart sad. In her mother's sadness Laura had sometimes proved a comforter, and the thought came into her head that she might comfort her friend. So when he had stopped by the vessel's side the little child had risen noiselessly, and kneeling by his side had clasped her small hands about his knees. Then came the partial darkness, which with her friend's seeming indifference frightened her so much that she loosened her hold and looked up pleadingly. A sailor who was walking about with a lantern looking after the rigging had been watching this little episode. In his curiosity he caused its light to shine full upon the child's face, so that when L'Estrange turned round he saw it irradiated, while, as the sailor stood behind him, the source of the sudden radiance was hidden.

The illumination did not last longer than a few minutes. The man turned away to his business, his heart softer for this glimpse of innocent beauty; Laura and her protector were left in the darkness. But until the day of his death L'Estrange believed that the light which irradiated the child came down from heaven.

He was recalled to his belief in Laura's mortality by a little wailing cry. She put out her hands to feel for her friend, as the darkness and silence alarmed her. Then he stooped down reverently and lifted her up in his arms. The sorrowing angel was his own little Laura, fair and pure in her habitation of flesh and blood, for, clasping her small arms about his neck, she burst into a passion of tears. The darkness, the sense of loneliness, the over-excitement had wrought upon the child's nerves, and L'Estrange forgot all his wild thoughts in the effort to comfort her. Instead of seeking evil as a good, he became tender as the tenderest of fathers while he strove to make her forget her fears.

He succeeded at last. She lay on his knees, quiet, only for a sob or two at intervals, her golden head against his breast, one hand round his neck, the other lost in his large grasp--she was afraid of losing her friend again--and he soothed her by murmuring low, crooning melodies that he thought he had forgotten long ago. Then when the morning came and they were near their destination, he took her to the stewardess for all needful combing and dressing. But from that time L'Estrange treated the mortal child with a strange reverence.

Later in that day, when they were wandering through the quaint streets and corners of old Rouen, and the child had almost forgotten her sorrows in wonder and delight, he brought his trouble to his young oracle. "Have you ever been naughty, Laura?" he asked, looking down upon her with a smile that was almost one of incredulity.

The child smiled: "Oh yes, mon pere--a number of times."

"And what did you do, ma fillette?--when you were naughty, I mean."

"I told mamma about it," said the child simply, "and she always said something to make me good again."

"But, Laura, when people are grown up and have no mamma to tell, what must they do then?"

For a moment the child looked troubled and thoughtful; then, as a light seemed to dawn upon her, she smiled. "I should think they might tell God," she said.

The wayworn man bowed his head, and that evening in the solitude he told God. For the child was making him believe in the actual goodness (for only the Good could have made anything so good and pure) and in the possibility of goodness for himself, as he was still able to love and reverence it.

Slowly the light dawned upon his benighted soul, and only after many struggles with the darkness that was in him: this telling God was the beginning.