Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

by C. Despard

He had written to her again from Paris, but this time he had been still more bewildered about the address. Laura could not assist. Like her friend, she could have found her way to her mother's cottage even in the night, but she had never thought much about the name of the place where she lived, and its spelling was quite beyond her. Fate was inexorable. His second letter went astray like the first, and Laura, who was hoping for an answer to her big letters, and L'Estrange, who was looking passionately for one line to tell him that he was forgiven and understood, were both destined to disappointment. There was a letter, however, an English letter, which partially explained the mystery of the attempt to recapture Laura on the Champs Elysées.

Mr. Robinson, that most respectable of solicitors, had been highly satisfied with the contents of the mysterious little packet which his foreign client had put into his hands at the Great Northern Station. It confirmed him in his opinion that the Frenchman was likely to be valuable. He determined at once to make himself useful. And no one understood better how to make himself useful without needlessly disturbing his conscience or compromising his character for rectitude. He had scented a mystery in the fair-haired English child, and Margaret's story, related to him on the day following his meeting with L'Estrange, made him imagine that he saw through it. Hence his lukewarmness in the pursuit entrusted to him. But the young Arthur's vigorous championship alarmed him for his client. He saw that everything would be done for the recovery of the child, whom it was his firm conviction the Frenchman had stolen, from some motive utterly unguessed at by himself.

After Arthur had left him the lawyer cogitated for a while. It would not do for him, in his capacity of family lawyer to Mrs. Grey, and more especially still in his character for even ultra-scrupulousness, to appear to connive at such a deed as this of his client's, but he might, by warning him of the search which was being set on foot, buy his gratitude, and, what was better still, bind him to himself.

After much planning he resolved to give the little episode of Arthur's visit and the search that was being inaugurated for the lost child as a piece of gossip which might be interesting to his client on account of his supposed connection with Laura's father. The letter was a grand piece of lawyer's art, and Mr. Robinson chuckled over it with delight.

L'Estrange saw through the artifice, and as he read the letter his dark face looked grim. Opposition was like food to his determined soul. He set his teeth together, vowing inwardly that he would carry out his project in spite of them all.

They were detained at Vienna. It was as he had feared: the constant movement, the over-excitement, the strange, new life, had been too much for Laura. She had a slight feverish attack, but her friend, who knew a little of everything, had studied medicine in his early years, not with a view of entering the profession, for as a profession he despised it, but simply to increase and intensify his power over his fellows. He knew how to treat the child, and was not even alarmed at her sudden weakness. Rest and quietness were the best remedies, and these he gave her, with some simple medicine whose efficacy he had often tested. The child was inclined to be sorely fretted at the delay. On the sixth day of their stay in Vienna (she was lying on a sofa in a splendidly-furnished room that looked out upon the broad, grand Danube flowing majestically through the city, and her friend for the first time had left her a few minutes alone) this impatience grew almost too great to be borne. She buried her head in the sofa-pillows, and the wailing plaint for mamma came now and then, with heavy sobs, from her child's heart. This continued for some little time. When she looked up again, trying with the vain endeavor of a troubled child to stay her weeping and think no more of her sorrow, L'Estrange was standing at the head of the sofa looking down on her. His arms were folded, he stood perfectly still, and there was on his face a look of such fixed and hopeless sadness that, child as she was, she recognized it suddenly. Her own tears ceased to flow, and for a moment she looked back into his face as if, with the angelic intuition of her age (I wonder if angels do whisper these secrets to the little ones?), she would find out and understand what was the great woe that oppressed him. Then, as if she had come to a partial understanding, she raised herself on the sofa and tried with all her small strength to draw down his dark, weary-looking face to the level of hers. He yielded to the sweet compulsion; kneeling beside her, he suffered her to lay his head on the sofa-pillow and draw his cheek to hers.

It was a very simple mode of consolation. She only whispered again and again the name he had taught her to call him, and pressed her childish lips to his forehead, and stroked back his hair with her small, hot fingers; but it was very effectual. The dark look left her friend's face. It was as though "a spirit from the face of the Lord" had visited him.

He lifted the little one into his arms and held her there for a few minutes, then, with a softness of tone and manner which none but the pure child could awake in him, he told her a part, at least, of his trouble. It was in the form of a parable. "Laura," he murmured—the darkness was gathering, and two or three stars had begun to shine out in the sky—"look up: what do you see?"

"The sky, mon père; and now, ah, see! the stars are beginning to shine—one, two, three. I can see them in the water too."

"Do you know what it is that makes them so bright, fillette?"