A MAN AT WAR WITH HIMSELF.
CHAPTER I.
MAURICE GREY.
But the living and the lost—
For them our souls must weep;
For them we suffer a yearning pain
That will not let us sleep.
A change. From the shores of the gray British seas to those of the grayer Baltic—from the yellow sands and purple moors of Yorkshire to the wellnigh boundless forests and plains of Western Russia—thousands of miles of wood, lake and river, only diversified by some few castles and villages.
It was July, hot and radiant, but in the depths of those woods coolness is always attainable. By one of the broad silver lakes, under a group of birches that rose gracefully from its shores, a young man was resting through the noontide.
He appeared to be a hunter, for his horse was tethered to one of the trees and a brace of fine hounds were baying out their impatience at his side. But for these dumb companions he seemed to be alone, and yet all the accessories spoke of comfort. A kind of table had been extemporized at his feet, and on it a large meat-pasty, some bread and salt, a knife and fork and a flask of sherry were lying. He had not done much justice to the provisions; he was leaning back against the tree and looking out over the lake, a kind of disgust in his fine face. Suddenly, bethinking himself, he raised two fingers to his lips and gave a prolonged whistle.
It brought from the surrounding woods two stately-looking Russians, long-bearded and sedate. Their master pointed to the provisions before him—a gesture which was evidently understood without difficulty, for they carried away the food, retired respectfully to some distance, and soon made a great inroad into both pasty and bread, packing up what was left in a small haversack which one of them carried on his back. The other then approached his master and made a low bow.
"Time to mount?" said the young man, evidently English from his appearance and accent. "Ha! so much the better."
The horse was untethered, wiped down admiringly, and held in readiness by the bearded Russian, his companion in the mean time bringing out two stout little ponies from the trees. And in a few moments the small cavalcade was ranging the woods.
The black eagle was flapping its great wings above them, feathered fowl of a thousand varieties were twittering on the branches of the trees. Many of the coverts might harbor the wolf or lynx; in the reach of meadow to which a forest-glade might lead the gigantic elk would probably be resting with her young.
It was a position to exhilarate the coldest brain, and the Englishman, who took the lead into the forest, did not look particularly torpid.
He was monarch, too, of all he surveyed, for one of the hospitable nobles of Courland had given his guest a free permission to shoot not only through his estates, which were sufficiently vast, but through those of his neighbors; indeed, the whole province was free to Maurice Grey. With gun and dogs he might traverse the wilds of Courland in all their length and breadth.
To an Englishman, a lover of sport for its own sake, could any position be more delightful? He seemed to feel this. Mounted on his horse, a fine little mare of Arab extraction, his keen sportsman's eye scanning the depths of wood, his ear intent on the faintest sound, he looked another man from the jaded, weary traveller resting listlessly on the shores of the silver lake.
But the dogs looked uneasy; there was a rustling in the underwood; the dry fallen leaves crackled ominously. He cocked his gun. Hist! a long, gray-looking animal, gliding ghost-like out of the bush, but not within range. It was a fierce she-wolf—the terror of the neighborhood; this the Englishman discovered, and then the chase began. The wily dogs urged her out into the open; bewildered she fled before them—long, swift, seemingly untiring. With bellies to the ground, and legs that seemed barely to skim it, followed the noble hounds, and after them their master, urging them on by his voice, till dogs, wolf and horseman seemed to fly over the plain.
On, on, leaving the Russian servants and ponies in the far distance, the forest behind, the blue distance before them, till at last the wolf grew weary, her pace perceptibly flagged: she tried to stand at bay, but exhaustion overcame her; the hounds were on her haunches; they pinned her to the ground till the voice of their master called them off, and a shot put an end for ever to the robber of Russian hen-roosts and the terror of Russian babies.
Various other feats were performed that day, each exciting in its kind; and when the young Englishman, who had ridden far into the short, bright night of that season, rested at last in a kind of log-built hunting-lodge, where the hospitable owner of the estate had always a few necessaries in readiness for the guests of the hunt, he was quite ready for refreshment and repose. He partook of the provisions put before him by his servants, bathed in the river that flowed at no great distance, and laid himself down to rest, rejoicing in the glorious solitude, in the freedom from anxiety, in the triumph of having found one pursuit that could put to flight, even for a time, haunting care and cruel retrospect.
But the triumph was short. The few hours of night passed, and kindly sleep would hold his restless spirit no longer. With the gray dawning Maurice lifted his head from his couch and looked around him. The Russian servants, wrapped in sheepskins, were lying on mats at his feet, fast asleep; even the hounds were silent and motionless, wearied with their day of hard work. The neighborhood of the sleepers was oppressive. He rose and wandered out into the little clearing in the midst of which the hut was built.
Yes, this was solitude, true solitude, without excitement of any kind to fill it; and as Maurice looked listlessly at the sun rising over the woods he tried to persuade himself that it was delightful. Far from the babble of false men and falser women, not even the rising of a thin wreath of smoke in the far distance telling of their existence,—this was what he had been seeking, and hitherto seeking in vain. He seated himself on the trunk of a fallen tree to look this great loneliness in the face and realize the comfort of his position, but it would not do.
Insensibly, as he thought and gazed, came visions of the past, dreams of the future, like weird, shapeless demons whom memory had robed in horrors to rob him of his peace and fill his solitude with care. For Maurice Grey had loved as some men can and do love, throwing all the strength of their nature into this one thing. And he had lost, not by the hand of death—so pitiless when put forth to take the loved—but by a something more dread, more pitiless still—the discovery of his lady's falsehood. Oh, he had honored her, trusted her, given her his all; and what had he found? That through the long years they had passed together in such perfect harmony her heart had been not his, but another's. He had given all; she had given nothing—worse than nothing. And in the bitter revulsion of feeling consequent on the discovery he had not waited for explanations; he had left her, vowing, in a vow that came from the very depths of his stricken heart, not to look upon her fair, false face again.
Since then he had been striving after forgetfulness. He would not hear of her, he would not ask about her. In the various business letters that necessarily passed between him and his solicitor in England—for he was a man of some property—her name was never mentioned. He had left amply sufficient for her maintenance. The property she had brought was paid over to her without the slightest reference to him. Thus, he considered, bare duty was fulfilled, and for anything further—bah! woman-like, would she not rejoice in the absence of restraint? It was possible that he might desire to have a voice in the education of his child; about his wife he would trouble himself no further.
But the mind is volatile and independent; it receives not the "Thou shalt not" with which poor mortals would fetter it. Over flood and field, through cities and solitudes, Maurice had been wandering with this one idea—to banish for ever from his mind the beautiful, haunting face of his lost Margaret—and all was in vain. More persistently than ever it returned on this morning in the wilds, looking at him with her lustrous eyes, speaking to him with her sweet, low voice, maddening him with the cruel recollections it brought of loss and shame.
For in a case of this kind the man is, perhaps, a greater sufferer than the woman. True, he can wander hither and thither, throwing himself into the stirring life of the world—business, pleasure, excitement; but in the deep, strong nature the sting remains, bitter, poignant, ever present; not the soft sadness of the weaker sex, which in many cases, stooping down under the stroke, reaps the reward of submission in a certain gradual dulling of the pain; but the fierce, angry plunging of a soul that will not yield to dire necessity—that will not look its sorrow in the face and bear it.
And no trial is fitter to raise this ceaseless tempest in the spirit than that under which Maurice was smarting. He had trusted in her as he trusted in his God; she had been to him the embodiment of all that is good, pure, beautiful in womankind, and the discovery of her treachery was like the breaking away of solid ground from beneath his feet.
From that moment he believed in nothing. Writhing under the bitter pain of the wound inflicted on him, he would yet show no signs of weakness. He would forget; he would cut the ties that bound him to the past; he would tear her from his heart. In the struggle his nature seemed to change. He whom Margaret had loved for his gentle thoughtfulness, his manly courage, his geniality, his bright, joyous spirit, became another man. Irritable, morose, cynical, gayest among the gay at the festive season, though of his laughter it might have been said that it was mad, of his mirth that it was "the crackling of thorns under a pot;" at other times dull and listless, uneasy, changeable, passionate. These were some of his characteristics after many months' wandering. And he felt the change; sometimes he professed to rejoice in it. He told himself that he was getting hardened—that soon, soon, the past would be as though it had not been; but there was a secret consciousness within which told him that this could not be.
Such was the feeling which spoke to him on that still July morning through the solitude till he could bear his own society no longer. He returned to the hut, awoke his servants with some roughness, and intimated to them, in the best Russian he could command, that he was tired of wandering; he would return to their lord's castle that day, and then join him and his family in St. Petersburg.
The Russians bowed simultaneously. They were accustomed to the caprices of their lord, and did not show the least surprise at this sudden termination, after two or three days, of an excursion that was to have lasted at least a fortnight.
They escorted their lord's guest to the castle, and on the same evening Maurice Grey left it for a St. Petersburg mansion.
[CHAPTER II.]
SOCIETY VERSUS SOLITUDE.
Come, let us to the hills, where none but God
Can overlook us; for I hate to breathe
The breaths and think the thoughts of other men.
A few days later and the wilds of Courland were given up, as far as Maurice Grey was concerned, to the animals that ranged them; he was in St. Petersburg, installed as a welcome guest in the grand city mansion of Count ——, one of the Courland nobles, his son, who had mixed in the best society of both London and Paris, having been for some time one of Maurice Grey's warmest friends.
Into the gay life of his brilliant city the young man welcomed his English friend with the utmost cordiality, and Maurice was soon immersed in a round of gayeties. It was a good time to see St. Petersburg, for all the misery of the spring melting of ice and snow was over. The stately Neva, clear as crystal and covered with craft of every description, was flowing in full magnificence after its winter sleep through the streets and piazzas of the city. The highways were full of vehicles, from the grand carriage-and-four of the general or prince to the plain hired droshki that seemed ubiquitous. Pleasure was the order of the day in the city, for all, high and low, rich and poor, were revelling in the charms of the short-lived summer-time.
Maurice threw himself into this new life with the utmost eagerness. French is the language of the crème de la crème in St. Petersburg, and as he was master of the seductive mistress of conversation, his ignorance of Russian by no means interfered with any of his amusements. And he entered into them thoroughly. Lounging about on the Prospekt or Grand English Quay in the morning with a few young Russians; flirting with pretty French coquettes, or rarer Russian beauties, in the ladies' afternoon receptions; floating at night in the grand barge of one of the princes on the wide Neva, in company of the fair and gay and to the sounds of delicious music; dancing far into the morning and supping with the dawn;—this was the life of St. Petersburg, and for some days he enjoyed it thoroughly. One thing was certain: it allowed very little time for thought. But he had not the constitution or power of endurance of some of his Russian friends. A week or two of this hard life knocked him up. He was compelled to rest, whether he would or no. And then reaction came. The crowd and bustle were once more hateful to him. Biliousness, that great foe of the fashionable, cast its jaundiced veil over his eyes. He began to loathe the luxurious saloons and crowded rooms and made-up beauties—to long again for his own society, for the scenes of Nature, for the solitude from which he had only just escaped.
"Be thine own heart thy palace, or the world's a jail,"
said the great Shakespeare. The world was a jail to Maurice Grey because of the bitterness his heart contained; and, unhappily, go where we will, we cannot escape the world, or that throbbing, torturing consciousness of good and evil, of pain and delight, that mortals call the heart. He could not hide his cynicism; like the thorn that the rose-leaves conceal, it peeped out when it was least expected, and the fair ladies with whose society he pleased himself began gayly to question him on the mysterious cause of his gloomy ideas.
This alarmed Maurice. His wound was of such a kind as to be sensitive to the lightest touch. He could not bear that what he looked upon as his dishonor should be the common talk of his associates. It was this that had made him leave England and break all connection with those who had known him there. When, therefore, it became the custom of his fair St. Petersburg friends to question him curiously about his past, to suggest a probable history in his dark, melancholy eyes, to speak to him with sentimental pathos about life and love, he took fright; and to the grief of his many friends—for the Englishman had become the fashion in St. Petersburg—announced his intention of departure. Loud and long was the opposition, and Maurice grew weary of the delay and sick of the great city before his friends would allow him to go; but at last they were left behind him. With no companion, not even a servant this time, he was travelling through the length and breadth of Russia, by her scattered cities and vast plains, to Moscow, the ancient capital; there only a few hours, and then on once more, for Russia had become distasteful to him.
He would scarcely pause, for he was in a fever to be on, on and away, far from the vexations of "towered cities" and their "busy hum"—far, if it were possible, even from men. There was a little village that he had known in happier days. It was far up in the Swiss mountains; it was lonely, save for the coming and going of tourists, and even these did not honor it with their presence for long. Two glaciers stooped down into its valley, and it was watched evermore by pillars of purest snow. There, perhaps, in the savage grandeur of holy Nature, he might find the rest for which he craved, and with a feverish anxiety he pressed on to his goal.
Switzerland at last!—a mountain-pass, snow-crowned hills, land-locked lakes and white foaming torrents. A certain satisfaction glowed in the breast of the world-weary man as he looked out upon it all.
He and his sorrow seemed dwarfed, for the moment, by the grand magnificence of the world as God made it—not the world of cities, but the world of Nature. His hand was visible in the grouping of the Alpine giants, in the variegated beauty of their hidden vales, and beneath that hand the traveller felt himself.
Of carriages and mules he would have none. With his staff in his hand he crossed the mountains, courting the healthy physical weariness, sure precursor of that which denies itself to the brain overwrought by excitement—blessed sleep. And with the exertion and consequent rest his health returned, his muscles played freely, Life carried on her great functions with ease. By the time he had reached Grindelwald, the little village in which he intended to stay for some time, even some of his cynicism had melted. Doubtless it was only for the time. Nature can do much, but she cannot really draw the sting of bitter aching from the heart, or give back to the spirit the brightness and elasticity of that fresh time when men are divine and women are earth-angels, and the world is a region of enchantment, a "palace of delights;" even the eternal snows and the grand sights and sounds of the mountain-country may pall upon the eyes and sicken the disappointed heart. For in human nature are the elements of the divine—its infinite cravings only the Infinite can fill. Beautiful as God's world may be, it is powerless to fill the heart or satisfy the soul of man. Hither and thither he may wander; like the dying poet Shelley's marvellous creation,
"Nature's most secret steps
He, like her shadow, may pursue;"
and yet for the haunting vision, the great unfound loveliness, the unfelt joy, his spirit may sicken unceasingly.