Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

by C. Despard

Karl grew afraid of his own shadow. Indeed, only his visits (and he took care they should be of daily recurrence) to inhabited places kept him sane and capable. So absolute is the truth, old as humanity itself, that "it is not well for man to dwell alone."

For Maurice Grey where was the helpmate to be found? Not upon earth, if perfection such as he sought in his lofty idealism was to be its necessary accompaniment. He had broken his idol for a flaw in its fair whiteness, and what wonder that he found it difficult—nay, impossible—to replace it?

Not that Maurice, to do him justice, had ever sought to replace his idol by any creature outside of him in the world of men and women. It may be, however, that his dream was wilder and more vain. For he looked within instead of without—looked to the poor trembling self for that satisfaction and peace which life with one who was (though he had not known it) verily his other self, by reason of her tenderness and warm womanly sympathy, might have brought him.

Maurice and Margaret had been alike wrong in this, that they had sought in the transitory and fleeting what is impalpable and enduring. Happiness springs not from the dust, and happiness abiding is only to be found outside of ourselves, outside of humanity, outside even of the world.

This they were learning, the husband and wife, each in the secret place of a stricken heart—learning it with stormy seas and vast plains and snow-clad mountains between them. Sometimes it would dawn upon Maurice, in the midst of a dream of impossible bliss, that he had been seeking the good in a wrong channel—that perhaps it might be found when and where he least thought to meet it. And the idea would make him tremble as with a sudden inspiration his eyes would seek the blue vault above, so restful in its calm transcendent purity.

And so the long summer months, laden with beauty, passed by him. Days he had of musing, when his soul, entering in upon itself, would strive painfully for the secret of Nature's abiding joy—days of inspiration, when after a restless night dreams and imaginings would shape themselves into burning words which he would trace with a poet's tremulous joy—days of moody abstraction, when even the blue heavens irritated him by their calm beauty, when the white snow-peaks glared and dazzled and robed themselves in dark palls: days too he had when a better spirit seemed to be taking possession of him, when the spirit of good brooded over his soul, when from the everlasting pæan of hill and vale, of rustling leaves, rushing torrents and tuneful birds the shadow of a peace that might yet be his descended on his soul. And still Karl came and went, leaving the hermit in the morning, returning with early evening, ministering to his necessities and preventing him from feeling the hardships that might have been his lot in the strange life he had chosen.

If the truth must be told, the imaginative German half expected at times, as he entered the dark gorges which led to his master's dwelling, to find that in his absence companion-ghosts had spirited him away. But such an occurrence never happened, and the man began to take heart and breathe more freely.

Unhappily, the summer-time could not last for ever. Autumn came, and on this particular occasion an early autumn fell upon the valley. Bleak winds began to moan and sigh among the hills, the mountains robed themselves in gray, impenetrable mist, the leaves shuddered and fell by myriads.

Maurice Grey was an Englishman. He had always prided himself on his independence of externals, but hitherto he had been well occupied, mentally or physically, in such a season. This coming on of autumn was very different from any former experience. To be absolutely alone, or shut up with a servant who only at intervals shows a scared face; a blanket, damp, white, clinging, about the house, and entering in by every nook and cranny; nothing visible but walls of chilly vapor rising in billowy folds about dark, formless giants, that are known to be snow-mountains only because they have been visible before,—is sufficiently depressing; but add to all this a mental life unhealthily alive and sensitive, an absence of present joys, with the memory of past happiness rising at times to mock the heart by its fairness, the sting of a remorseful conscience, physical powers fast decaying under the unspeakable horrors of a lonely, unloved life, and I think it will be allowed that Maurice Grey would have been more than human if even his intellect had not begun to fail him.

It was such a morning as that I have been describing; he sat before his desk; his pipe was on the table before him, books were scattered on every side, a manuscript was open, the pen was in the ink; but he was doing literally nothing, not even attempting to beguile his dreariness with that friend of the forlorn—a pipe. His folded arms rested listlessly on the table; he was looking out into the thick mists with a dreary hopelessness that in a man seemed miserable beyond compare. He was not even thinking. It was as though a gloomy abstraction had seized upon his soul.