Fairy Fingers / A Novel

by Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie

Though the count had escaped a calamity, which even to contemplate had almost driven him out of his mind,—though his son's life was spared, and his restoration to vigorous health assured,—at times the father felt as if that son were lost to him forever. An inexplicable reserve had risen up and thrust them asunder. In the count's presence Maurice was always abstracted and pensive; he uttered no complaints, made no petitions. He had come to the conclusion that both were useless; but his opinions and wishes were no longer frankly, boldly, iterated. He and his father stood upon different platforms, with an invisible, but an insurmountable barrier looming up between them. Count Tristan, albeit irritated, galled, grieved, could discover no mode of reëstablishing the olden footing. After spending a month in Paris, he returned to Brittany, his mind filled with discomforting forebodings, to which he could give no definite shape.

Maurice was once more left in the great, gay capital, his own master,—at liberty to plunge into whatever sea of dissipation, to float idly down whatever tide of pleasure lured him. But he wronged himself when he warned his father, some months previous, that if he were debarred from studying a profession, he might seek excitement, or oblivion, in impure channels, and waste his exuberant energies in degrading pastimes. He spoke on the spur of some vague, restless impulse within him, that clamored for an outlet; but he misjudged himself in imagining that he could be compelled to drown the memory of his disappointment in the wine-cup, the vortex of the gaming-table, or the more fearful maelstrom of siren allurements. To a young heart which has not been sullied by familiar contact with evil, there is no ægis so invulnerable to the assaults of those deadly enemies, who make their attacks in the fascinating garb of licentious liberty, as a strong, pure, life-absorbing attachment. He who wears the shield of a first, stainless affection, carries Ithuriel's spear in his hand, and, at a single touch, the sensual enchanter in his path, however resplendent its disguise, drops the fair-featured mask and shining mantle, and stands revealed in native hideousness. The image of Madeleine, ever present to Maurice, drew around him a protecting circle which nothing vile could enter, and, wherever his own eyes turned, it seemed to him that her heavenly eyes followed. Could he profane their holy gaze by fixing his upon scenes of captivating degradation and rose-crowned vice?

Day after day, as his strength returned, it was but natural that he should grow more and more weary of monotonous indolence, and more and more impatient to escape from its depressing, deadening thraldom. The happy change, which a settled occupation had effected in Gaston de Bois, seemed to add to the discontent of his friend. Sometimes he was on the point of starting for Brittany, and making a fresh appeal to his father; then he was withheld by the dread that an angry discussion would be the only sequence. He knew that his father's pride, sustained by that of his grandmother, was unconquerable, and that the sentence, which condemned him to a dreary, inert, and profitless existence, would only be pronounced upon him anew.

Since his illness he had entirely abandoned his vain search for Madeleine. He always felt as though he had seen her, albeit, when he attempted to reflect upon the likelihood that she had actually sat beside his couch, and watched over him during his illness, reason essayed to efface the impression which could hardly have been made by the fingers of reality. Even granting that Madeleine, on leaving Brittany, had joined the sisterhood, and proposed to devote her life to holy offices, for which she was richly dowered by nature, was there not a novitiate to be passed? How could she so soon have entered upon her sacred duties? And if by some mysterious dispensation she had been absolved from the probation of a novice, how could she have learned that he was ill? How could she have come to him so promptly? Was it probable that Mr. Walton, an entire stranger, had, by mere accident, selected a nurse from the very society which she had joined? These questions, and others equally difficult to answer, sprang up constantly in his mind, and found no satisfactory solution. Yet the conviction that he had actually beheld her remained unshaken.

Bertha had been apprised by her aunt of the dangerous illness of Maurice, and had written to him when he was unable to read her letters. As soon as he was convalescent, they were placed in his hands.

"My dear Gaston, write a line to my cousin for me," begged Maurice, feeling that he had not strength to reply, and little dreaming what a thrill of joy ran through Gaston's frame at that request.

M. de Bois wrote,—wrote with an eloquence that could never have found utterance through his tongue.

If we may judge from the number of times Bertha perused that letter, or if we may draw an inference from her wearing it about her person (probably that she might be able to refresh her memory with its information concerning her cousin), the epistle was either very difficult of comprehension, or it had some witching spell which drew her eyes irresistibly to its cabalistic characters.

She had not recovered her wonted buoyancy. Beneath her uncle's roof she pined for Madeleine hardly less than at the Château de Gramont.

The Marquis de Merrivale, her guardian, was a bachelor. The chief object of his existence was an endeavor to "take life easy," and guard himself from all vexations and discomforts. His next aim was to pamper the cravings of an epicurean appetite, but always with such judicious ministry that his digestive organs might not be impaired thereby. He was good-natured on principle, because it was too much trouble to get excited and vexed. His equanimity was seldom disturbed, save by his cook's failure in the concoction of a favorite dish.