Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

by C. Despard

"Thank you," replied Maurice cordially. He was at a loss to account for the timidity, the hesitation, the evident constraint of this young man, who was yet, to all appearance, no novice in the ways of the world; but he liked him and wished to set him at his ease.

"You have just come from England, I presume?" he said after a short pause, looking kindly into Arthur's flushed face. "I have been a wanderer for many years. How do you like this kind of life?"

"It has been pleasant enough," replied the younger man, reassured once more by his companion's friendliness; "but, do you know, I find nothing to compare with the comfort, the convenience—in fact, you know the kind of thing that one finds at home. Here one can't get even decent tobacco; there is nothing to be had in the way of drink but sour wine. As for the cooking, some people praise it very highly; but—" As he spoke there came up a little dish of vegetables swimming in butter. "Bah! they call that an entrée, I suppose."

Maurice laughed, and helped himself to the obnoxious dish: "You see what wandering does. I have become cosmopolitan in my tastes. From the sauerkraut of Germany to the caviare of Russia I am tolerably at home, able at least to pick up a living; but come, you are right about the wine, which I really think grows in sourness with the added degrees of frost; we might have better tipple than this, and it is an occasion. I have not done the social for many a long day. The 'Wein kart,' Karl. Let us order up the best bottle of champagne the landlord has in his cellar, though I greatly fear his stock is low. Karl, inquire for me—any first quality champagne left?"

The landlord's cellar was not absolutely empty. In a few moments a bottle of very excellent champagne stood on the table between the two young men. Maurice drained a brimming glass; Arthur would scarcely do more than wet his lips. He had not forgotten his purpose, and to bring it to a successful issue he knew it would be necessary to have all his wits about him. Laughingly, Maurice reproached his young companion for his abstemiousness, and filled and refilled his own glass with the glittering draught. For after the dull weight of loneliness, after the terrible experiences of the morning, after the gloomy musing that had oppressed him with its horror, this return, even transitory as he felt it to be, to some of life's amenities was a boundless relief to the man's soul. In the old happy days society had been Maurice Grey's life; it had intoxicated him like wine. Among his peers, when, soul meeting soul, the sparkles of wit, the flashes of gay humor had been struck out in the heat of social intercourse, he had reigned as a king: brilliant, vivacious, boundlessly hospitable, his society had been courted by the world, and he had met the world courteously, drawing out from its pleasures the extreme of good that was in them.

But misery had changed Maurice woefully, and it was only when the wine was in his blood, when its liquid fire was coursing through his veins, that he could return in any degree to his former self—that he could become once more the fascinating, brilliant, cordial man of society. On this particular occasion he had determined to forget himself. It was the flying back of the bow that had been bent nigh to breaking. Wine could make him forget, and he poured out glass after glass, draining them rapidly, as a man might do who was consumed with burning thirst. Gradually his eyes began to shine and his words to flow more readily. The haughty, self-contained man spoke freely of himself, and made a friend and companion of the youth whom hazard had thrown into his way.

Arthur listened silently, with a tremulous joy. If Maurice would confide in him his task was half done already. But love had taught the young man prudence. He would hear before he would speak; he would earnestly study the character of him he had come so far to seek before he would determine how and when his object should be revealed. Maurice, in this mood, was a marvellously agreeable companion. The younger man, standing, as it were, on the threshold of life, listened, entranced, to his descriptions of the great world, and Mr. Grey knew the world better than most men. He had plunged into every kind of society; he had feigned to be what he was not, that he might gain access to that which would otherwise have been denied to him; he had played upon the weaknesses of men and women, only to scathe them with his biting ridicule. Then too, he had seen the world from a variety of standpoints. During the first part of his life as a man he had taken a part in the careers which the great world offers to its votaries; afterward he had lived as a spectator: holding himself aloof from the heartburnings, the jealousies, the ambitions, the intrigues, he had been able more calmly to note and criticise. He had made undying enemies, he had knit to himself faithful friends, he had been concerned in strange histories; but all these things had been apart from himself. As far as his own feelings were concerned, they were nothing, feathers light as air, incidents pour passer le temps—nothing more. He was in the midst of a brilliant series of anecdotes drawn from his life in St. Petersburg, which had been fruitful in events, commenting lightly, even with a kind of sarcasm—for these things could not move Maurice Grey—on the enthusiasm he had excited in female breasts, and on the confusion and dismay which his mysterious absence would create, when the light began to wane, and the waiter came in to set a match to the solitary oil-lamp which was the hotel dining-room's winter allowance of light.

Maurice stopped and drew out his watch: "By Jove! young gentleman, your society is so fascinating that I had altogether forgotten the time. Do you know we have been nearly three hours at table? Now tell me candidly, have you any plan for this evening? I need scarcely ask," he continued laughing; "amusements are not in this primitive corner; if you went out to walk you would infallibly lose yourself, and as far as I can make out there are in the hotel at present no fair ladies to conquer; but so much the better for you. If I had my life to live over again, I would flee woman as I would the plague." His brow contracted. "I wonder why I talk about women at all. They are all alike false and fickle."

Arthur looked up. He was but a boy, and in presence of this man of the world, steeped to the lips in cynicism, it was difficult to express the strong faith of his young soul. But Margaret's face in its calm beauty came suddenly like a sweet vision before his eyes, and he answered, trembling slightly, "I am younger than you, Mr. Grey, and have had much less experience of the world; but I know that in this thing you are wrong. There may be some women who are bad and faithless, and all that kind of thing—there are ever so many more who are good and pure. Perhaps you have been unfortunate in your intercourse with women—perhaps—" his voice shook, and there was a sudden light in his blue eyes—"perhaps you have made some terrible mistake."