Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow: A Novel

by C. Despard

Observation and deduction had been carried by this strange man to such an extent in the course of his ceaseless wanderings, that at last they had reached almost the rank of a science. In ancient days his acuteness would have earned for him the unenviable notoriety of the wizard; men would have imagined that he had dealings with the powers of darkness. Indeed, as it was, Margaret and her friends had often been perfectly astounded by the accuracy of his predictions, based on grounds to them undiscoverable, for they never failed of verification.

Connecting the past with the present, Margaret's brain—unhealthily active in this her hour of deepest misery—began to trace for itself a theory to account for the mysterious words, which clung to it like a subtle poison. He had met her husband, she said to herself; he had found out, by the marvellous power he possessed, that no friendly purpose had brought him to the vicinity of his wife—that he was hostile to her still, that some new misery was in store for her.

But what could it be? Could her sufferings be increased? She had risen from her seat. In the restlessness of her spirit movement seemed a necessity. She had walked with unconscious rapidity to some distance along the shore. Suddenly, as she reached this point in her theory of possibilities, she stopped; covering her face with both hands, she uttered a low cry and sank down upon the grassy edge of the cliff. There had come to her mind, like a fatal knell, one sentence of her tormentor's speech—"In all hearts there is one assailable point"—and it brought a picture to her mind.

She seemed to see the pensive, half-melancholy eyes, the golden curls, the graceful, childish form of her little Laura, and as she saw she realized what her affection for the child had become during the last few weeks—how the little one was her hope, her joy, the sheet-anchor of her soul.

But Laura was his. Could it be that he would take away her treasure and punish her afresh by an added loneliness—by letting her know that he felt her unworthy to be the guardian of his child after the age when the young soul is plastic and open to impressions? It was unlike Maurice. Ah, how unlike! pleaded the weary heart; but misery had been known to change men utterly was the answer of the brain, grown morbid by lonely pondering; and that Maurice, with his earnest craving for sympathy, could have been anything but miserable through those long months was impossible.

But he could not remove her without warning. He would see his wife, he would speak to her; Heaven, in its mercy, would give her one more opportunity. This she said to herself as she sat almost helpless by the cliff, crushed by the dreary possibilities which this new presentiment of evil had brought to her mind. And with this idea came a desire for action. Even at that moment, as she sat there inert, he might be at the cottage waiting with impatience for her return, wondering at her long absence from his child.

She sprang to her feet and began rapidly to retrace her steps, skirting the sand-cliff that rose up from the shore. By this time evening had come. The little ones were being marshalled by their nurses for home and bed, two or three loving pairs were pacing the yellow sands, the sun was stooping down in ruddy glory to the rest of his ocean bed, there was a fragrant steam from the fields of clover and cowslip, a hush as of coming repose upon everything; but what can stay the tumult of the soul?

Like the fabled Io of the Greek, she may wander hither and thither, the lulling sounds and the restful sights of Nature may wrap their calm around her, but only externally. When the gad-fly of stinging misery follows evermore in her track, what are all these? Nothing, less than nothing, or a mocking echo of that to which she can never attain.

Something of this Margaret felt that evening as, through the torturing consciousness of a new possibility of anguish, she looked upon the fair outer world. Nature was too calm, too fair—she was antagonistic to the mood of the lonely, suffering woman.

Margaret had wandered farther than she thought, and the sun had already dipped below the western horizon before she saw her cottage. It was lying in the shadow, not touched by the sunset glory. To her imagination, distraught by the experiences of the day, it looked cold and blighted.