CHAPTER V.

_A GLIMPSE OF MARGARET'S CHILD._

To look upon the fair face of a child Feels like a resurrection of the heart. Children are vast in blessings; kings and queens According to the dynasties of love.

Arthur, then, had found his way to Moscow. After days of wandering, after vain efforts to entrap the wily Russian into sending him by letter the information he desired, after keen and hungry searching in the English quarter of every city through which he had passed, he had gained the dim metropolis of the North, but only to be forestalled, to have a watch set upon his movements, to play into the hands of the man for whom, in his youthful enthusiasm, he cherished the bitterest contempt, the most undying enmity.

Perhaps under any circumstances it would have been impossible for the impulsive, straightforward young Englishman, headlong in his pursuits, whether good or evil, to understand the complex, two-sided nature of such a man as L'Estrange. Knowing what he did of him, it is scarcely a matter of surprise that he felt his strong young arm tingle at times to fell him to the earth, and if he should never rise again, so much the better--there would be one villain the less in the world. All he desired was to meet him face to face.

But Margaret had laid her commands upon him. His enemy, her enemy, was to be respected. The remembrance of her words made Arthur tremble, for in the holy indignation of his youth he felt that if they should meet it would be difficult to restrain himself from dealing the well-merited blow.

He consoled himself with the reflection that words have power to slay. And words were ready on his lips for the disturber of Margaret's peace, the maker of her misery, which in his inexperience he believed must go to the heart of the worst villain that ever lived.

Arthur did not confine his search to Maurice. Wherever he went strict inquiry had been instituted for the dark foreigner and fair-haired English child. At Paris, as has been already seen, his agent was upon the traces of the pair. There they had been lost altogether, for L'Estrange's ruse had succeeded, and never again had Arthur or the agent he employed been able to recover them.

The only consolation that could be derived from the chance encounter in the Champs Elysees was in the relation that appeared to exist between the child and this man. He was evidently kind to her, for the agent, who reported their conversation accurately, told of her indignation when he so foolishly began to abuse her friend, and also of her little cry of delight when she saw him reappear.

In the long letter which Arthur was writing to Middlethorpe that evening he related this incident, scarcely knowing whether or no it would be a comfort to the bereaved mother--whether she would fear the strange influence which this man seemed to have acquired over her child, or be thankful that at least he was treating her kindly. In any case, of one blessed fact she might rest assured--for the child's companion had been seen, and dark as the night was the agent had recognized the original of Margaret's miniature--her husband was innocent of this last, this bitterest wrong and humiliation. _He_ had not removed his child from her care. The letter was addressed to Adele, but it was written for Margaret. It told of that evening's interview, of his wanderings up to that moment and of his further hopes.

He had ascertained Maurice Grey's hiding-place--that is to say, the address was promised--but days of travelling would probably be necessary before he could reach it. Arthur, however, was full of courage and hope. He looked upon the success of his enterprise as only delayed, not put from him altogether. And his young, strong spirit of devotion shone out in every line of the letter which was to find the two lonely women watching and hoping--_their trust in him_. To know this was enough to brace the young man's mind, to drain him of self-love, to make and keep him strong and pure.

He was in the heat of composition that evening (it must be confessed, in spite of Arthur's literary dreams, the pen was not his strong point), laboring to express enough, and not too much, of the hope his partial success had generated in his mind--to give his friends new courage without buoying them up with false hope; striving to give his devotion to Margaret the delicate expression that might mean what it really was, and yet not offend or alarm her; trying to consider duly the feelings of his cousin and future wife--to prevent her from being in any way hurt by his absorption in that which concerned another; and through it all making his travels and adventures appear in the most interesting and favorable light.

The combination was anything but easy, and once or twice Arthur threw down his pen in despair. To frame a letter satisfactory in every way seemed a hopeless task. On one of these occasions, as he was casting his eyes round the room for inspiration, he was startled by the sound of the door being softly opened. He looked round. A little girl, dressed for travelling, was standing on the threshold and looking at him earnestly. When she saw his face a cloud came over hers, and she looked very much inclined to cry.

Arthur got up and went to the door, the kindliness of his nature aroused by the sight of the child's distress. She threw off her hood then, and shaking back her golden curls showed him one of the loveliest child-faces he had ever seen; but it was not its loveliness that made him start back with a sudden exclamation; it was a memory which that face recalled.

In a moment he gathered his ideas together--where had he seen her before?--and then, with the rapidity of thought, that last evening in England, Margaret, the miniature, the child's likeness, came before his mind. Fate had been kind to him. Margaret's treasure was within his grasp.

Unfortunately, the idea agitated him so much that he could scarcely act with the necessary coolness.

Laura had come into his room by mistake. She had lost her way in the great house, and was looking for her friend, whose room, though in another wing of the building, resembled in position that which Arthur occupied.

Already the child was alarmed by his sudden exclamation. She retreated hastily to the door, but Arthur caught her by the arm and tried forcibly to detain her.

Then Laura really cried, and the young man, between his earnest desire to secure her and his distress at her tears, scarcely knew how to act. He tried gentleness, coaxing her by all kinds of bribes to remain with him, only for a few minutes; but the child grew the more frightened; crying bitterly, she tried with all her small strength to loosen his grasp on her arm. It was in vain, and Laura in her despair called aloud for help: "Mon pere! mon pere!"

Arthur began to think they had all been mistaken, that her father had actually taken her away, but he had scarcely time to come to any conclusion, for as he was still struggling with the child, drawing her into the room with gentle entreaty, there came a dark figure into the gloomy, unlit passage. Arthur was too much absorbed to see him; Laura did, and with a sudden wrench she tore herself free from the young man's grasp. The strong right arm of her friend received her, while before the young man could recover from his surprise (he was at the moment stooping forward to catch the small retreating form) the left hand thrust him back with such violence that he fell, and lay at full length on the floor of his room. Before he could leap to his feet he had the mortification of hearing the key turned in the lock, and of knowing that as his room was in a remote part of the house, Laura and her protector, whoever that protector might be, would have time during his forced inaction to put at least some of the tortuous streets of old Moscow between themselves and his pursuit.

Arthur's position was ignominious in the extreme, and very difficult of explanation. Rubbing his bruised shins, he thought over it woefully. But thinking would not mend matters. He rang the bell violently.

No one came. Probably his violence defeated its own object. A long hour passed, in which, his letter forgotten, he paced the floor of his room, stamping and fuming like an imprisoned lion.

At last a waiter came. He was a Russian, naturally rather timorous, to whom even French was an unknown tongue; and Arthur, from the other side of the locked door, had great difficulty in making him understand in what consisted the obstruction to its opening.

To tell the truth, his stamping and fuming and stormy gestures of impatience had alarmed the poor man considerably. He had always possessed a strong opinion about the violence of the English character, and it was only with many an inward tremor that, seeing the thing was inevitable, he slowly turned the key in the lock and released the young man from his prison.

His alarm was almost justified by Arthur's subsequent behavior. The delay, the ignominious failure, the blow from the hand of the man he so keenly despised, had nearly maddened the unfortunate young Englishman. Thrusting the waiter to one side with such violence that he staggered back against the wall of the passage, Arthur rushed down the wide staircase, three steps at a time, and demanded an interview with the proprietor of the hotel.

The head man waited upon him, respectful in attitude, fluent in speech, but chuckling inwardly at the Englishman's discomfiture.

L'Estrange had given his explanation of the little scene, and it had been by the order of the head-waiter himself that the young man had been detained so long in his prison.

The flood of bad French in which Arthur poured out his indignation was listened to with quiet deprecation, and answered by a multitude of well-turned apologies; but when the young man moderated his tone, and began to think prudence would be advisable if he wished to get anything from the people of the house about the movements of those who had escaped him, he could scarcely be surprised that diplomacy, bribery and a harrowing tale of wrong proved alike unavailing. He was obliged to give up the effort in despair. Through all the polite assurances, the smooth phrases, the courteous attention of the head-waiter he could read incredulity and indifference.

Arthur spent that night in haunting the railway-stations to extract information from the officials, and in knocking up the drivers of droshkies, trying to make them understand that he wished to find out whom they had driven that evening. It was hopeless. They were very civil; Arthur made it worth their while to be communicative. They were ready with highly-colored accounts of their passengers of the evening, but amongst them all he could find none answering to the description of those he sought. He returned to the hotel baffled and worn-out, longing to leave Moscow at once (the hotel and the smooth-faced head-waiter had become so utterly distasteful to him), but detained by an interview for the following day. M. Petrovski had promised him some further details about the residence of his client. He professed to expect letters which would let him know the Englishman's final resting-place.

That letter whose commencement had caused Arthur such pleasant tremors of anxiety was abruptly concluded. He could not make up his mind to relate to his friends in all its ignominious details the incident of that evening, although he longed to let Margaret know that he had actually seen and held her child. Several times he even tried to frame an account of this his first meeting with the little one, but always in vain. He sent off the letter as it was, and curses not loud but deep followed the swiftly-retreating enemy who had foiled him.

L'Estrange did not altogether deserve them. He had purposely treated the young man gently. He might have dealt him a far severer blow, but that glimpse of his face had taught the man of the world something about his character and purposes, had made him respect the boy, and so long as he did not interfere with himself he was ready to spare him. Laura, however, and her share in the task of restoring the wanderer to his home and wife, L'Estrange reserved to himself. He would bring her forward at his own time, and in the mean while he would show this young man, brave with the temerity of youth, that his guardianship, if tenacious, was strong.

Laura had acted instinctively in the occurrence of the evening, but when it was over, when she and her protector were once more in the train, travelling rapidly southward, she was agitated at the remembrance of what had passed.

"Mon pere," she said, clinging to him fearfully, "why do they all try to take me away from you?"

He looked down at her earnestly: "Because they know not how much I love thee."

The child clasped her hands: "I hope, oh I hope, papa will know."

"Why, Laura?"

"Because then he won't wish to take me away."

"But you, ma belle enfant--you will wish to go back with your father. Is it not so?"

"Back to mamma?" said the child. "Oh yes, mon pere, but you must go too."

He looked down upon her with a sudden pain in his eyes: "Kiss me, fillette, put your arms round my neck. There, so--it is easier now. Little wise one, what shall I do without thee?"

Laura did not answer, only with her gentle womanly ways she soothed her friend, while in her small heart rose a certain determination. It was this. Not even for her father would she leave her friend. He should go back with them to her mother, for her mother could do him good. It was the determination of a woman, for a woman's tenderness and depth of feeling were becoming prematurely developed in the young girl, who would never perhaps in all her life be a thoughtless child again. Had she gained or lost by the exchange? It was for the future to say.

But my readers will be impatient; and truly it seems that in looking back on this strange story, which the past has evolved out of its mists, an undue prominence has been given to this part. It has been altogether unconsciously done, and only because of the enchaining nature of the subject.

There was something so touching in the confidence and affection of this innocent child's heart, that with the instincts of truth itself found beauty where others might have only been able to find its opposite; there was something so beautiful in the surrender of the strong man's soul to the guiding influence of the poor child, in whose tenderness the heavenly side of him had read a possibility of salvation for his whole nature; and in all the sweet mystery there was so evidently present the working of an unseen Power, preparing this man, who had missed his right aim in the world, for the reception of a pure ideal, for the vision of undying truth. Time presses. We must linger no more over the tender scenes that marked the intercourse between Laura and her strange protector, but pass on our way, leaving them together.

On the following day, while Laura and L'Estrange were putting vast tracts of country between themselves and the ancient city of Moscow, Arthur Forrest, jaded and worn-out by a sleepless night, and considerably discouraged at the total failure of this his first effort to restore Margaret to her own, prepared himself for another interview with Petrovski.

He wished to be calm and cool, for what, he said to himself, if he were to be sent on a fool's errand?--what if the man who had dealt him that mysterious blow could have been really Laura's father? He found it difficult on such a supposition to assign a motive for his conduct, unless indeed he could have heard of his search, and have believed he was simply an agent sent by his wife to entice the child back to her. On the other hand, what could have led L'Estrange, if it should be he, to Moscow?

Arthur was very much perplexed. He determined to call the calmest, clearest judgment to his aid in sifting the information which the agent was ready to proffer. Alas! when did an old head sit upon young shoulders? If ever they have been united, the combination has not produced such a pleasing whole as Arthur Forrest, who, in spite of the knowledge of this world on which he prided himself, was above all things young and confiding.

Petrovski might have deceived him, might have sent him to the antipodes, if he had seen fit, but his master in the art of dissimulation had advised him to be truthful. Arthur, therefore, after some days' delay, was told the simple truth--that Maurice Grey, disgusted with his life in St. Petersburg, had made up his mind to turn his back on society altogether. With this view he had sought the mountains, and had established himself, one servant his only companion, in a chalet hastily fitted up with a few necessaries in one of the higher Swiss valleys.

The agent professed to have just received letters from this remote point. In them Mr. Grey had directed that his money and business-letters from England should be sent to the hotel nearest to his temporary home, and this was the address which was given to Arthur, which had previously been given to L'Estrange.

By the following night's mail Arthur left Moscow. As may well be supposed, he lost no time on the way.

Of this strange flight through almost the entire breadth of Europe he never thought afterward save in the light of a feverish dream. It seemed like a vision. Sleeping and waking he was flying still, with all manner of various impressions, multitudes of scenes and strange faces, flitting before him like a kind of phantasmagoria. Glimpses of grand cities, appearing but to vanish, vast solitudes, uncultivated and barren wastes, mountain-country and soft pastoral scenes passed before him in an ever-varying succession. At last the train had to be left behind; he had gained the mountains, and with them a mode of travelling that seemed painfully slow and wearisome to his brain, in a whirl with swift movement and tumultuous thought.

Arthur was haunted through those long days, and, strange to say, it was not Margaret's face that haunted him, nor even that of his gentle cousin who was pining in distant England for his return. The lovely child's face followed him day after day and night after night. It reminded him of failure, brought back in vivid colors the memory of what he looked upon as a species of ignominy, and yet, do what he would, he could not banish it. The bright golden hair, the dark mournful eyes, the fair contour, the childish grace returned again and again.

At times it was like a nightmare. He would see the child, even touch her, and as he touched her she would vanish. Once or twice during those long nights of travelling Arthur seriously interfered with the comfort of his fellow-voyagers by his strange proceedings. Reaching forward at one time, he would seize upon the hand or knee of the person who sat in front of him, laying himself open, if the individual were of the feminine order, to serious misconception--if of the masculine, to a rude rebuff and rough awakening; at another he would passionately grasp the window-blind, giving rise to an irresistible titter among those of his companions who did not find sleeping in a train such easy work as he did. But whenever Laura's face came before his mind, in sleeping or waking moments, Arthur looked at it with a strange reverence. To him it was scarcely a child's face. It seemed almost as if behind the fairness and beauty there was a meaning.

Arthur could not analyze character. He did not sufficiently understand human nature's diversity to be able to explain to himself why this child was so different from other children, but he felt it; and stronger almost than his longing to restore Maurice Grey to faith in his wife's perfections became his desire to rescue that child from him who had taken her, he firmly believed, with some bad motive, and to lead her back to her mother.

The strange thing was that she loved this man (for Petrovski had so impressed Arthur with a belief in his veracity that once more he had settled with himself the identity of Laura's companion). Could it be, then, that there was some good even in him? But Arthur would not follow out this line of reasoning. He was more than ever confirmed in his hatred of L'Estrange.

"There is something in the Bible," he said to himself, "about Satan putting on the form of an angel of light. This man has only followed the example of his forerunner in all evil. He is deceiving the innocent darling, and she thinks him good."

He was driving in an open sledge--for the season was late and snow had begun to fall on the mountains--when these thoughts crowded in upon his brain.

It was tolerably cold in these high latitudes, but the young man was wrapped up in a fur-lined travelling cloak, the thick leather apron of the sledge covered his knees, and a cigar emitting fragrant blue clouds, whose ascent into the pure air he watched curiously, was between his lips.

Arthur Forrest had not been bred in Belgravia altogether in vain. He understood very thoroughly how to make himself comfortable.

In this thing he considered himself fortunate. The crowd of Britons that yearly fill the Swiss solitudes with their all-engrossing presence had fled at the first breath of winter, "like doves to their windows."

Two or three hardy Swiss returning to their mountains, an adventurous German desirous of studying the aspect of Switzerland in winter, a Pole who wished to put the mountains, soon to be an almost impassable barrier, between himself and his enemies, the vigilant and all-powerful Russian police,--these, with a conductor and driver, formed the whole of the small cavalcade that crossed the St. Gothard on this bleak autumnal day.

In spite of the glorious scenes through which they had been passing, the beauty of Italy rising into the grand desolation of the country that belongs to the snow-kingdom, and that again descending into the awful grandeur of rugged precipices, hissing torrents and shaggy pines, the little party was gloomy. The Pole shivered, and folding his fur-cloak around him cursed the ancestral enemies of his race; the Swiss rubbed their hands, stamped their feet and looked defiantly at a threatening storm-cloud that was rising up behind them; the German tried to get up a shadow of enthusiasm. He stared, with what was meant to be earnestness, through his spectacles, emitted a series of "wunderschoens and wunderhuebschs," and strove dutifully to think that this was seeing life and entering sympathetically into Nature's most secret joys--the joy of the torrent, the delight of the snow-whirl. Perhaps it was scarcely matter for surprise that his enthusiasm left rather a dreary effect upon the minds of his companions.

Arthur was the only one who really enjoyed, for this was novelty to him, and in his fashionable life he had long been craving for something out of the common. Then, too, there was about this kind of travelling a certain necessity for endurance which braced his nerves. He was doing this for Margaret, and as each keen blast of wind, sweeping with biting force from the ice-fields, touched his young face, he felt the blood tingle in his veins. He was full of satisfaction, strong to endure.

With an Englishman's insight into possibilities he had forgotten nothing that could possibly conduce to an approximation to comfort in such a situation as that in which he found himself. This being so, he was able to enter more thoroughly into Nature's strange caprices, as exhibited in this land of wonders, than the sentimental German, who shivered in a threadbare coat. For--there can be no doubt about it--physical comfort frees the mind: when the body is irritated by discomfort, the mind, sympathetic, is occupied by itself.

In the intervals of meditation on his plans and further attempts for Margaret, and efforts to take in and write upon his brain some at least of the wonderful combinations of form and coloring through which they were passing, Arthur looked with a dreamy philosophy at his fellow-travellers.

The young man was inclined, from the depths of his magnificent cloak, to wonder lazily why Providence had bestowed the world's allowance of common sense upon our nation. The experience of foreigners which he had been gaining during those weeks of travelling had only confirmed Arthur in his preconceived idea. One and all they were absurd. The absurdities might differ in kind and degree--this the young man would not attempt to deny--and no doubt there were clever people among them; still, as a rule, were they to be compared to Englishmen?

He looked at the sturdy, commonplace Swiss, the shivering Pole (only half a man he pronounced him), the sentimental German, trying so conscientiously to enjoy, and with a feeling of self-gratulation that actually helped to send a warm glow through his frame answered the question by a decided negative. No wonder they pronounced the young Englishman supercilious; he had intended to be very condescending. From the heights of his superior nationality it was so easy to look with a calm pity upon those who had been less highly favored by Nature. It need scarcely be considered matter for surprise that they regarded his condescension in another light, and were inclined to repel his spasmodic efforts to be very pleasant and friendly.

All the travellers were glad when the foot of the mountain was reached. Even the indefatigable Arthur, when he found himself so near his destination, thought it well to take a night's rest at Amsteg, where he broke off from the St. Gothard route for Meyringen and Grindelwald. It was somewhere between these two places that the chalet occupied by Maurice Grey was supposed to be situated.

Once in the neighborhood, the young man felt that it would not be difficult to find it. The very fact of a stranger having made for himself a lonely habitation in the mountains would be sufficient to render his home a celebrated place.

Arthur's only difficulty now was what it had been at York before his interview with Margaret--the framing of some reason which might account for his seeming intrusiveness. He formed a thousand plans. He would wander in the direction of the chalet, he would put himself in the position of a benighted traveller thrown on the hospitality of the hermit; finally, he determined to torment himself no longer--Fate would perhaps befriend him as before. That evening Arthur sent another letter to Margaret and his cousin. There was not much in it of the impressions which the grand scenes among which he was sojourning had written on his mind, but it held a courage and hope that might inspire the lonely wife and bereaved mother with a kindred sentiment.

Arthur was an inexperienced traveller, and the plan of his route had been principally traced in obedience to the suggestions of the few English people he had met. It is more than possible, therefore, that the route chosen was not the most direct; for although it had not been possible for L'Estrange in any way to emulate his swiftness in travelling (he was obliged to suit himself to Laura's capabilities), yet on that night when, from the small village in the valleys, Arthur sent his second letter to Margaret, the child and her protector were already at the address given by Petrovski, in the close vicinity of the child's father, of her friend's most bitter and unrelenting enemy. She was utterly unconscious of the strange position, though a change had come over her in those last days of travelling. There was about her even more of the sedateness of the thoughtful woman, still less of the child's merry unconcern. For the shadows that had threatened this young life's joy were gathering thickly around her. She was in the centre of emotions too strong, of a life too earnest, for her tender youth, and her friend saw with concern how the color faded from her face, how her brow grew transparent, how the quiet gestures of a woman became more and more habitant.

But he could do nothing; the mischief had been wrought in that hour when his passion had overpowered his judgment, when he had consummated the rash deed of taking a tender little one from the mother's fostering care. He had done what he could to obviate the evil, and in the interval the child had grown dear to him as his own soul. This it was that added a tenfold poignancy to the pain with which L'Estrange sometimes looked at her.

Once or twice in the course of this later journey L'Estrange had further accesses of the pain he dreaded, and more than once he had been forced to resort to his kindly enemy, entrancing opium, to stay his fierce pangs for a time. It produced its true effect upon him. Moments he had of joys too great for earth--moments when his imagination played freely, when his heart expanded, when all the dark places of his past life's journey were irradiated with a golden light, and when the growing uneasiness of the present strangeness and the certain future pain passed into calm security and pleasant rosy dreams. But the false potion brought other moments in its train--moments when his whole being seemed weak and nerveless, when deep depression possessed his soul, when even the higher life and nobler possibilities of existence which he had been learning in the child's pure presence became to his languid soul unattainable as the dreams of a weak visionary.

At such times he would sit with folded arms and knit brows looking out and away to the far stretches of horizon that were fleeing evermore before them. Only the child had power to arouse him from one of these gloomy fits of abstraction, though sometimes his mood was so dark that even she scarcely ventured to break in upon it. But she never really feared him; there was a strange sympathy between the two that made her understand him in some wonderful way.

As they neared the end of their journey and rest became a possibility, L'Estrange once more tried to refrain from his death-winged potion. He felt that languor and weakness were possessing themselves of his being, and strength of mind would be more needful than strength of body for the work he had to do.

Only those who have known what this refraining means can understand his sufferings. Racked with pain, that reckless gnawing pain which seems to be verily eating into life, he lay for two nights and days on a bed in the hotel at Grindelwald, where he had decided to remain for a few days. And still during the long hours the patient child, his ministering angel in very truth, sat by his bedside helping her friend to bear, and waiting for him to be better.