[CHAPTER XII.]
TOLD AMONG THE SNOWS.
Oh, she was fair: her nature once all spring
And deadly beauty, like a maiden sword—
Startlingly beautiful. I see her now!
That was the end of anything like confidential intercourse between Maurice Grey and the young Arthur, so far as the evening passed in the chalet was concerned. They were both tired, and Maurice had once more allowed himself to take rather more strong drink than was good for him.
It was a new fault. Hitherto, in all his dark moods, through his dreary solitude, and, to him, almost as dreary times of gayety, he had always respected himself so far as to refrain from drowning his sorrows in so contemptible a way. Now, it seemed as though a crisis in his fate had come, as though he were destined to be swept away utterly in the numbing torrent of misery and loneliness.
Arthur had to assist him to bed that evening, for he was almost incapable of doing anything for himself. The young man recovered very soon from the indignant displeasure into which Maurice's cynicism had thrown him. He saw the weary man, overcome as much perhaps by emotion and fatigue as by what he had taken, sink into a deep sleep, and a dim idea of the truth dawned in upon his mind. It softened him so much that he could scarcely keep from tears as he looked on the face of his new friend, so fine in all its outlines, yet so evidently wasted by care. And this was the long-sought, the earnestly-desired—Margaret's husband, the arbiter of her destinies, the object of her changeless love.
Arthur felt a new love stirring in his heart; he treated his companion with a tender reverence.
He had some difficulty and met a few harsh words before he could rouse Maurice so far as to half lead, half drag him, into his small bedroom. When at last his efforts had been successful, when he saw him resting in the death-like immobility of sleep upon the pillow, he half trembled about the effect upon Maurice's morning mood of this little night-episode. Would he be humiliated at the remembrance of the weakness into which he had been betrayed, and shut up his heart still more from his companion?
Arthur might have spared himself the trouble of forming any conjecture on the subject. Maurice the next morning remembered very little of his strange revelations, and nothing whatever of the torpor that succeeded.