CHAPTER IV.

_A DREAM INTERRUPTED AND A STRANGE REVELATION MADE._

Just as I thought I had caught sight of heaven, It came to naught, as dreams of heaven on earth Do always.

The Alpine mountains again--"silences of everlasting hills"--Nature and man face to face in the quiet, stealthy creeping on of night!

Maurice Grey sat in his little chalet alone; no friend was near to catch the outflowings of his heart--no watcher, not even a faithful servant, to note the changes that followed one another over his face. The untouched meal, prepared by old Marie, was on the table; he sat before his desk facing the little window, and looked out with sad, weary eyes.

For more than an hour he had been thinking, reviewing the tale Arthur had told him, trying frantically to rend the net of mystery that surrounded him, but trying in vain. A letter was under his hand. He had read it over by the failing light, and then crushed it together in his strong grasp. It was an old, faded, yellow paper which had evidently lain for years in his desk, but the sting of that it contained was still as fresh as on the first day when it had been read. The letter was one of those anonymous productions which perhaps show up in more lurid light than anything else the depths of cowardly spite that lie hidden in the hearts of men. This particular one, to give it its due, was well put together and plausible.

The writer began by acknowledging cordially the apparent cowardice of the step he had taken. Necessity and strong feeling were urged as the excuse. He represented himself as one who owed a debt of gratitude to Mr. Grey; it was therefore peculiarly painful to see him imposed upon. For in purport it was an accusation, cleverly drawn up, implying more than it revealed against Maurice Grey's wife. The history of stolen meetings between her and her former lover, of whose residence in England Mr. Grey was aware, was circumstantially given. They coincided strangely, as Maurice remembered with a pang almost as bitter as that first one had been, with Margaret's comings and goings; but further, a certain test was offered. It was proposed that on that very evening the husband should profess to leave his wife, that instead of returning to London he should remain in Ramsgate, and that if, at a specified time, he should not find her and the foreigner together, he might throw aside all that the letter contained as unworthy of belief. Maurice was naturally jealous. His wife's unusual beauty, the difficulty of winning her, the knowledge that he had not been the first to possess her heart, combined to make him distrustful. Instead of showing her the letter or treating it with merited contempt, he was weak enough to fall into the snare.

The event had been planned with a fatal accuracy. He found L'Estrange at Margaret's feet, and in the agony of wounded love, of despairing rage, left her altogether. For four long years he had wandered hopelessly and aimlessly, not daring, in case his worst fears should receive terrible confirmation, to find out anything about the woman whom through it all he loved so madly. And now, when, as he believed, his heart had grown callous, when he thought his retreat was surely hidden from all his former friends, this earnest champion came forward, sent evidently by her to plead her cause, to assure him of her continued love and unwearied faithfulness, to recall him to her side. But the mystery was unexplained. All she offered was a simple declaration of the falsehood of that of which Maurice believed he held incontrovertible proof.

What could it all mean? Was it, he asked himself--and his brows were fiercely knit--a plot to betray him? Did she wish to regain her position, only that she might the more surely carry on her intrigues? Had her paramour wearied her, and in his turn been cast off? He thought, but suddenly, as on the preceding evening, there came, like a gleam of light through his dark thoughts, the memory of that pale, pure face.

The strong man bowed his head, and tears such as only men can weep found their way to his burning eyelids. He covered his face with his hands. "It is possible," he cried--"possible! O my God, I may have been wrong." As he spoke he trembled like a child, this man who knew the world, whose wide experience had made him a cynic.

But if the thought held pain, it had also infinite sweetness. That first spasm past, Maurice gave way to it. He looked up again and the pale snows met his gaze. There was a soft, tender light in his dark eyes. Between them and those pale snows that fair, sad face was shining. "Margaret!" he whispered.

The man was weary with his mental struggles, overwrought by the physical exertions of the day. He allowed hope in its soft, tremulous beauty to take possession of his soul, old memories to steal over his heart. He leaned back in his arm-chair, folded his arms over his breast and fell into a kind of trance. Gradually, as his senses lost their hold upon the visible, the snow-laden pines, the white peaks, the swollen torrents passed away from his gaze, till at last it seemed that the sternness of winter had passed away--spring, life, green beauty took its place.

The four walls of his chalet fell; he was sitting on the green sward, innumerable delicious odors filled the air with fragrance, bright-eyed flowers were about him, the birds twittered gayly, everywhere was life and gladness; but in the midst of all was a something incongruous, like a minor chord in a fair melody--a sound of low, sad singing, the voice as of one in pain. Maurice thought he knew the voice; turning suddenly, he saw his wife. She was walking steadily forward with a gliding step; a black robe covered her from head to foot; her eyes were fixed on the distant horizon. He thought that he called her "Margaret!" but her eyes did not move, only her lips stirred as if in prayer. She glided past him, but before she had quite gone out of his reach he caught the hem of her dress. Then, while her heaven-turned face was slowly moving, while he was yearning to catch the gleam of her eyes, the vision passed, as visions will.

The whole had only lasted a few minutes, though it seemed to Maurice as if he had been long insensible. When reality and consciousness began slowly to assert their cold superiority it was absolute pain. At first he tried to deny them, in the vain hope that closed eyes and utter stillness would bring back the fair vision; then suddenly the vague uneasiness a watchful presence brings awoke him fully.

He started up, and saw by the failing light that he was not alone--he was being watched. Between him and the window a dark form was standing; keen, searching eyes scanned his face; they were those of his enemy. L'Estrange had found his way to the chalet. At last these two were face to face.

It was a rude awakening from a pleasant dream, and the very contrast between the fairness of the vision and the blackness of that reality which to Maurice's inflamed heart this man personified made his hatred more intense. It took him but a moment to start to his feet. His first impulse was to seize the intruder by the throat and cast him out; his very presence seemed a wanton insult. But L'Estrange met his gaze calmly, and Maurice checked himself: "Before I touch him I will get to the bottom of the mystery, and if he have betrayed her as well as me--"

He clenched his teeth and involuntarily smote his knotted fists together. For a few moments the men looked at one another in silence. Maurice spoke first, and his voice was like the growl of an angry lion: "What has brought you here?"

A sneer curled the Frenchman's lips: "No love to you, Mr. Grey, but--listen to me patiently, or I vow I will be silent for ever--a late repentance for an old wrong."

"_Then_--" There was a whole torrent of wrath pent up in the opening syllable.

"I tell you not to speak," cried his visitor, "or what I have come to say shall never be told. Maurice Grey, you are my enemy. You married the only woman I ever loved. This I could have forgiven; it was my fault, it was in the course of Nature; but you won her heart, the heart that once was mine. Yes, short-sighted Englishman, of this I can speak, for you knew it; she told you, and this it was that filled you with proud jealousy, that made you torment yourself. Yet it is true your wife loved you as she never loved me. I did not believe it then: now I know it. You gasp: well you may. That was my snare, and you fell into it. I see the letter; give it to me. Is it true, then, that with all your boasted knowledge of the world you could not read jealousy and spite under these fine phrases, made for me by a lying English servant? But yours is a strange nation. Clever and far-seeing where your money is in question, you are in knowledge of character, in all that touches your affections, easy to take in as little children. You frown impatiently. I shall soon have done. I tell you, Monsieur Grey, the meeting you interrupted that day was the first and only one that had taken place between your wife and me since your marriage. And the attitude in which you found me? Mon Dieu! nothing simpler--got up for you--_un tableau vivant motive_. She was more surprised than you, la pauvrette!" His voice sank. "Since that day four long years have passed by. I have spent them in seeking her--persecuting her, if you like; so it was, so it must be. Her hatred is strong and bitter. I deserve it for misunderstanding her. But women have been my study all my life, and I never met _her_ like before. _You_ had less cause. What do you deserve? But do not answer me yet. Never fear, proud Englishman; your reckoning shall come by and by; my task must first be finished. She hid herself from me for a long time, but at last I came upon her in a miserable London lodging. The sight of me shocked and terrified her. She left London at once, and returned to the lonely place where she had lived in the closest retirement since your desertion. But, woman-like, she had left her address behind her. I found it out, followed her, forced myself upon her; and then at last, then first, I understood her. It was in the midst of deep loneliness--a loneliness which I saw by her face was killing her--that I found her out. She had one joy and consolation, a little daughter whom she had trained to love _you_, to wait and watch for your return. I spoke to her that day, but she repelled me with scorn and abhorrence. Maurice Grey, I offer for myself no excuse. I was mad with rage and pain. I determined to punish her. I stole her little one, and in such a way that she might think it had been done by you."

The Englishman could bear it no longer. He sprang forward, and seizing his enemy by the collar shook him vigorously:

"Villain! do you know what you deserve?"

"Patience!" replied the man when he had wrenched himself free from that strong grasp. "You shall have my life. Mon Dieu! it is worth little. But first you must listen to me."

He retreated to the side of the little window, the evening light shone full on his face. He fixed his enemy with his piercing eyes, to which the fever of his brain had given strange brilliancy. "You want to know what brought me here," he continued. "I have told you--no love to you, albeit my hand and voice may restore you to life and happiness--to all life holds most precious and dear. And yet it is love as well as penitence that has brought me to this. Love--a truer love than I have ever known--to the woman and child whom you have forsaken; for your little daughter changed my mood. I dare not speak of _her_. It would make me soft when I should be stern. She has been with me ever since; she is with me now. See her for yourself. She is a living proof of what I tell." The man bowed his head. "I give her up to you. I have found you for this, that you may take my treasure. And now--for I read the fierce hunger of your eyes; you Englishmen are all alike, insatiate, uncontrolled--_la revanche_. Well! it is well. Monsieur Grey, I understand your nature, and my hand shall supply you with an instrument. I went into your room to-day. I found these; I have brought them with me."

He took from a chair on which he had laid them the pair of pistols, one of which Maurice had loaded and prepared for action only a few days before.

The sight inflamed him. It recalled to his mind what this man had done--how for these long years his life had been a blank of good--a burden from which he had even sought to free himself. He seized the offered case. "Yes," he said sternly, "it is well. Villain, it were a good deed to rid the world of such as you."

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. "Soit donc," he said calmly; then folded his arms with the equanimity of a red Indian, who looks death and all its horrors in the face without shrinking.

It was too much for Maurice Grey's patience. He drew near to his enemy and shook him roughly: "Do you take me for an assassin? Come out, if you have any of the feelings of a man left in you, and defend yourself," he said hoarsely, and led the way to the door.

L'Estrange followed with a calmness that was no longer real, for his nervous system had given way suddenly. The tension that had supported him through these long weeks of wandering, the iron purpose, the self-constraining force, had given way suddenly when the necessity had gone by, when his tale had been told, when he had read in his enemy's face that it was counted true.

For this time Maurice could not help himself. Perhaps even in his passionate longing for this, a restored belief in the truth and purity of her who had once been to him the embodiment of all that was best and fairest in womanhood, had kept him incredulous through Arthur's tale. This strange confirmation of its every detail, wrung out from the very torture of his enemy's heart, commended itself to him as true.

He disbelieved her no longer. Rather, his soul was overflowing with passionate repentance and pity--repentance for the cruel blow he had dealt her, pity for those years of loneliness, anguish for his own mistakes, for a past that would ever remain the past, that no future, however blessed, could recall. All this was surging in his brain as he listened to those few but fate-laden words, and the first impulse was indignation against her betrayer. He could not detach his past from his present; out of his own mouth he was condemned. Persecutor, villain, torturer of weak women and helpless children (for Maurice had not seen his child; how could he tell that _she_ had not suffered ill-treatment at his hands?), he should die the death of a dog, be cast out into the frozen valleys to sleep the sleep of bitter ignominy.

It may be that in the glance cast at him by his enemy when he had seized him, when his pale face was close to his own, L'Estrange had read this wild determination, for as he followed his guide his knees trembled. He was no more the accuser, but the accused, the condemned.

Margaret was avenged. With head cast down and failing heart he followed his stern guide, while still the fitful twilight, reflected from the dazzling snow, shone cold and calm over the hills. The stricken man groaned in spirit. "It is the bitterness of death," he said to himself. "Mon Dieu! I am punished. I would have seen la petite. She will grieve for me."

His thoughts were broken in upon suddenly; they had reached the border of a deep ravine, and Maurice stopped. He looked round: "The light is uncertain, but we shall have the same chance. Whoever falls, falls there."

He pointed down to the abyss, fathomless in the dim evening light.

"We have no seconds--allow me to arrange everything."

He took out the pistols, examined their priming with minute care, and handed one to L'Estrange.

"I will give the word," he said; "we fire together."

With steady, measured tread he paced the distance that was to divide them, then took his place by the ravine, pale, calm, determined--the avenger.

Maurice Grey did not suppose for a moment that _he_ would fall, though, a true Englishman, he would give his enemy a fair chance for life. Evil as he believed this man to be, deserving death for the traitorous wrong he had consummated, he would yet give him the power of defending himself. But as this man of iron nerve counted out unfalteringly the seconds that divided one of them from death, he showed his belief in the issue by the defiance he shouted out across the shadows: "But yesterday I would have taken my own life, and with this very weapon; now I take yours. Traitor, coward, slanderer of the innocent, prepare for death!"

Was it the knell of fate? No answer came from the condemned man, but before the fatal ball could cleave the air, before the word that might have meant death to one of them had been spoken, he staggered strangely, gave utterance to a gurgling cry and fell forward to the ground.