“Don’t you think he is better, mamma--a little better to-day?”
“Ah, mon Dieu, what can I say, Reine? To be a little better in his state
is often to be worst of all. You have not seen so much as I have. Often,
very often, there is a gleam of the dying flame in the socket; there is
an air of being well--almost well. What can I say? I have seen it like
that. And they have all told us that he cannot live. Alas, alas, my poor
boy!”
Madame de Mirfleur buried her face in her handkerchief as she spoke. She
was seated in the little sitting-room of a little house in an Alpine
valley, where they had brought the invalid when the Summer grew too hot
for him on the shores of the Mediterranean. He himself had chosen the
Kanderthal as his Summer quarters, and with the obstinacy of a sick man
had clung to the notion. The valley was shut in by a circle of snowy
peaks toward the east; white, dazzling mountain-tops, which yet looked
small and homely and familiar in the shadow of the bigger Alps around. A
little mountain stream ran through the valley, across which, at one
point, clustered a knot of houses, with a homely inn in the midst. There
were trout in the river, and the necessaries of life were to be had in
the village, through which a constant stream of travellers passed during
the Summer and Autumn, parties crossing the steep pass of the Gemmi, and
individual tourists of more enterprising character fighting their way
from this favorable centre into various unknown recesses of the hills.
Behind the chalet a waterfall kept up a continual murmur, giving
utterance, as it seemed, to the very silence cf the mountains. The scent
of pine-woods was in the air; to the west the glory of the sunset shone
over a long broken stretch of valley, uneven moorland interspersed with
clumps of wood. To be so little out of the way--nay, indeed, to be in
the way--of the Summer traveller, it was singularly wild and quaint and
fresh. Indeed, for one thing, no tourist ever stayed there except for
food and rest, for there was nothing to attract any one in the plain,
little secluded village, with only its circle of snowy peaks above its
trout-stream, and its sunsets, to catch any fanciful eye. Sometimes,
however, a fanciful eye was caught by these charms, as in the case of
poor Herbert Austin, who had been brought here to die. He lay in the
little room which communicated with this sitting-room, in a small wooden
chamber opening upon a balcony, from which you could watch the sun
setting over the Kanderthal, and the moon rising over the snow-white
glory of the Dolden-horn, almost at the same moment. The chalet belonged
to the inn, and was connected with it by a covered passage. The Summer
was at its height, and still poor Herbert lingered, though M. de
Mirfleur, in pleasant Normandy, grew a little weary of the long time his
wife’s son took in dying; and Madame de Mirfleur herself, as jealous
Reine would think sometimes, in spite of herself grew weary too,
thinking of her second family at home, and the husband whom Reine had
always felt to be an offence. The mother and sister who were thus
watching over Herbert’s last moments were not so united in their grief
and pious duties as might have been supposed. Generally it is the mother
whose whole heart is absorbed in such watching, and the young sister who
is to be pardoned if sometimes, in the sadness of the shadow that
precedes death, her young mind should wander back to life and its warmer
interests with a longing which makes her feel guilty. But in this case
these positions were reversed. It was the mother who longed
involuntarily for the life she had left behind her, and whose heart
reverted wistfully to something brighter and more hopeful, to other
interests and loves as strong, if not stronger, than that she felt in
and for her eldest son. When it is the other way the sad mother pardons
her child for a wandering imagination; but the sad child, jealous and
miserable, does not forgive the mother, who has so much to fall back
upon. Reine had never been able to forgive her mother’s marriage. She
never named her by her new name without a thrill of irritation. Her
stepfather seemed a standing shame to her, and every new brother and
sister who came into the world was a new offence against Reine’s
delicacy. She had been glad, very glad, of Madame de Mirfleur’s aid in
transporting Herbert hither, and at first her mother’s society, apart
from the new family, had been very sweet to the girl, who loved her,
notwithstanding the fantastic sense of shame which possessed her, and
her jealousy of all her new connections. But when Reine, quick-sighted
with the sharpened vision of jealousy and wounded love, saw, or thought
she saw, that her mother began to weary of the long vigil, that she
began to wonder what her little ones were doing, and to talk of all the
troubles of a long absence, her heart rose impatient in an agony of
anger and shame and deep mortification. Weary of waiting for her son’s
death--her eldest son, who ought to have been her only son--weary of
those lingering moments which were now all that remained to Herbert!
Reine, in the anguish of her own deep grief and pity and longing hold
upon him, felt herself sometimes almost wild against her mother. She did
so now, when Madame de Mirfleur, with a certain calm, though she was
crying, shook her head and lamented that such gleams of betterness were
often the precursors of the end. Reine did not weep when her mother
buried her face in her delicate perfumed handkerchief. She said to
herself fiercely, “Mamma likes to think so; she wants to get rid of us,
and get back to those others,” and looked at her with eyes which shone
hot and dry, with a flushed cheek and clenched hands. It was all she
could do to restrain herself, to keep from saying something which good
sense and good taste, and a lingering natural affection, alike made her
feel that she must not say. Reine was one of those curious creatures in
whom two races mingle. She had the Austin blue eyes, but with a light in
them such as no Austin had before; but she had the dark-brown hair,
smooth and silky, of her French mother, and something of the piquancy of
feature, the little petulant nose, the mobile countenance of the more
vivacious blood. Her figure was like a fairy’s, little and slight; her
movements, both of mind and body, rapid as the stirrings of a bird; she
went from one mood to another instantaneously, which was not the habit
of her father’s deliberate race. Miss Susan thought her all
French--Madame de Mirfleur all English; and indeed both with some
reason--for when in England this perverse girl was full of enthusiasm
for everything that belonged to her mother’s country, and when in
France was the most prejudiced and narrow-minded of English women. Youth
is always perverse, more or less, and there was a double share of its
fanciful self-will and changeableness in Reine, whose circumstances were
so peculiar and her temptations so many. She was so rent asunder by love
and grief, by a kind of adoration for her dying brother, the only being
in the world who belonged exclusively to herself, and jealous suspicion
that he did not get his due from others, that her petulance was very
comprehensible. She waited till Madame de Mirfleur came out of her
handkerchief, still with hot and dry and glittering eyes.
“You think it would be well if it were over,” said Reine; “that is what
I have heard people say. It would be well--yes, in order to release his
nurses and attendants, it would be well if it should come to an end. Ah,
mamma, you think so too--you, his mother! You would not harm him nor
shorten his life, but yet you think, as it is hopeless, it might be
well: you want to go to your husband and your children!”
“If I do, that is simple enough,” said Madame de Mirfleur. “Ciel! how
unjust you are, Reine! because I tell you the result of a little rally
like Herbert’s is often not happy. I want to go to my husband, and to
your brothers and sisters, yes--I should be unnatural if I did not--but
that my duty, which I will never neglect, calls upon me here.”
“Oh, do not stay!” cried Reine vehemently--“do not stay! I can do all
the duty. If it is only duty that keeps you, go, mamma, go! I would not
have you, for that reason, stay another day.”
“Child! how foolish you are!” said the mother. “Reine, you should not
show at least your repugnance to everything I am fond of. It is
wicked--and more, it is foolish. What can any one think of you? I will
stay while I am necessary to my poor boy; you may be sure of that.”
“Not necessary,” said Reine--“oh, not necessary! _I_ can do all for him
that is necessary. He is all I have in the world. There are neither
husband nor children that can come between Herbert and me. Go,
mamma,--for Heaven’s sake, go! When your heart is gone already, why
should you remain? I can do all he requires. Oh, please, go!”
“You are very wicked, Reine,” said her mother, “and unkind! You do not
reflect that I stay for you. What are you to do when you are left all
alone?--you, who are so unjust to your mother? I stay for that. What
would you do?”
“Me!” said Reine. She grew pale suddenly to her very lips, struck by
this sudden suggestion in the sharpest way. She gave a sob of tearless
passion. She knew very well that her brother was dying; but thus to be
compelled to admit and realize it, was more than she could bear. “I will
do the best I can,” she said, closing her eyes in the giddy faintness
that came over her. “What does it matter about me?”
“The very thought makes you ill,” said Madame de Mirfleur. “Reine, you
know what is coming, but you will never allow yourself to think of it.
Pause now, and reflect; when my poor Herbert is gone, what will become
of you, unless I am here to look after you? You will have to do
everything yourself. Why should we refuse to consider things which we
know must happen? There will be the funeral--all the arrangements--”
“Mamma! mamma! have you a heart of stone?” cried Reine. She was shocked
and wounded, and stung to the very soul. To speak of his funeral, almost
in his presence, seemed nothing less than brutal to the excited girl;
and all these matter-of-fact indications of what was coming jarred
bitterly upon the heart, in which, I suppose, hope will still live while
life lasts. Reine felt her whole being thrill with the shock of this
terrible, practical touch, which to her mother seemed merely a simple
putting into words of the most evident and unavoidable thought.
“I hope I have a heart like all the rest of the world,” said Madame de
Mirfleur. “And you are excited and beside yourself, or I could not pass
over your unkindness as I do. Yes, Reine, it is my duty to stay for poor
Herbert, but still more for you. What would you do?”
“What would it matter?” cried Reine, bitterly--“not drop into his grave
with him--ah, no; one is not permitted that happiness. One has to stay
behind and live on, when there is nothing to live for more!”
“You are impious, my child,” said her mother. “And, again, you are
foolish; you do not reflect how young you are, and that life has many
interests yet in store for you--new connections, new duties--”
“Husbands and children!” cried Reine with scornful bitterness, turning
her blue eyes, agleam with that feverish fire which tells at once of the
necessity and impossibility of tears, upon her mother. Then her
countenance changed all in a moment. A little bell tinkled faintly from
the next room. “I am coming,” she cried, in a tone as soft as the Summer
air that caressed the flowers in the balcony. The expression of her face
was changed and softened; she became another creature in a moment.
Without a word or a look more, she opened the door of the inner room and
disappeared.
Madame de Mirfleur looked after her, not without irritation; but she was
not so fiery as Reine, and she made allowances for the girl’s folly, and
calmed down her own displeasure. She listened for a moment to make out
whether the invalid’s wants were anything more than usual, whether her
help was required; and then drawing toward her a blotting-book which lay
on the table, she resumed her letter to her husband. She was not so much
excited as Reine by this interview, and, indeed, she felt she had only
done her duty in indicating to the girl very plainly that life must go
on and be provided for, even after Herbert had gone out of it. “My poor
boy!” she said to herself, drying some tears; but she could not think of
dying with him, or feel any despair from that one loss; she had many to
live for, many to think of, even though she might have him no longer.
“Reine is excited and unreasonable, as usual,” she wrote to her husband;
“always jealous of you, mon ami, and of our children. This arises
chiefly from her English ideas, I am disposed to believe. Perhaps when
the sad event which we are awaiting is over, she will see more clearly
that I have done the best for her as well as for myself. We must pardon
her in the meantime, poor child. It is in her blood. The English are
always more or less fantastic. We others, French, have true reason.
Reassure yourself, mon cher ami, that I will not remain a day longer
than I can help away from you and our children. My poor Herbert sinks
daily. Think of our misery!--you cannot imagine how sad it is. Probably
in a week, at the furthest, all will be over. Ah, mon Dieu! what it is
to have a mother’s heart! and how many martyrdoms we have to bear!”
Madame de Mirfleur wrote this sentence with a very deep sigh, and once
more wiped from her eyes a fresh gush of tears. She was perfectly
correct in every way as a mother. She felt as she ought to feel, and
expressed her sorrow as it was becoming to express it, only she was not
absorbed by it--a thing which is against all true rules of piety and
submission. She could not rave like Reine, as if there was nothing else
worth caring for, except her poor Herbert, her dear boy. She had a great
many other things to care for; and she recognized all that must happen,
and accepted it as necessary. Soon it would be over; and all recovery
being hopeless, and the patient having nothing to look forward to but
suffering, could it be doubted that it was best for him to have his
suffering over? though Reine, in her rebellion against God and man,
could not see this, and clung to every lingering moment which could
lengthen out her brother’s life.
Reine herself cleared like a Summer sky as she passed across the
threshold into her brother’s room. The change was instantaneous. Her
blue eyes, which had a doubtful light in them, and looked sometimes
fierce and sometimes impassioned, were now as soft as the sky. The lines
of irritation were all smoothed from her brow and from under her eyes.
Limpid eyes, soft looks, an unruffled, gentle face, with nothing in it
but love and tenderness, was what she showed always to her sick brother.
Herbert knew her only under this aspect, though, with the
clear-sightedness of an invalid, he had divined that Reine was not
always so sweet to others as to himself.
“You called me,” she said, coming up to his bed-side with something
caressing, soothing, in the very sound of her step and voice; “you want
me, Herbert?”
“Yes; but I don’t want you to do anything. Sit down by me, Reine; I am
tired of my own company, that is all.”
“And so am I--of everybody’s company but yours,” she said, sitting down
by the bed-side and stooping her pretty, shining head to kiss his thin
hand.
“Thanks, dear, for saying such pretty things to me. But, Reine, I heard
voices; you were talking--was it with mamma?--not so softly as you do to
me.”
“Oh, it was nothing,” said Reine, with a flush. “Did you hear us, poor
boy? Oh, that was wicked! Yes, you know there are things that make me--I
do not mean angry--I suppose I have no right to be angry with mamma--”
“Why should you be angry with any one?” he said, softly. “If you had to
lie here, like me, you would think nothing was worth being angry about.
My poor Reine! you do not even know what I mean.”
“Oh, no; there is so much that is wrong,” said Reine; “so many things
that people do--so many that they think--their very ways of doing even
what is right enough. No, no; it is worth while to be angry about many,
many things. I do not want to learn to be indifferent; besides, that
would be impossible to me--it is not my nature.”
The invalid smiled and shook his head softly at her. “Your excuse goes
against yourself,” he said. “If you are ruled by your nature, must not
others be moved by theirs? You active-minded people, Reine, you would
like every one to think like you; but if you could accomplish it, what a
monotonous world you would make! I should not like the Kanderthal if all
the mountain-tops were shaped the same; and I should not perhaps love
you so much if you were less yourself. Why not let other people, my
Reine, be themselves, too?”
The brother and sister spoke French, which, more than English, had been
the language of their childhood.
“Herbert, don’t say such things!” cried the girl. “You do not love me
for this or for that, as strangers might, but because I am I, Reine, and
you are you, Herbert. That is all we want. Ah, yes, perhaps if I were
very good I should like to be loved for being good. I don’t know; I
don’t think it even then. When they used to promise to love me if I was
good at Whiteladies, I was always naughty--on purpose?--yes, I am
afraid. Herbert, should not you like to be at Whiteladies, lying on the
warm, warm grass in the orchard, underneath the great apple-tree, with
the bees humming all about, and the dear white English clouds floating
and floating, and the sky so deep, deep, that you could not fathom it?
Ah!” cried Reine, drawing a deep breath, “I have not thought of it for a
long time; but I wish we were there.”
The sick youth did not say anything for a moment; his eyes followed her
look, which she turned instinctively to the open window. Then he sighed;
then raising himself a little, said, with a gleam of energy, “I am
certainly better, Reine. I should like to get up and set out across the
Gemmi, down the side of the lake that must be shining so in the sun.
That’s the brightest way home.” Then he laughed, with a laugh which,
though feeble, had not lost the pleasant ring of youthfulness. “What
wild ideas you put into my head!” he said. “No, I am not up to that yet;
but, Reine, I am certainly better. I have such a desire to get up: and I
thought I should never get up again.”
“I will call François!” cried the girl, eagerly. He had been made to get
up for days together without any will of his own, and now that he should
wish it seemed to her a step toward that recovery which Reine could
never believe impossible. She rushed out to call his servant, and
waited, with her heart beating, till he should be dressed, her thoughts
already dancing forward to brighter and brighter possibilities.
“He has never had the good of the mountain air,” said Reine to herself,
“and the scent of the pine-woods. He shall sit on the balcony to-day,
and to-morrow go out in the chair, and next week, perhaps--who
knows?--he may be able to walk up to the waterfall, and--O God! O Dieu
tout-puissant! O doux Jesu!” cried the girl, putting her hands together,
“I will be good! I will be good! I will endure anything; if only he may
live!--if only he may live!”