Herbert continued much better next day. It had done him good to be out,
and already François, with that confidence in all simple natural
remedies which the French, and indeed all continental nations, have so
much more strongly than we, asserted boldly that it was the pines which
had already done so much for his young master. I do not think that Reine
and Herbert, being half English, had much faith in the pines. They
referred the improvement at once, and directly, to a higher hand, and
were glad, poor children, to think that no means had been necessary, but
that God had done it simply by willing it, in that miraculous simple way
which seems so natural to the primitive soul. The doctor, when he came
next day upon his weekly visit from Thun or Interlaken, was entirely
taken by surprise. I believe that from week to week he had scarcely
expected to see his patient living; and now he was up, and out, coming
back to something like appetite and ease, and as full of hope as youth
could be. The doctor shook his head, but was soon infected, like the
others, by this atmosphere of hopefulness. He allowed that a wonderful
progress had been made; that there always were special circumstances in
this case which made it unlike other cases, and left a margin for
unexpected results. And when Madame de Mirfleur took him aside to ask
about the state of the tissue, and whether the perforations were
arrested, he still said, though with hesitation and shakings of the
head, that he could not say that it might not be the beginning of a
permanent favorable turn in the disease, or that healing processes might
not have set in. “Such cases are very unlikely,” he said. “They are of
the nature of miracles, and we are very reluctant to believe in them;
but still at M. Austin’s age, it is impossible to deny that results
utterly unexpected happen sometimes. Sometimes, at rare intervals; and
no one can calculate upon them. It might be that it was really the
commencement of a permanent improvement; and nothing can be better for
him than the hopeful state of mind in which he is.”
“Then, M. le docteur,” said Madame de Mirfleur, anxiously, “you think I
may leave him? You think I may go and visit my husband and my little
ones, for a little time--a very little time--without fear?”
“Nothing is impossible,” said the doctor, “nor can I guarantee anything
till we see how M. Austin goes on. If the improvement continues for a
week or two--”
“But I shall be back in a week or two,” said the woman, whose heart was
torn asunder, in a tone of dismay; and at length she managed to extort
from the doctor something which she took for a permission. It was not
that she loved Herbert less--but perhaps it was natural that she should
love the babies, and the husband whose name she bore, and who had
separated her from the life to which the other family belonged--more.
Madame de Mirfleur did not enter into any analysis of her feelings, as
she hurried in a flutter of pleasant excitement to pack her necessaries
for the home journey. Reine, always dominated by that tremulous
determination to do good at any cost, carefully refrained also, but with
more difficulty, from any questioning with herself about her mother’s
sentiments. She made the best of it to Herbert, who was somewhat
surprised that his mother should leave him, having acquired that
confidence of the sick in the fact of their own importance, to which
everything must give way. He was not wounded, being too certain, poor
boy, of being the first object in his little circle, but he was
surprised.
“Reflect, Herbert, mamma has other people to think of. There are the
little ones; little children are constantly having measles, and colds,
and indigestions; and then, M. de Mirfleur--”
“I thought you disliked to think of M. de Mirfleur, Reine?”
“Ah! so I do; but, Bertie, I have been very unkind, I have hated him,
and been angry with mamma, without reason. It seems to be natural to
some people to marry,” said the girl, after a pause, “and we ought not
to judge them; it is not wrong to wish that one’s mother belonged to
one, that she did not belong to other people, is it? But that is all.
Mamma thought otherwise. Bertie, we were little, and we were so much
away in England. Six months in the year, fancy, and then she must have
been lonely. We do not take these things into account when we are
children,” said Reine; “but after, when we can think, many things become
clear.”
It was thus with a certain grandeur of indulgence and benevolence that
the two young people saw their mother go away. That she should have a
husband and children at all was a terrible infringement of the ideal,
and brought her down unquestionably to a lower level in their primitive
world; but granting the husband and the children, as it was necessary to
do, no doubt she had, upon that secondary level, a certain duty to them.
They bade her good-bye tenderly, their innate disapproval changing, with
their altered moral view, from irritation and disappointment into a
condescending sweetness. “Poor mamma! I do not see that it was possible
for her to avoid going,” Reine said; and perhaps, after all, it was this
disapproved of, and by no means ideal mother, who felt the separation
most keenly when the moment came. When a woman takes a second life upon
her, no doubt she must resign herself to give up something of the
sweetness of the first; and it would be demanding too much of human
nature to expect that the girl and boy, who were fanciful and even
fantastic in their poetical and visionary youth, could be as reverent of
mother as if she had altogether belonged to them. Men and women, I fear,
will never be equal in this world, were all conventional and outside
bonds removed to-morrow. The widower-father does not descend from any
pedestal when he forms what Madame de Mirfleur called “new ties,” as
does the widow-mother; and it will be a strange world, when, if ever, we
come to expect no more from women than we do from men; it being granted,
sure enough, that in other ways more is to be expected from men than
from women. Herbert sat in his chair on the balcony to see her go away,
smiling and waving his thin hand to his mother; and Reine, at the
carriage-door, kissed her blandly, and watched her drive off with a
tender, patronizing sense that was quite natural. But the mother, poor
woman, though she was eager to get away, and had “other ties” awaiting
her, looked at them through eyes half blinded with tears, and felt a
pang of inferiority of which she had never before been sensible. She was
not an ideal personage, but she felt, without knowing how, the loss of
her position, and that descent from the highest, by which she had
purchased her happiness.
These momentary sensations would be a great deal more hard upon us if we
could define them to ourselves, as you and I, dear reader, can define
them when we see them thus going on before us; but fortunately few
people have the gift to do this in their own case. So that Madame de
Mirfleur only knew that her heart was wrung with pain to leave her boy,
who might be dying still, notwithstanding his apparent improvement. And,
by-and-by, as her home became nearer, and Herbert farther off, the
balance turned involuntarily, and she felt only how deep must be her own
maternal tenderness when the pang of leaving Herbert could thus
overshadow her pleasure in the thought of meeting all the rest.
Reine came closer to her brother when she went back to him, with a sense
that if she had not been trying with all her might to be good, she would
have felt injured and angry at her mother’s desertion. “I don’t know so
much as mamma, but I know how to take care of you, Bertie,” she said,
smoothing back the hair from his forehead with that low caressing coo of
tenderness which mothers use to their children.
“You have always been my nurse, Reine,” he said gratefully,--then after
a pause--“and by-and-by I mean to require no nursing, but to take care
of you.”
And thus they went out again, feeling half happy, half forsaken, but
gradually grew happier and happier, as once more the air from the pines
blew about Herbert’s head; and he got out of his chair on François’s arm
and walked into the wood, trembling a little in his feebleness, but glad
beyond words, and full of infinite hope. It was the first walk he had
taken, and Reine magnified it, till it came to look, as Bertie said, as
if he had crossed the pass without a guide, and was the greatest
pedestrian in all the Kanderthal. He sat up to dinner, after a rest; and
how they laughed over it, and talked, projecting expeditions of every
possible and impossible kind, to which the Gemmi was nothing, and
feeling their freedom from all comment, and happy privilege of being as
foolish as they pleased! Grave François even smiled at them as he served
their simple meal; “Enfants!” he said, as they burst into soft peals of
laughter--unusual and delicious laughter, which had sounded so sick and
faint in the chamber to which death seemed always approaching. They had
the heart to laugh now, these two young creatures, alone in the world.
But François did not object to their laughter, or think it indecorous,
by reason of the strong faith he had in the pines, which seemed to him,
after so many things that had been tried in vain, at last the real cure.
Thus they went on for a week or more, after Madame de Mirfleur left
them, as happy as two babies, doing (with close regard to Herbert’s
weakness and necessities) what seemed good in their own eyes--going out
daily, sitting in the balcony, watching the parties of pilgrims who came
and went, amusing themselves (now that the French mother was absent,
before whom neither boy nor girl would betray that their English
country-folks were less than perfect) over the British tourists with
their alpenstocks. Such of these same tourists as lingered in the valley
grew very tender of the invalid and his sister, happily unaware that
Reine laughed at them. They said to each other, “He is looking much
better,” and, “What a change in a few days!” and, “Please God, the poor
young fellow will come round after all.” The ladies would have liked to
go and kiss Reine, and God bless her for a good girl devoted to her sick
brother; and the men would have been fain to pat Herbert on the
shoulder, and bid him keep a good heart, and get well, to reward his
pretty sister, if for nothing else; while all the time the boy and girl,
Heaven help them, made fun of the British tourists from their balcony,
and felt themselves as happy as the day was long, fear and the shadow of
death having melted quite away.
I am loath to break upon this gentle time, or show how their hopes came
to nothing; or at least sank for the time in deeper darkness than ever.
One sultry afternoon the pair sallied forth with the intention of
staying in the pine-wood a little longer than usual, as Herbert daily
grew stronger. It was very hot, not a leaf astir, and insupportable in
the little rooms, where all the walls were baked, and the sun blazing
upon the closed shutters. Once under the pines, there would be nature
and air, and there they could stay till the sun was setting; for no harm
could come to the tenderest invalid on such a day. But as the afternoon
drew on, ominous clouds appeared over the snow of the hills, and before
preparations could be made to meet it, one of the sudden storms of
mountainous countries broke upon the Kanderthal. Deluges of rain swept
down from the sky, an hour ago so blue, rain, and hail in great solid
drops like stones beating against the wayfarer. When it was discovered
that the brother and sister were out of doors, the little inn was in an
immediate commotion. One sturdy British tourist, most laughable of all,
who had just returned with a red face, peeled and smarting, from a long
walk in the sun, rushed at the only mule that was to be had, and
harnessed it himself, wildly swearing (may it be forgiven him!)
unintelligible oaths, into the only covered vehicle in the place, and
lashed the brute into a reluctant gallop, jolting on the shaft or
running by the side in such a state of redness and moisture as is
possible only to an Englishman of sixteen-stone weight. They huddled
Herbert, faintly smiling his thanks, and Reine, trembling and drenched,
and deadly pale, into the rude carriage, and jolted them back over the
stony road, the British tourist rushing on in advance to order brandy
and water enough to have drowned Herbert. But, alas! the harm was done.
It is a long way to Thun from the Kanderthal, but the doctor was sent
for, and the poor lad had every attention that in such a place it was
possible to give him. Reine went back to her seat by the bedside with a
change as from life to death in her face. She would not believe it when
the doctor spoke to her, gravely shaking his head once more, and advised
that her mother should be sent for. “You must not be alone,” he said,
looking at her pitifully, and in his heart wondering what kind of stuff
the mother was made of who could leave such a pair of children in such
circumstances. He had taken Reine out of the room to say this to her,
and to add that he would himself telegraph, as soon as he got back to
Thun, for Madame de Mirfleur. “One cannot tell what may happen within
the next twenty-four hours,” said the doctor, “and you must not be
alone.” Then poor Reine’s pent-up soul burst forth. What was the use of
being good, of trying so hard, so hard! as she had done, to make the
best of everything, to blame no one, to be tender, and kind, and
charitable? She had tried, O Heaven, with all her heart and might; and
this was what it had come back to again!
“Oh, don’t! don’t!” she cried, in sharp anguish. “No; let me have him
all to myself. I love him. No one else does. Oh, let her alone! She has
her husband and her children. She was glad when my Bertie was better,
that she might go to them. Why should she come back now? What is he to
her? the last, the farthest off, less dear than the baby, not half so
much to her as her house and her husband, and all the new things she
cares for. But he is everything to me, all I have, and all I want. Oh,
let us alone! let us alone!”
“Dear young lady,” said the compassionate doctor, “your grief is too
much for you; you don’t know what you say.”
“Oh, I know! I know!” cried Reine. “She was glad he was better, that she
might go; that was all she thought of. Don’t send for her; I could not
bear to see her. She will say she knew it all the time, and blame you
for letting her go--though you know she longed to go. Oh, let me have
him to myself! I care for nothing else--nothing--now--nothing in the
world!”
“You must not say so; you will kill yourself,” said the doctor.
“Oh, I wish, I wish I could; that would be the best. If _you_ would only
kill me with Bertie! but you have not the courage--you dare not. Then,
doctor, leave us together--leave us alone, brother and sister. I have no
one but him, and he has no one but me. Mamma is married; she has others
to think of; leave my Bertie to me. I know how to nurse him, doctor,”
said Reine, clasping her hands. “I have always done it, since I was _so_
high; he is used to me, and he likes me best. Oh, let me have him all to
myself!”
These words went to the hearts of those who heard them; and, indeed,
there were on the landing several persons waiting who heard them--some
English ladies, who had stopped in their journey out of pity to “be of
use to the poor young creature,” they said; and the landlady of the inn,
who was waiting outside to hear how Herbert was. The doctor, who was a
compassionate man, as doctors usually are, gave them what satisfaction
he could; but that was very small. He said he would send for the mother,
of course; but, in the meantime, recommended that no one should
interfere with Reine unless “something should happen.” “Do you think it
likely anything should happen before you come back?” asked one of the
awe-stricken women. But the doctor only shook his head, and said he
could answer for nothing; but that in case anything happened, one of
them should take charge of Reine. More than one kind-hearted stranger in
the little inn kept awake that night, thinking of the poor forlorn girl
and dying boy, whose touching union had been noted by all the village.
The big Englishman who had brought them home out of the storm, cried
like a baby in the coffee-room as he told to some new-comers how Reine
had sat singing songs to her brother, and how the poor boy had mended,
and began to look like life again. “If it had not been for this accursed
storm!” cried the good man, upon which one of the new arrivals rebuked
him. There was little thought of in the village that night but the two
young Englanders, without their mother, or a friend near them. But when
the morning came, Herbert still lived; he lived through that dreary day
upon the little strength he had acquired during his temporary
improvement. During this terrible time Reine would not leave him except
by moments now and then, when she would go out on the balcony and look
up blank and tearless to the skies, which were so bright again. Ah! why
were they bright, after all the harm was done? Had they covered
themselves with clouds, it would have been more befitting, after all
they had brought about. I cannot describe the misery in Reine’s heart.
It was something more, something harder and more bitter than grief. She
had a bewildered sense that God Himself had wronged her, making her
believe something which He did not mean to come true. How could she
pray? She had prayed once, and had been answered, she thought, and then
cast aside, and all her happiness turned into woe. If He had said No at
first it would have been hard enough, but she could have borne it; but
He had seemed to grant, and then had withdrawn the blessing; He had
mocked her with a delusive reply. Poor Reine felt giddy in the world,
having lost the centre of it, the soul of it, the God to whom she could
appeal. She had cast herself rashly upon this ordeal by fire, staked her
faith of every day, her child’s confidence, upon a miracle, and, holding
out her hand for it, had found it turn to nothing. She stood dimly
looking out from the balcony on the third night after Herbert’s relapse.
The stars were coming out in the dark sky, and to anybody but Reine, who
observed nothing external, the wind was cold. She stood in a kind of
trance, saying nothing, feeling the wind blow upon her with the scent of
the pines, which made her sick; and the stars looked coldly at her,
friends no longer, but alien inquisitive lights peering out of an
unfriendly heaven. Herbert lay in an uneasy sleep, weary and restless
as are the dying, asking in his dreams to be raised up, to have the
window opened, to get more air. Restless, too, with the excitement upon
her of what was coming, she had wandered out, blank to all external
sounds and sights, not for the sake of the air, but only to relieve the
misery which nothing relieved. She did not even notice the carriage
coming along the darkening road, which the people at the inn were
watching eagerly, hoping that it brought the mother. Reine was too much
exhausted by this time to think even of her mother. She was still
standing in the same attitude, neither hearing nor noticing, when the
carriage drew up at the door. The excitement of the inn people had
subsided, for it had been apparent for some time that the inmate of the
carriage was a man. He jumped lightly down at the door, a young man
light of step and of heart, but paused, and looked up at the figure in
the balcony, which stood so motionless, seeming to watch him. “Ah,
Reine! is it you? I came off at once to congratulate you,” he said, in
his cheery English voice. It was Everard Austin, who had heard of
Herbert’s wonderful amendment, and had come on at once, impulsive and
sanguine, to take part in their joy. That was more in his way than
consoling suffering, though he had a kind heart.