CHAPTER VIII.

_A TETE-A-TETE DINNER AT THE HOTEL._

For how false is the fairest breast! How little worth, if true! And who would wish possessed What all must scorn or rue? Then pass by beauty with looks above: Oh seek never--share never--woman's love.

Maurice Grey's costume was as faultless as that of the young man whom he had admired in the hotel-garden when at the strange hour of two o'clock P. M. he, in obedience to the summoning bell, peered into the long dining-room, at the extremity of which was a small table spread with two or three covers. Karl, his face beaming all over as he recognized his master, was standing behind the chair destined for him, the young Englishman was brushing his feet vigorously on the mat before the door that stood midway in the room, two waiters were hovering about helplessly.

Maurice took his place at one side, Arthur Forrest seated himself at the other side of the table. They were Englishmen and total strangers one to the other, therefore it is scarcely necessary to say that the places they chose were as far apart as the small size of the table would permit. And yet the two men were anxious to know one another--Maurice, because he felt that his companion's freshness would be a relief to his jaded soul; Arthur, because he had recognized in Maurice Grey the husband of Margaret, the man for whom he had been searching through the length and breadth of Europe.

Burning with anxiety to unfold his mission, he could scarcely preserve his composure now the fatal moment had arrived, now he and the man he had been seeking were at last face to face. For he could not be mistaken; he had ascertained from the landlord the name of this only other Englishman besides himself who had not fled from the valleys at the first breath of winter, and Maurice's likeness, confided to him by Margaret, had been too often studied in its every lineament for him not to be able at once to know its original. With the knowledge came an excitement that threatened to overpower him utterly; but he controlled himself. That calm self-possession and a certain amount of diplomacy were absolutely necessary if he would bring his mission to a successful issue, he felt most keenly.

Once Maurice caught the young men's eye scanning his face, and as the eyes met Arthur blushed; he felt, too much for his comfort and composure, that the slightest false move might be fatal. Maurice was utterly unsuspicious; he attributed his young companion's confusion to embarrassment at being caught exhibiting a little too much curiosity, and ne was simply amused, determining in his own mind to find out more about the young fellow, so evidently a gentleman, yet so frank and transparent in his ways.

A few moments of delay passed by; then, as there was no further accession to the company, soup was served. Arthur, too full of tremulous excitement to be able to find a single commonplace, began to eat in total silence; Maurice looked across at him between the spoonfuls.

"Apparently we are to dine alone together," he said at last with a pleasant smile; "rather a different scene from the one I looked in upon a few weeks ago."

"I suppose this place is very full in the season," was Arthur's not very brilliant reply.

"Especially so this year; it is gaining in renown, and certainly the situation is good. But to me hotel-life is _so_ distasteful."

Arthur was beginning to gain confidence. "Do you think so?" he said. "Now, I like it--abroad, that is to say; the people one meets are off their stilts, and generally inclined to be friendly; there is no bother, something approaching to comfort, and plenty of life and gayety."

"I'm afraid present circumstances will scarcely answer to your description," said Maurice.

Arthur laughed: "No, indeed, you and I seem to be the only sane people in the establishment. I gather from the waiters--one of whom, happily for me, speaks English--that the present company consists of an elderly gentleman, ill or out of his mind, certainly peculiar; his daughter, an angel of beauty and goodness; a fuming Austrian, scouring the mountains for his lost wife; attendant brother, similarly occupied; landlord, landlady, staff of servants."

Maurice smiled: "I think you have omitted nobody, only, for fear your expectations should have risen too high, even under circumstances so meagre, I should inform you that the angel of beauty is a child, a mere baby; but my arrival only preceded yours by a few hours, so, like you, I speak from rumor. Now, may I venture to ask how long you will be likely to stand out against such an atrocious state of things? I have an interest in the question, as I believe I am a fixture for some time."

It was by no means an easy question for Arthur to answer. He might have said that the time of his stay depended entirely upon Maurice himself. Not being able to give the true answer, he treated the question as lightly as possible: "Oh I I can scarcely say, exactly. I was recommended to come--mountains in winter, snow, and that kind of thing; they certainly look very well, but, you see, I am not precisely an enthusiast in that line."

"Was it for your health?" asked Maurice with grave interest, looking compassionately at the fresh young face, whose brilliant coloring might possibly hide disease.

This question made Arthur turn as red as fire. The knowledge of what his errand really was rendered him painfully self-conscious. "Why, no--yes--no, I mean," he answered, his confusion growing as he advanced.--"What a fool I must be!" he muttered to himself angrily; then, as he caught a faint smile, polite but perplexed, on the lips of his questioner, he controlled himself suddenly. "The fact is," he said rapidly, "I've been so desperately chaffed about this midwinter journey--But, you see, I rather like cold weather, and the air here is bracing."

Maurice saw his questions had been ill-timed, and with true courtesy proceeded to change the subject: "You would not have said so yesterday. Then, and for some days previously, it was anything but bracing up here. We had a fine blanket of cold mist about us--not a tree to be seen beyond the distance of a handsbreadth."

"I thought you had only arrived yesterday," said Arthur, a tremor in his voice. He knew perfectly well whence Maurice had come, but it was his plan to feign ignorance; he wished to draw him on to speak about himself.

Maurice smiled: "I don't come from very far. You must have heard from the people about here of the peculiar Englishman who shuns civilized places--I believe this is the form the rumors take--and lives by himself in a chalet among the mountains. That strange individual is before you now."

Arthur bowed, as in acknowledgment of this peculiar kind of introduction. "I must confess," he replied, "that Mr. Grey is known to me by fame, and being so far in advance of you I must ask you to be obliging enough to accept my card. If, as I suppose, we are to dine in this way tete-a-tete for some few days to come, it is as well that we should at least know each other by name."

"Thank you," replied Maurice cordially. He was at a loss to account for the timidity, the hesitation, the evident constraint of this young man, who was yet, to all appearance, no novice in the ways of the world; but he liked him and wished to set him at his ease.

"You have just come from England, I presume?" he said after a short pause, looking kindly into Arthur's flushed face. "_I_ have been a wanderer for many years. How do you like this kind of life?"

"It has been pleasant enough," replied the younger man, reassured once more by his companion's friendliness; "but, do you know, I find nothing to compare with the comfort, the convenience--in fact, you know the kind of thing that one finds at home. Here one can't get even decent tobacco; there is nothing to be had in the way of drink but sour wine. As for the cooking, some people praise it very highly; but--" As he spoke there came up a little dish of vegetables swimming in butter. "Bah! they call _that_ an _entree_, I suppose."

Maurice laughed, and helped himself to the obnoxious dish: "You see what wandering does. _I_ have become cosmopolitan in my tastes. From the sauerkraut of Germany to the caviare of Russia I am tolerably at home, able at least to pick up a living; but come, you are right about the wine, which I really think grows in sourness with the added degrees of frost; we might have better tipple than this, and it is an occasion. I have not done the social for many a long day. The 'Wein kart,' Karl. Let us order up the best bottle of champagne the landlord has in his cellar, though I greatly fear his stock is low. Karl, inquire for me--any first quality champagne left?"

The landlord's cellar was not absolutely empty. In a few moments a bottle of very excellent champagne stood on the table between the two young men. Maurice drained a brimming glass; Arthur would scarcely do more than wet his lips. He had not forgotten his purpose, and to bring it to a successful issue he knew it would be necessary to have all his wits about him. Laughingly, Maurice reproached his young companion for his abstemiousness, and filled and refilled his own glass with the glittering draught. For after the dull weight of loneliness, after the terrible experiences of the morning, after the gloomy musing that had oppressed him with its horror, this return, even transitory as he felt it to be, to some of life's amenities was a boundless relief to the man's soul. In the old happy days society had been Maurice Grey's life; it had intoxicated him like wine. Among his peers, when, soul meeting soul, the sparkles of wit, the flashes of gay humor had been struck out in the heat of social intercourse, he had reigned as a king: brilliant, vivacious, boundlessly hospitable, his society had been courted by the world, and he had met the world courteously, drawing out from its pleasures the extreme of good that was in them.

But misery had changed Maurice woefully, and it was only when the wine was in his blood, when its liquid fire was coursing through his veins, that he could return in any degree to his former self--that he could become once more the fascinating, brilliant, cordial man of society. On this particular occasion he had determined to forget himself. It was the flying back of the bow that had been bent nigh to breaking. Wine could make him forget, and he poured out glass after glass, draining them rapidly, as a man might do who was consumed with burning thirst. Gradually his eyes began to shine and his words to flow more readily. The haughty, self-contained man spoke freely of himself, and made a friend and companion of the youth whom hazard had thrown into his way.

Arthur listened silently, with a tremulous joy. If Maurice would confide in him his task was half done already. But love had taught the young man prudence. He would hear before he would speak; he would earnestly study the character of him he had come so far to seek before he would determine how and when his object should be revealed. Maurice, in this mood, was a marvellously agreeable companion. The younger man, standing, as it were, on the threshold of life, listened, entranced, to his descriptions of the great world, and Mr. Grey knew the world better than most men. He had plunged into every kind of society; he had feigned to be what he was not, that he might gain access to that which would otherwise have been denied to him; he had played upon the weaknesses of men and women, only to scathe them with his biting ridicule. Then too, he had seen the world from a variety of standpoints. During the first part of his life as a man he had taken a part in the careers which the great world offers to its votaries; afterward he had lived as a spectator: holding himself aloof from the heartburnings, the jealousies, the ambitions, the intrigues, he had been able more calmly to note and criticise. He had made undying enemies, he had knit to himself faithful friends, he had been concerned in strange histories; but all these things had been apart from himself. As far as his own feelings were concerned, they were nothing, feathers light as air, incidents _pour passer le temps_--nothing more. He was in the midst of a brilliant series of anecdotes drawn from his life in St. Petersburg, which had been fruitful in events, commenting lightly, even with a kind of sarcasm--for these things could not move Maurice Grey--on the enthusiasm he had excited in female breasts, and on the confusion and dismay which his mysterious absence would create, when the light began to wane, and the waiter came in to set a match to the solitary oil-lamp which was the hotel dining-room's winter allowance of light.

Maurice stopped and drew out his watch: "By Jove! young gentleman, your society is so fascinating that I had altogether forgotten the time. Do you know we have been nearly three hours at table? Now tell me candidly, have you any plan for this evening? I need scarcely ask," he continued laughing; "amusements are not in this primitive corner; if you went out to walk you would infallibly lose yourself, and as far as I can make out there are in the hotel at present no fair ladies to conquer; but so much the better for you. If I had my life to live over again, I would flee woman as I would the plague." His brow contracted. "I wonder why I talk about women at all. They are all alike false and fickle."

Arthur looked up. He was but a boy, and in presence of this man of the world, steeped to the lips in cynicism, it was difficult to express the strong faith of his young soul. But Margaret's face in its calm beauty came suddenly like a sweet vision before his eyes, and he answered, trembling slightly, "I am younger than you, Mr. Grey, and have had much less experience of the world; but I know that in this thing you are wrong. There may be some women who are bad and faithless, and all that kind of thing--there are ever so many more who are good and pure. Perhaps you have been unfortunate in your intercourse with women--perhaps--" his voice shook, and there was a sudden light in his blue eyes--"perhaps you have made some terrible mistake."

Maurice was earnestly intent on the business of lighting his cigar from the solitary oil-lamp, so that the look on Arthur's face escaped him, but the earnestness, the apparent meaning in the boy's voice, impressed him strangely. He turned round instantly, a slight appearance of surprise in his manner; then as he caught sight of the flushed face and gleaming eyes of his companion, he shook his head and his lips curled into something like a sneer: "My dear fellow, you are young. Wait a few years, and your vigorous championship will die down, withered by circumstances."

He laughed bitterly, and Arthur turned away, a cold feeling at his heart. He could not understand this cynicism. To him who knew this man's history it seemed cruel and wanton beyond compare.

But Maurice was good-natured, and he liked the boy; his very freshness, whose springs he had been trying to poison, pleased him. He took him by the arm and looked into his averted face. "Have I frightened you altogether?" he said kindly, "or will you listen to what I was about to propose?" Arthur smiled his acquiescence, but it was with an effort; he felt in no smiling mood.

"If you like, then, let us adjourn to my quarters. This great place looks desolate with the one oil-lamp they generously allow us. There I have a jar of excellent whisky, and Karl will soon find us all appliances and means to boot for the concoction of whisky-punch, which, if you had lived so long in these inhospitable regions as I have, you would know to be a real luxury."

Arthur smiled: "I have not tasted a drop since I left England."

"Then you agree to my proposal? Come!"

The two men rose, Maurice linking his arm into that of his companion, and leaving the long dining-room, threaded the ill-lit passages which led to Maurice's apartment. The door of the room adjoining his was ajar, and close to its threshold they paused involuntarily for a second or two. What made them stop was nothing more than a child's voice singing a child's hymn: an untaught, feeble voice, thrilling with melody that made it tremble, there was yet in it that which irresistibly drew and fascinated. Even in its weakness there was something strange. To the imaginative it would have seemed like a woman's heart trying to express itself through the feeble medium of a child's voice. For there was soul and purpose in the quavering treble that trilled against the air. With one accord the men stopped to listen, holding their breath lest any of the sounds should escape them. The voice paused a moment and they passed on, but before they had reached their destination, Maurice, who had been looking back toward the door whence the sound had proceeded, caught an instantaneous glimpse of the owner of the childish voice. A little golden head and fair face, on which light from within the room was shining, peered out and looked up and down the passage. Only for a moment, but in that moment the dark eyes of the golden-haired child and the dark eyes of the world-weary man met. The child, frightened vaguely, retreated to the inside of the room; the man staggered as if he had received a blow, and sank down, to his companion's dismay, pale and speechless on the nearest chair.

Maurice, it must be remembered, had been drinking pretty freely and in such a condition as his men are scarcely so well able to master their sudden emotions as they may be at another time.

The face of his child, the sound of the hymns her mother had sung at her cradle, was to Maurice like the dim memory of a fair dream. He did not for a moment recognize the child as his own; he was far from imagining that the little Laura was near him, and the look in her eyes, the expression of her features, the music of her voice, constituted a haunting mystery that absolutely staggered him.

He met her eyes, and suddenly, as in a vision, his wife's pure face, his child's cradle, all the details in their utmost minuteness of a home that had once been happy, flashed over his mind. He did not know how it had come. He scarcely even connected this sudden revulsion of feeling with the sight of the child's face; he only knew that it was there, a haunting memory of past happiness, and that his present pain was almost too great to be borne. Covering his face with his hands, the strong, cynical man sat for some minutes--minutes that seemed ages to Arthur--plunged in bitter thought.

When he looked up, Arthur thought his face was more haggard than it had been, and there was a certain excitement in his manner. He rang the bell vigorously. "You will say I am a pretty host, Mr. Forrest," he said lightly; "this is scarcely the entertainment I promised you."

Then, as Karl, who had been in the close neighborhood of the room expecting some such summons, appeared in the doorway, "Try and get a small kettle, two tumblers and a lemon."

In a very short time the required articles were in the room, and with his favorite beverage before him the frown passed from Maurice's brow and the gloomy abstraction from his manner.

He returned to the descriptions which his adjournment to his own room had interrupted, and Arthur was by turns convulsed with merriment, thrilling with sympathy, absorbed in interest; but Maurice's tales left a sad impression. There ran through them all the spirit of the preacher's bitter cry, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

"Yes, Solomon was a wise man," cried Maurice at the end of one of his vivid bits of description. "'One man in a thousand have I found, but a woman have I not found.'"

He flung down his glass with a laugh so bitter that it made his young companion shudder.

"You look incredulous," continued Maurice; "when the gray begins to sprinkle your hair you will come to the same conclusion. Look!" he bowed his head and showed the deep furrows that lined his brow, the white that shone out here and there from his dark hair. "I _could_ have done great things in the world: a woman made me what I am--a wreck in every sense of the word."

The whisky was rapidly mounting to the man's brain. Maurice's cheek was flushed, his eyes glistened, but he recollected himself suddenly: "I am a fool to prate about my own affairs, God knows it were best to hide them; but, young man, you will understand it all some day." He laughed harshly. "Lives there a man who has not suffered?"

Arthur listened to his ravings, and as he did so the memory of Margaret's pure life, the echo of her noble words, shone out to him like light through the darkness of her husband's desperate words.

At first he felt his heart swell with indignation, but he looked at Maurice and the indignation changed to pity. "Yes," said the young man to himself, "to believe such a woman false must be enough to kill a man's faith in humanity."

He rose from his seat, and stood up before the world-sated man strong in the pure faith of his young soul. His companion had said he would understand this some day.

"Never!" said Arthur earnestly; "God grant that day may never come! I know women on whose constancy and purity I would stake my life." He was thinking of Margaret and Adele.

Maurice looked at him curiously. For the second time he saw that in Arthur's face which made him think there might possibly be a meaning under his vigorous assertions.

"Life is not very much to stake," he said lightly--"more, no doubt, to you than to me--but I confess I am curious." The cynical smile which Arthur disliked was playing round his lips. "I have given you a chapter out of my experience; return it by giving me one out of yours. I should like to know more about those fair ladies--but perhaps they are _not_ fair; that would make all the difference--upon whose integrity you would be ready to stake your life." Then his voice deepened and his brow contracted: "God knows I would have done the same once upon a time, but that is past, with other things."

There was silence between the two men for a few moments; then Maurice looked across at the young face, on which a shade of weariness was resting, with some compunction.

"Poor fellow!" he said gently, "I have done wrong. Faith is such a beautiful thing, and it lasts so short a time, I should have left you yours."

But Arthur looked up almost angrily: "You cannot surely think that _my_ faith is weakened by anything you have said."

Maurice smiled. "Youthful infatuation!" he muttered. "But let me hear your story," he added aloud, "then perhaps I shall discover that unlike mine your faith is founded on a rock."

Arthur looked at his companion searchingly. The last words had been carelessly spoken, for the excitement brought on by wine and whisky was wearing Maurice out; fatigue and exhaustion were fast taking possession of him.

The young man read this, and he rose to his feet.

"I cannot tell you my story to-night," he said; "it is rather long, considering the lateness of the hour."

"As you will, my dear fellow." Maurice's eyes were nearly closed.

Arthur went to his own room, and when Karl appeared a few minutes later to take his master's last commands, he had great difficulty in persuading him of the desirability of undressing and lying down between the sheets like a Christian. He succeeded at last, and Maurice slept such a deep unbroken sleep as he had not known for days; but he woke with a racking headache and a general sense of dissatisfaction.