Fairy Fingers / A Novel

by Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie

Maurice, without a moment's hesitation, without letting his own personal suffering weigh in the balance of decision, without allowing his mind to dwell upon the probabilities of tracing Madeleine through this new clew, resolved to comply with her request.

When he returned to Paris and placed her letter in Bertha's hands, and told her his determination, she impetuously urged him not to be guided by their cousin's wishes. She pleaded that Madeleine was sacrificing herself from a mistaking sense of duty; that, if her place of abode could only be revealed, Bertha's own supplications might influence her to abandon her present project, and to accept the home which Bertha, with the full consent of her uncle, could offer.

Maurice listened not unmoved, but unshaken, in his selected course. He felt that a woman of Madeleine's dignity of character,—a woman of her calm judgment,—a woman who could look with such steady, tearless eyes upon life's realities,—a woman who would not have trodden in flowery ways though every pressure of her foot crushed out some delicious aroma to perfume her life, if the "stern lawgiver, duty," summoned her to a flinty road, and pointed to a glorious goal beyond,—such a woman, having deliberately chosen her path, having tested her strength to walk therein, having pronounced that strength all-sufficient, deserved the tribute of confidence, and an even blind respect to her mandates. Besides, compliance with her wishes was a species of voiceless, wordless communication with her; it was sending her a message through some unknown and mysterious channel.

Maurice presented this in its most vivid colors before Bertha's eyes; but in vain. She was too wayward, too unreasonable, too full of passionate yearning for the presence of Madeleine, too sensible of an innate weakness that longed to lean upon Madeleine's strength, to see the justice and wisdom of the conclusion to which Maurice had arrived.

As soon as their painful interview was closed by the entrance of the marquis, Maurice sought the old Jew and ordered him to prosecute his search no further. Henriques, who had already extracted a considerable sum from the young nobleman, and looked upon the transaction as a safe investment calculated to yield a certain profit for some months to come, was very unwilling to relinquish his promised gain. He assured the viscount that he had lately received information of the greatest importance; the party to whom the jewels had originally belonged had at last been tracked; the undertaking was on the very eve of success. To abandon it was a refusal to grasp the prize almost within their clutch. Whether the cunning Jew spoke the truth, or fiction, mattered little; for Maurice, in spite of these alluring representations, did not allow himself to be tempted to violate Madeleine's express command. He had, as it were, accepted his fate, and cast away the arms with which men war with so-called "destiny;" struggle and rebellion were over. To "wait" in patience was all that remained.

But what was to be done with his existence? In the plenitude of youthful health and strength, was his life to ebb away, like an unreplenished stream, flowing into nothingness? His days became more and more wearisome; the hours hung more and more heavily upon his hands; the feet of time sounded with iron tramp in his ears, yet never appeared to move onward.

"In his eyes a cloud and burthen lay;" a shadowy sorrow dropped its pall of darkness over his mind and obscured his perception of all awakening, quickening inspirations; a smouldering fire within him withered up every vernal shoot of impulse and turned all the spring-time foliage of thought and fancy sere. His voice, his look, his mien, betrayed that an ever-living woe encompassed him with gloom.

Ronald fruitlessly strove to rouse him from this state of supine despondency. The active employment, the all-engrossing interest which would have medicined his unslumbering sorrow, were remedial agents denied by his father's unwise decree. As a substitute, though of less potency, Ronald strove to inspire him with his own strong love for literature. The young American had a passion for books which were the reflex of great minds. His quick hearkening to the voices breathing from their pages, and made prophetic by some sudden experience; the ready plummet with which he sounded their depths of reasoning; the sentient hand with which he plucked out their truths and planted them in his own rich memory, to grow like trees filled with singing-birds: these had rendered his communings with master-spirits one of the noblest and most strengthening influences of his life. What wonder, when literature was so bounteously distributed over his native land that it made itself vocal beneath every hedge,—enriched the humblest cottage with a library,—found its way, in the inexpensive guise of magazines, a welcome visitant at every fireside,—poured out its treasures at the feet of rich and poor, liberally as the liberal sunshine, freely as the free air?

Maurice, educated in a different atmosphere, at the same age as Ronald, was a stranger to the companionship of written minds, save those to which his college studies had formally presented him; and his dark unrest rendered it difficult for him to follow his friend into the teeming Golconda of literature, and to gather the gems spread to his hands. And when, at last, Ronald's enthusiasm proved contagious and kindled Maurice to seek out some great author's charm, it too often chanced that he stumbled upon passages that irritated him, and increased his moody discontent. We instance one of these occasions as illustrative of many others.