Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

by C. Despard

With an Englishman's insight into possibilities he had forgotten nothing that could possibly conduce to an approximation to comfort in such a situation as that in which he found himself. This being so, he was able to enter more thoroughly into Nature's strange caprices, as exhibited in this land of wonders, than the sentimental German, who shivered in a threadbare coat. For—there can be no doubt about it—physical comfort frees the mind: when the body is irritated by discomfort, the mind, sympathetic, is occupied by itself.

In the intervals of meditation on his plans and further attempts for Margaret, and efforts to take in and write upon his brain some at least of the wonderful combinations of form and coloring through which they were passing, Arthur looked with a dreamy philosophy at his fellow-travellers.

The young man was inclined, from the depths of his magnificent cloak, to wonder lazily why Providence had bestowed the world's allowance of common sense upon our nation. The experience of foreigners which he had been gaining during those weeks of travelling had only confirmed Arthur in his preconceived idea. One and all they were absurd. The absurdities might differ in kind and degree—this the young man would not attempt to deny—and no doubt there were clever people among them; still, as a rule, were they to be compared to Englishmen?

He looked at the sturdy, commonplace Swiss, the shivering Pole (only half a man he pronounced him), the sentimental German, trying so conscientiously to enjoy, and with a feeling of self-gratulation that actually helped to send a warm glow through his frame answered the question by a decided negative. No wonder they pronounced the young Englishman supercilious; he had intended to be very condescending. From the heights of his superior nationality it was so easy to look with a calm pity upon those who had been less highly favored by Nature. It need scarcely be considered matter for surprise that they regarded his condescension in another light, and were inclined to repel his spasmodic efforts to be very pleasant and friendly.

All the travellers were glad when the foot of the mountain was reached. Even the indefatigable Arthur, when he found himself so near his destination, thought it well to take a night's rest at Amsteg, where he broke off from the St. Gothard route for Meyringen and Grindelwald. It was somewhere between these two places that the chalet occupied by Maurice Grey was supposed to be situated.

Once in the neighborhood, the young man felt that it would not be difficult to find it. The very fact of a stranger having made for himself a lonely habitation in the mountains would be sufficient to render his home a celebrated place.

Arthur's only difficulty now was what it had been at York before his interview with Margaret—the framing of some reason which might account for his seeming intrusiveness. He formed a thousand plans. He would wander in the direction of the chalet, he would put himself in the position of a benighted traveller thrown on the hospitality of the hermit; finally, he determined to torment himself no longer—Fate would perhaps befriend him as before. That evening Arthur sent another letter to Margaret and his cousin. There was not much in it of the impressions which the grand scenes among which he was sojourning had written on his mind, but it held a courage and hope that might inspire the lonely wife and bereaved mother with a kindred sentiment.

Arthur was an inexperienced traveller, and the plan of his route had been principally traced in obedience to the suggestions of the few English people he had met. It is more than possible, therefore, that the route chosen was not the most direct; for although it had not been possible for L'Estrange in any way to emulate his swiftness in travelling (he was obliged to suit himself to Laura's capabilities), yet on that night when, from the small village in the valleys, Arthur sent his second letter to Margaret, the child and her protector were already at the address given by Petrovski, in the close vicinity of the child's father, of her friend's most bitter and unrelenting enemy. She was utterly unconscious of the strange position, though a change had come over her in those last days of travelling. There was about her even more of the sedateness of the thoughtful woman, still less of the child's merry unconcern. For the shadows that had threatened this young life's joy were gathering thickly around her. She was in the centre of emotions too strong, of a life too earnest, for her tender youth, and her friend saw with concern how the color faded from her face, how her brow grew transparent, how the quiet gestures of a woman became more and more habitant.

But he could do nothing; the mischief had been wrought in that hour when his passion had overpowered his judgment, when he had consummated the rash deed of taking a tender little one from the mother's fostering care. He had done what he could to obviate the evil, and in the interval the child had grown dear to him as his own soul. This it was that added a tenfold poignancy to the pain with which L'Estrange sometimes looked at her.

Once or twice in the course of this later journey L'Estrange had further accesses of the pain he dreaded, and more than once he had been forced to resort to his kindly enemy, entrancing opium, to stay his fierce pangs for a time. It produced its true effect upon him. Moments he had of joys too great for earth—moments when his imagination played freely, when his heart expanded, when all the dark places of his past life's journey were irradiated with a golden light, and when the growing uneasiness of the present strangeness and the certain future pain passed into calm security and pleasant rosy dreams. But the false potion brought other moments in its train—moments when his whole being seemed weak and nerveless, when deep depression possessed his soul, when even the higher life and nobler possibilities of existence which he had been learning in the child's pure presence became to his languid soul unattainable as the dreams of a weak visionary.