CHAPTER I.

_WAITING._

Look? I would rather look on thee one minute Than paradise for a whole day--such days As are in heaven.

Autumn had fallen upon the little village by the seaside where Margaret was waiting and hoping and longing, with still no tidings, or but very scant ones, of her lost. She and Adele were left almost alone, for the bleak winds and stormy seas had driven away the few visitors. It was a very different scene from the one which Arthur had looked in upon on that sunny August day not so many weeks before, for now the balmy summer winds had given place to strong blustering gales; the trees, almost bare, shivered in their nakedness; and instead of the soft, continuous murmuring of rippling waters, there came ever and anon to the ear the boom of waves breaking in upon the shore. It was a dreary time. Chill mists and equinoctial gales divided the sea between them, while the dank earth-smell of decaying leaves and dying blossoms made the earth desolate.

The two women in the little cottage, knit together by so strange a tie, fought vigorously against the influence of the season, but there were times when it was too strong for them--times when Adele would read danger in the stormy seas and long passionately for Arthur's safe return--times when Margaret would fear that her hope had been vain, that never, in all the long life that lay before her, would she see her husband again or know the mystery of his long forgetfulness.

Through it all Margaret and Adele clung to one another; their mutual friendship was a source of great comfort to both. Adele was unlike many others of her sex. The knowledge that Margaret was the woman who had first called out her cousin's force of character, instead of making her sick with jealousy, filled her soul with loving reverence for her who had been the cause of this awakening. She never hid her frank admiration, her untiring love and sympathy, from her companion; and what wonder that Margaret returned her feelings, honored her as she deserved, and reckoned her friendship the most precious thing her years of suffering had brought her? They were different, these two who had been thrown in so strange a manner upon one another's society--as different in character as they were in appearance; and perhaps, strange as it may seem, the younger of the two, who seemed little more than a child with her flaxen hair and bright blue eyes and general fragility, was stronger in some ways than the woman of queenly stature, of much experience, of many woes.

In any case, since that evening when Arthur left them the relations between them were partially reversed, for now it was Margaret who leaned upon Adele for support and comfort. When her courage was about to fail utterly; when, weary and heart-sick, she was ready to arraign God himself for cruelty and injustice; when the long days which would have to pass before anything certain could be known seemed so hard to live through that she would clench her hands and pace up and down, seeking rest and finding none,--then the younger and more inexperienced would bring her strength, would speak with a calm assurance she was far from feeling, would use a gentle authority in enforcing rest that Margaret found it difficult to resist.

"I wonder how it is, Adele," she said one day when, after a paroxysm of bitter weeping, the young girl had soothed her into something like rest--"I wonder how it is that you have such power? A few moments ago everything seemed hopeless. You tell me to hope, and my courage comes back. What makes you so certain?"

"I scarcely know," replied the young girl; she was silent for a few moments, then added in a low tone, "I believe in God."

Margaret put out her hand; it had grown thin and transparent during these last days: "Darling, I know, but He allows wrong."

"Not for ever," replied Adele firmly, taking the offered hand in her warm grasp. "Margaret, be patient--your wrong will end--the truth will be known."

"But if _he_ does not know it, what will be the use? And perhaps he is dead. Ah, listen!" She raised her hands and pressed them against her ears.

"Only the wind, dear; but why need you mind that? October is a stormy month, and those we love are far inland. Come! I see I must read Arthur's last letter to convince you that the meeting has not taken place on the stormy seas, with only a plank between them and destruction. Confess, now, something like this was working in your brain."

"I _am_ very foolish--I know it."

Adele stooped and kissed her friend: "You are weak, darling. Remember how patient you were with me when my strength seemed as if it would not come. Now it is my turn to keep your courage up; you are wasting away to skin and bone with fretting, Margaret. Have faith!"

"In what, Adele?"

"In yourself--in God--in the future," replied the young girl quietly.

She rose from her seat by Margaret's side and fetched her Bible. We learn in very different ways. To this young girl, trained from her babyhood to think of nothing better and higher than dress and gayety, than self-pleasing in some form, religion had come of itself.

Adele had always loved to think of the something that for ever lies beyond this world and its fleeting joys; so it was not strange that in her hour of perplexity she should turn instinctively to this for comfort and help.

The afternoon of that chill October day waned, the last flickering rays of light fled, while the young girl read softly of that beyond--the city that hath no need of the sun, the fair land where night is not.

"Patience," she had said.

"I _will_ have patience," whispered Margaret, "even to the end," she added faintly, "for the morning cometh." She paused for a few moments, as if in enjoyment of new rest; but suddenly, as it were, the full import of her thought broke over her: "Earth holds my treasures," she cried passionately. "God forgive me! I _cannot_ wish to leave them yet. Adele, light the lamp and bring that green book from my table. An old story is haunting me to-night. It has followed me in my strange life, for sometimes it seems to me that I have loved the human too much. Will you read it for me, dear?"

She repeated some of the lines in a low tone:

"Then breaking into tears, 'Dear God,' she cried, 'and must we see All blissful things depart from us or e'er we go to Thee? Ay, sooth we feel too strong in weal to need Thee on that road, But woe being come, the soul is dumb that crieth not on God.'"

Adele's eyes filled with tears: "Not to-night, dear, it sounds so dreary."

"Yes, to-night. I feel as if the good and evil were struggling together in my heart, and I have a certain craving to hear the old story, which long ago, when I was an uncomprehending child, used to move me to tears:

"'Onora! Onora! her mother is calling.'"

Adele said no more. She began to read the "Lay of the Brown Rosary" in a soft low voice, that trembled often from excess of feeling. It seemed real and possible in the tremulous half light of the little room, the sound of boisterous winds and breaking waves running through it like a vivid illustration of its imagery; Margaret's fair face, in its pure delicate outline, her pale patient hands folded calmly, giving a kind of witness to its truth. She listened with apparent calm, but once or twice her face flushed, and now and then the tears would roll one by one down her pale cheeks.

Adele read well. She knew how to put the true spirit of the scene into the words that represented them. She came to the third part, the spirits of good round the maiden's bed:

"How hath she sinned? In bartering love, God's love, for man's,"

when she was suddenly interrupted.

Margaret had started up, her eyes and cheeks on flame, "There are steps outside. Adele! Adele! go and see."

Adele went to the window, while Margaret shaded the lamp. "A man standing outside," she said, "hunting for the latch of the gate. Be calm, dear; it's only the postman. He promised to come if there should be any letter to-night. He's very good not to have forgotten. And such a night, too! Poor old fellow! I must tell Martha to give him supper."

"But the letter! the letter!" said Margaret, sinking back upon her pillow. The flush of excitement had died out from her cheeks, leaving them deadly pale.

Adele forgot the letter and the postman. She rushed to her friend's side.

"I thought _he_ had come back," said Margaret faintly. "Don't look so frightened, dear; this is nothing," but she moaned as if in pain, "O God! if this is to last much longer I _cannot, cannot_ bear it!"

Adele stooped to raise her friend, and her warm clasping arms spoke boundless love and sympathy: "Be of good courage, Margaret; perhaps this is to say that they are near."

But the young girl's heart sank. What if, after all, their sacrifices and suffering should be in vain? for Margaret was visibly sinking.

It sometimes happens so. The brave heart that has borne unflinchingly a weary weight of woe fails suddenly when hope--but hope that must be waited for--succeeds. And Margaret had been tried almost past endurance by her life of solitude. A glass of water revived her for the moment. She did not faint, and in the interval Martha brought up three letters. Two were from Arthur, the other from Mr. Robinson, who was still acting, or professing to act, as Margaret's legal adviser.

This was set aside for after-perusal. They did not reckon very much upon his zeal and earnestness. But Margaret's letter from Arthur was eagerly seized, almost too eagerly, for when she had opened it the words swam before her eyes; she found it impossible to decipher it.

"Read it, Adele," she said; "my eyes are dim this evening."

It was the letter that had been written in Moscow--the letter that had begun so joyfully, that had ended in a cloud. Arthur had not let them know in his letter the reason for the sudden discouragement, but the two women read it and their hearts sank.

They had received one letter before this. It had told of the meeting with Laura in Paris. In it, too, Arthur had announced, with all the sanguine assurance of youth, that the next letter, to be written in Moscow, would certainly bring positive news. He could see no reason for doubting this. The second letter had met with certain delays _en route_, and the very length of the interval had in her most courageous moods filled Margaret with hope.

When, therefore, the long looked-for letter came, and heralded nothing but another endless journey, another weary search, her heart sank, her courage failed suddenly.

She turned her face to the wall and wept. "I shall never live to see it," she moaned.

Adele was bewildered; she scarcely knew how to comfort her friend, for her own heart was sad. This unfolding of another weary age of suspense and delay had disappointed her bitterly. In her despair she turned to the lawyer's letter. It might possibly promise hope from another source.

She read it hastily, then, stooping over her friend, "Listen, Margaret dear; you must be brave and not give way. Mr. Robinson is to be here to-morrow; perhaps he may bring news about Laura."

But the mother shook her head: "No, no; my little one is lost--lost! Child, I tell you, God is punishing me. I have sinned."

"Margaret, be calm. How have you sinned?"

But the young girl trembled as she spoke, there was so intense a sadness in Margaret's face.

She raised her head from the pillow, and throwing back the long waves of yellow hair from her face and eyes looked wildly at her companion. And then she laughed--a low hollow laugh that made Adele shiver.

"In bartering love, God's love, for man's!" she cried, and leaped from the bed, for the madness of fever was on her. "And what is worse, I do it still," she cried. "Yes, I would barter my soul--my soul, do you hear?--only to see him once"--from a shriek her voice sank into plaintive wailing--"to feel his hand upon my hair as in the old days--to hear him call me love, wife. Oh, Maurice, Maurice!"

Adele was frightened, but she would not call for assistance. Her tears falling fast, she threw her arms round her friend and tried by gentle force to make her lie down again.

But at first Margaret resisted. "Let me alone," she cried; "none of them understand, for men cannot love like women. I must go myself and tell him or he will never know. _He_ might have done wrong--_I_ should have loved him still. Dear, I could never have left _you_ for these long years without a word, a sign; and what had I done?" Her voice sank, she fell back on the bed. "It was God's will. I loved him more than Heaven--more than goodness."

The paroxysm had exhausted her. Adele covered her feet with a shawl. Margaret closed her eyes and fell into a troubled sleep, which lasted about half an hour. When she awoke the room was in darkness, only the white moonlight streamed in under the raised blind, and there was the sound of bitter weeping by her bed. She put out her hand: "Adele, are you there? What is it, dear?"

"I thought you were fast asleep;" and the young girl choked back her sobs courageously.

"But what has happened, Adele? what makes you cry like this?"

"Don't ask me, please, but try to sleep again."

"Child, you must think me very selfish. Was it on my account you were crying? I think I must have said some strange things before I went to sleep, but I forget what they were--indeed, I sometimes fear my brain is giving way. But, Adele dear, I can't allow you to grieve for me in this way. Perhaps it was something else. Tell me. Come, I intend to know."

She drew one of Adele's cold little hands from her face and held it lovingly, then the young girl told out her trouble in a few simple words.

Her religion was the growth of her loving heart; she had no particular doctrines, for so-called theology always seemed to her too hard to be understood, but she believed, in the full simplicity and truth of her young soul, what many religionists by their harsh doctrine practically deny--that God, the Father of spirits, is a merciful God, "tender, compassionate, boundless in loving-kindness and truth." She wept that night because the friend whom she loved so deeply would not take to her soul the comfort of the truth that God loved her.

It had come over Adele's sympathetic heart that evening like a kind of agony that the loving God is for ever, through the long ages, misunderstood and denied--that while He is calling in His tenderest tones to the stricken, they will look to any comfort rather than His for help in their trouble. "God is angry with them--God is punishing them," when in reality "God is with them--God is loving them." She told it all to Margaret in a voice often broken with tears, and her earnest conviction gave a certain reality to her words.

Margaret's sore heart was soothed. "It may be," she said. "God grant it! Dear, I was beginning to feel Him near, but now the earthly things, the longings of youth, have come back with this delayed hope. They stand between my soul and God; I must long for them more than I long for Him."

"And who told you He would be angry, Margaret? Could He wish you to do what is contrary to nature? He gave you these earthly desires, this longing, this love. I sometimes think"--the young girl's voice sank, she bowed her head reverently--"that Christ became a man for this, not only that _He_ might understand us, but that we might know He understands. It is such a good thing; it helps us to bear."

Margaret smiled: "I think it will come. I am better already; but, dear, where did you learn all this wisdom?"

There was a knock at the door which prevented an answer. The landlady's little nephew was standing in the passage, a few choice flowers in his small hands. He wanted to say good-night to Mrs. Grey, and his auntie had sent her some flowers.

It was the best possible diversion. The child's blue eyes smiled up into those of the weary woman, and they brought her pleasant memories. She took the child up on the bed kissed him tenderly and listened to his infant prattle.

Then when the landlady appeared, quiet and respectful, but allowing her honest sympathy to be seen, to ask whether the little boy were troublesome and to say that it was his bed-time, Margaret turned to her comforter with something like hope in her face. "Child," she said, "you are right; God is merciful. I will trust Him."

They slept together that night, for Margaret's nerves were unstrung, she could not bear to be left alone; but both of them slept calmly, and a peace, verily Heaven-born, brooded over the small company of women in their temporary home within the circle of the sea-sounds.