Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

by C. Despard

On the following day, while Laura and L'Estrange were putting vast tracts of country between themselves and the ancient city of Moscow, Arthur Forrest, jaded and worn-out by a sleepless night, and considerably discouraged at the total failure of this his first effort to restore Margaret to her own, prepared himself for another interview with Petrovski.

He wished to be calm and cool, for what, he said to himself, if he were to be sent on a fool's errand?—what if the man who had dealt him that mysterious blow could have been really Laura's father? He found it difficult on such a supposition to assign a motive for his conduct, unless indeed he could have heard of his search, and have believed he was simply an agent sent by his wife to entice the child back to her. On the other hand, what could have led L'Estrange, if it should be he, to Moscow?

Arthur was very much perplexed. He determined to call the calmest, clearest judgment to his aid in sifting the information which the agent was ready to proffer. Alas! when did an old head sit upon young shoulders? If ever they have been united, the combination has not produced such a pleasing whole as Arthur Forrest, who, in spite of the knowledge of this world on which he prided himself, was above all things young and confiding.

Petrovski might have deceived him, might have sent him to the antipodes, if he had seen fit, but his master in the art of dissimulation had advised him to be truthful. Arthur, therefore, after some days' delay, was told the simple truth—that Maurice Grey, disgusted with his life in St. Petersburg, had made up his mind to turn his back on society altogether. With this view he had sought the mountains, and had established himself, one servant his only companion, in a chalet hastily fitted up with a few necessaries in one of the higher Swiss valleys.

The agent professed to have just received letters from this remote point. In them Mr. Grey had directed that his money and business-letters from England should be sent to the hotel nearest to his temporary home, and this was the address which was given to Arthur, which had previously been given to L'Estrange.

By the following night's mail Arthur left Moscow. As may well be supposed, he lost no time on the way.

Of this strange flight through almost the entire breadth of Europe he never thought afterward save in the light of a feverish dream. It seemed like a vision. Sleeping and waking he was flying still, with all manner of various impressions, multitudes of scenes and strange faces, flitting before him like a kind of phantasmagoria. Glimpses of grand cities, appearing but to vanish, vast solitudes, uncultivated and barren wastes, mountain-country and soft pastoral scenes passed before him in an ever-varying succession. At last the train had to be left behind; he had gained the mountains, and with them a mode of travelling that seemed painfully slow and wearisome to his brain, in a whirl with swift movement and tumultuous thought.

Arthur was haunted through those long days, and, strange to say, it was not Margaret's face that haunted him, nor even that of his gentle cousin who was pining in distant England for his return. The lovely child's face followed him day after day and night after night. It reminded him of failure, brought back in vivid colors the memory of what he looked upon as a species of ignominy, and yet, do what he would, he could not banish it. The bright golden hair, the dark mournful eyes, the fair contour, the childish grace returned again and again.

At times it was like a nightmare. He would see the child, even touch her, and as he touched her she would vanish. Once or twice during those long nights of travelling Arthur seriously interfered with the comfort of his fellow-voyagers by his strange proceedings. Reaching forward at one time, he would seize upon the hand or knee of the person who sat in front of him, laying himself open, if the individual were of the feminine order, to serious misconception—if of the masculine, to a rude rebuff and rough awakening; at another he would passionately grasp the window-blind, giving rise to an irresistible titter among those of his companions who did not find sleeping in a train such easy work as he did. But whenever Laura's face came before his mind, in sleeping or waking moments, Arthur looked at it with a strange reverence. To him it was scarcely a child's face. It seemed almost as if behind the fairness and beauty there was a meaning.