CHAPTER XXXIII
Herbert and Reine had settled at Cannes for the Winter, at the same time when Giovanna settled herself at Whiteladies. They knew very little of this strange inmate in their old home, and thought still less. The young man had been promoted from one point to another of the invalid resorts, and now remained at Cannes, which was so much brighter and less valetudinary than Mentone, simply, as the doctors said, “as a precautionary measure.” Does the reader know that bright sea-margin, where the sun shines so serene and sweet, and where the color of the sea and the sky and the hills and the trees are all brightened and glorified by the fact that the grays and chills of northern Winter are still close at hand? When one has little to do, when one is fancy free, when one is young, and happiness comes natural, there is nothing more delicious than the Riviera. You are able, in such circumstances, to ignore the touching groups which encircle here and there, some of the early doomed. You are able to hope that the invalids must get better. You say to yourself, “In this air, under this sky, no one can long insist upon being ill;” and if your own invalid, in whom you are most interested, has really mended, hope for every other becomes conviction. And then there are always idlers about who are not ill, to whom life is a holiday, or seems so, and who, being impelled to amuse themselves by force of circumstances, add a pleasant movement to the beautiful scene. Without even these attractions, is not the place in which you receive back your sick as from the dead always beautiful, if it were the dirtiest seaport or deserted village? Mud and gray sky, or sands of gold and heavenly vaults of blue, what matters? That was the first time since the inspired and glorious moment at Kandersteg that Reine had felt sure of Herbert’s recovery; – there was no doubting the fact now. He was even no longer an invalid, a change which at first was not nearly so delightful to his sister as she had expected. They had been all in all to each other for so long; and Reine had given up to Herbert not only willingly, but joyfully, all the delights of youth – its amusements, its companionships, everything. She had never been at a ball (grown up) in her life, though she was now over twenty. She had passed the last four years, the very quintessence of her youth, in a sick-room, or in the subdued goings out and gentle amusements suited to an invalid; and indeed, her heart and mind being fully occupied, she had desired no better. Herbert, and his comfort and his entertainment, had been the sum of all living to Reine. And now had come the time when she was emancipated, and when the young man, recovering his strength, began to think of other amusements than those which a girl could share. It was quite natural. Herbert made friends of his own, and went out with them, and made parties of pleasure, and manly expeditions in which Reine had no part. It was very foolish of her to feel it, and no critic could have been more indignant with her than she was with herself. The girl’s first sensation was surprise when she found herself left out. She was bewildered by it. It had never occurred to her as likely, natural, nay, necessary – which, as soon as she recovered her breath, she assured herself it was. Poor Reine even tried to laugh at herself for her womanish folly. Was it to be expected that Herbert should continue in the same round when he got better, that he should not go out into the world like other men? On the contrary, Reine was proud and delighted to see him go; to feel that he was able to do it; to listen to his step, which was as active as any of the others, she thought, and his voice, which rang as clear and gay. It was only after he was gone that the sudden surprise I have spoken of assailed her. And if you will think of it, it was hard upon Reine. Because of her devotion to him she had made no friends for herself. She had been out of the way of wanting friends. Madame de Mirfleur’s eagerness to introduce her, to find companions for her, when she paid the pair her passing visits, had always been one of the things which most offended Reine. What did she want with other companions than Herbert? She was necessary to him, and did any one suppose that she would leave him for pleasure? For pleasure! could mamma suppose it would be any pleasure to her to be separate from her brother? Thus the girl thought in her absolute way, carrying matters with a high hand as long as it was in her power to do so. But now that Herbert was well, everything was changed. He was fond of his sister, who had been so good a nurse to him; but it seemed perfectly natural that she should have been his nurse, and had she not always said she preferred it to anything else in the world? It was just the sort of thing that suited Reine – it was her way, and the way of most good girls. But it did not occur to Herbert to think that there was anything astonishing, any hardship in the matter; nor, when he went out with his new friends, did it come into his head that Reine, all alone, might be dull and miss him. Yes, miss him, that of course she must; but then it was inevitable. A young fellow enjoying his natural liberty could not by any possibility drag a girl about everywhere after him – that was out of the question, of course. At first now and then it would sometimes come into his head that his sister was alone at home, but that impression very soon wore off. She liked it. She said so; and why should she say so if it was not the case? Besides, she could of course have friends if she chose. So shy Reine, who had not been used to any friends but him, who had alienated herself from all her friends for him, stayed at home within the four rather bare walls of their sitting-room, while the sun shone outside, and even the invalids strolled about, and the soft sound of the sea upon the beach filled the air with a subdued, delicious murmur. Good François, Herbert’s faithful attendant, used to entreat her to go out.
“The weather is delightful,” he said. “Why will mademoiselle insist upon shutting herself up in-doors?”
“I will go out presently, François,” Reine said, her pretty lips quivering a little.
But she had no one to go out with, poor child! She did not like even to go and throw herself upon the charity of one or two ladies whom she knew. She knew no one well, and how could she go and thrust herself upon them now, after having received their advances coldly while she had Herbert? So the poor child sat down and read, or tried to read, seated at the window from which she could see the sea and the people who were walking about. How lucky she was to have such a cheerful window! But when she saw the sick English girl who lived close by going out for her midday walk leaning upon her brother’s arm, with her mother close by watching her, poor Reine’s heart grew sick. Why was it not she who was ill? if she died, nobody would miss her much (so neglected youth always feels, with poignant self pity), whereas it was evident that the heart of that poor lady would break if her child was taken from her. The poor lady whom Reine thus noted looked up at her where she sat at the window, with a corresponding pang in her heart. Oh, why was it that other girls should be so fresh and blooming while her child was dying? But it is very hard at twenty to sit at a bright window alone, and try to read, while all the world is moving about before your eyes, and the sunshine sheds a soft intoxication of happiness into the air. The book would fall from her hands, and the young blood would tingle in her veins. No doubt, if one of the ladies whom Reine knew had called just then, the girl would have received her visitor with the utmost dignity, nor betrayed by a word, by a look, how lonely she was; for she was proud, and rather perverse and shy – shy to her very finger-tips; but in her heart I think if any one had been so boldly kind as to force her out, and take her in charge, she would have been ready to kiss that deliverer’s feet, but never to own what a deliverance it was.
No one came, however, in this enterprising way. They had been in Cannes several times, the brother and sister, and Reine had been always bound to Herbert’s side, finding it impossible to leave him. How could these mere acquaintances know that things were changed now? So she sat at the window most of the day, sometimes trying to make little sketches, sometimes working, but generally reading or pretending to read – not improving books, dear reader. These young people did not carry much solid literature about with them. They had poetry books – not a good selection – and a supply of the pretty Tauchnitz volumes, only limited by the extent of that enterprising firm’s reprints, besides such books as were to be got at the library. Everard had shown more discrimination than was usual to him when he said that Herbert, after his long helplessness and dependence, would rush very eagerly into the enjoyments and freedom of life. It was very natural that he should do so; chained to a sick-room as he had been for so long – then indulged with invalid pleasures, invalid privileges, and gradually feeling the tide rise and the warm blood of his youth swell in his veins – the poor young fellow was greedy of freedom, of boyish company, from which he had always been shut out – of adventures innocent enough, yet to his recluse mind having all the zest of desperate risk and daring. He had no intention of doing anything wrong, or even anything unkind. But this was the very first time that he had fallen among a party of young men like himself, and the contrast being so novel, was delightful to him. And his new friends “took to him” with a flattering vehemence of liking. They came to fetch him in the morning, they involved him in a hundred little engagements. They were fond of him, he thought, and he had never known friendship before. In short, they turned Herbert’s head, a thing which quite commonly happens both to girls and boys when for the first time either boy or girl falls into a merry group of his or her contemporaries, with many amusements and engagements on hand. Had one of these young fellows happened to fall in love with Reine, all would have gone well – for then, no doubt, the young lover would have devised ways and means for having her of the party. But she was not encouraging to their advances. Girls who have little outward contact with society are apt to form an uncomfortably high ideal, and Reine thought her brother’s friends a pack of noisy boys quite inferior to Herbert, with no intellect, and not very much breeding. She was very dignified and reserved when they ran in and out, calling for him to come here and go there, and treated them as somehow beneath the notice of such a very mature person as herself; and the young fellows were offended, and revenged themselves by adding ten years to her age, and giving her credit for various disagreeable qualities.
“Oh, yes, he has a sister,” they would say, “much older than Austin – who looks as if she would like to turn us all out, and keep her darling at her apron-string.”
“You must remember she has had the nursing of him all his life,” a more charitable neighbor would suggest by way of excusing the middle-aged sister.
“But women ought to know that a man is not to be always lounging about pleasing them, and not himself. Hang it all, what would they have? I wonder Austin don’t send her home. It is the best place for her.”
This was how the friends commented upon Reine. And Reine did not know that even to be called Austin was refreshing to the invalid lad, showing him that he was at least on equal terms with somebody; and that the sense of independence intoxicated him, so that he did not know how to enjoy it enough – to take draughts full enough and deep enough of the delightful pleasure of being his own master, of meeting the night air without a muffler, and going home late in sheer bravado, to show that he was an invalid no more.
After this first change, which chilled her and made her life so lonely, another change came upon Reine. She had been used to be anxious about Herbert all her life, and now another kind of anxiety seized her, which a great many women know very well, and which with many becomes a great and terrible passion, ravaging secretly their very lives. Fear for his health slid imperceptibly in her loneliness into fear for him. Does the reader know the difference? She was a very ignorant, foolish girl: she did not know anything about the amusements and pleasures of young men. When her brother came in slightly flushed and flighty, with some excitement in his looks, parting loudly with his friends at the door, smelling of cigars and wine, a little rough, a little noisy, poor Reine thought he was plunging into some terrible whirlpool of dissipation, such as she had read of in books; and, as she was of the kind of woman who is subject to its assaults, the vulture came down upon her, there and then, and began to gnaw at her heart. In those long evenings when she sat alone waiting for him, the legendary Spartan with the fox under his cloak was nothing to Reine. She kept quite still over her book, and read page after page, without knowing a word she was reading, but heard the pitiful little clock on the mantel-piece chime the hours, and every step and voice outside, and every sound within, with painful acuteness, as if she were all ear; and felt her heart beat all over her – in her throat, in her ears, stifling her and stopping her breath. She did not form any idea to herself of how Herbert might be passing his time; she would not let her thoughts accuse him of anything, for, indeed, she was too innocent to imagine those horrors which women often do imagine. She sat in an agony of listening, waiting for him, wondering how he would look when he returned – wondering if this was he, with a renewed crisis of excitement, this step that was coming – falling dull and dead when the step was past, rousing up again to the next, feeling herself helpless, miserable, a slave to the anguish which dominated her, and against which reason itself could make no stand. Every morning she woke saying to herself that she would not allow herself to be so miserable again, and every night fell back into the clutches of this passion, which gripped at her and consumed her. When Herbert came in early and “like himself” – that is to say, with no traces of excitement or levity – the torture would stop in a moment, and a delicious repose would come over her soul; but next night it came back again the same as ever, and poor Reine’s struggles to keep mastery of herself were all in vain. There are hundreds of women who well know exactly how she felt, and what an absorbing fever it was which had seized upon her. She had more reason than she really knew for her fears, for Herbert was playing with his newly-acquired health in the rashest way, and though he was doing no great harm, had yet departed totally from that ideal which had been his, as well as his sister’s, but a short time before. He had lost altogether the tender gratitude of that moment when he thought he was being cured in a half miraculous, heavenly way, and when his first simple boyish thought was how good it became him to be, to prove the thankfulness of which his heart was full. He had forgotten now about being thankful. He was glad, delighted to be well, and half believed that he had some personal credit in it. He had “cheated the doctors” – it was not they who had cured him, but presumably something great and vigorous in himself which had triumphed over all difficulties; and now he had a right to enjoy himself in proportion to – what he began to think – the self-denial of past years. Both the brother and sister had very much fallen off from that state of elevation above the world which had been temporarily theirs in that wonderful moment at Kandersteg; and they had begun to feel the effect of those drawbacks which every great change brings with it, even when the change is altogether blessed, and has been looked forward to with hope for years.
This was the position of affairs between the brother and sister when Madame de Mirfleur arrived to pay them a visit, and satisfy herself as to her son’s health. She came to them in her most genial mood, happy in Herbert’s recovery, and meaning to afford herself a little holiday, which was scarcely the aspect under which her former visits to her elder children had shown themselves. They had received her proposal with very dutiful readiness, but oddly enough, as one of the features of the change, it was Reine who wished for her arrival; not Herbert, though he, in former tunes, had always been the more charitable to his mother. Now his brow clouded at the prospect. His new-born independence seemed in danger. He felt as if mufflers and respirators, and all the old marks of bondage, were coming back to him in Madame de Mirfleur’s trunks.
“If mamma comes with the intention of coddling me up again, and goes on about taking care,” he said, “by Jove! I tell you I’ll not stand it, Reine.”
“Mamma will do what she thinks best,” said Reine, perhaps a little coldly; “but you know I think you are wrong, Bertie, though you will not pay any attention to me.”
“You are just like a girl,” said Herbert, “never satisfied, never able to see the difference. What a change it is, by Jove, when a fellow gets into the world, and learns the right way of looking at things! If you go and set her on me, I’ll never forgive you; as if I could not be trusted to my own guidance – as if it were not I, myself, who was most concerned!”
These speeches of her brother’s cost Reine, I am afraid, some tears when he was gone, and her pride yielded to the effects of loneliness and discouragement. He was forsaking her, she thought, who had the most right to be good to her – he of whom she had boasted that he was the only being who belonged to her in the world; her very own, whom nobody could take from her. Poor Reine! it had not required very much to detach him from her. When Madame de Mirfleur arrived, however, she did not interfere with Herbert’s newly-formed habits, nor attempt to put any order in his mannish ways. She scolded Reine for moping, for sitting alone and neglecting society, and instantly set about to remedy this fault; but she found Herbert’s little dissipations tout simple, said not a word about a respirator, and rather encouraged him than otherwise, Reine thought. She made him give them an account of everything, where he had been, and all about his expeditions, when he came back at night, and never showed even a shadow of disapproval, laughing at the poor little jokes which Herbert reported, and making the best of his pleasure. She made him ask his friends, of whom Reine disapproved, to dinner, and was kind to them, and charmed these young men; for Madame de Mirfleur had been a beauty in her day, and kept up those arts of pleasing which her daughter disdained, and made Herbert’s boyish companions half in love with her. This had the effect of restraining Herbert often, without any suspicions of restraint entering his head; and the girl, who half despised, half envied her mother’s power, was not slow to perceive this, though she felt in her heart that nothing could ever qualify her to follow the example. Poor Reine looked on, disapproving her mother as usual, yet feeling less satisfied with herself than usual, and asking herself vainly if she loved Herbert as she thought she did, would not she make any sacrifice to make him happy? If this made him happy, why could not she do it? It was because his companions were his inferiors, she said to herself – companions not worthy of Herbert. How could she stoop to them? Madame de Mirfleur had not such a high standard of excellence. She exerted herself for the amusement of the young men as if they had been heroes and sages. And even Reine, though she disapproved, was happier, against her will.
“But, mon Dieu!” cried Madame de Mirfleur, “the fools that these boys are! Have you ever heard, my Reine, such bêtises as my poor Herbert takes for pleasantries? They give me mal au cœur. How they are bêtes, these boys!”
“I thought you liked them,” said Reine, “you are so kind to them. You flatter them, even. Oh, does it not wound you, are you not ashamed, to see Bertie, my Bertie, prefer the noise – those scufflings? It is this that gives me mal au cœur.”
“Bah! you are high-flown,” said the mother. “If one took to heart all the things that men do, one would have no consolation in this world. They are all less or more, bêtes, the men. What we have to do is to ménager – to make of it the best we can. You do not expect them to understand – to be like us? Tenez, Reine; that which your brother wants is a friend. No, not thee, my child, nor me. Do not cry, chérie. It is the lot of the woman. Thou hast not known whether thou wert girl or boy, or what difference there was, in the strange life you have led; but listen, my most dear, for now you find it out. Herbert is but like others; he is no worse than the rest. He accepts from thee everything, so long as he wants thee; but now he is independent, he wants thee no more. This is a truth which every woman learns. To struggle is inutile – it does no good, and a woman who is wise accepts what must be, and does not struggle. What he wants is a friend. Where is the cousin, the Monsieur Everard, whom I left with you, who went away suddenly? You have never told me why he went away.”
Reine’s color rose. She grew red to the roots of her hair. It was a subject which had never been touched upon between them, and possibly it was the girl’s consciousness of something which she could not put into words which made the blood flush to her face. Madame de Mirfleur had been very discreet on this subject, as she always was. She had never done anything to awaken her child’s susceptibilities. And she was not ignorant of Everard’s story, which Julie had entered upon in much greater detail than would have been possible to Reine. Honestly, she thought no more of Everard so far as Reine was concerned; but, for Herbert, he would be invaluable; therefore, it was with no match-making meaning that she awaited her daughter’s reply.
“I told you when it happened,” said Reine, in very measured tones, and with unnecessary dignity; “you have forgotten, mamma. His affairs got into disorder; he thought he had lost all his money; and he was obliged to go at a moment’s notice to save himself from being ruined.”
“Ah!” said Madame de Mirfleur, “I begin to recollect. Après? He was not ruined, but he did not come back?”
“He did not come back because he had to go to Jamaica – to the West Indies,” said Reine, somewhat indignant, “to work hard. It is not long since he has been back in England. I had a letter – to say he thought – of coming – ” Here she stopped short, and looked at her mother with a certain defiance. She had not meant to say anything of this letter, but in Everard’s defence had betrayed its existence before she knew.
“Ah!” said Madame de Mirfleur, wisely showing little eagerness, “such an one as Everard would be a good companion for thy brother. He is a man, voyez-vous, not a boy. He thought – of coming?”
“Somewhere – for the Winter,” said Reine, with a certain oracular vagueness, and a tremor in her voice.
“Some-vere,” said Madame de Mirfleur, laughing, “that is large; and you replied, ma Reine?”
“I did not reply – I have not time,” said Reine with dignity, “to answer all the idle letters that come to me. People in England seem to think one has nothing to do but to write.”
“It is very true,” said the mother, “they are foolish, the English, on that point. Give me thy letter, chérie, and I will answer it for thee. I can think of no one who would be so good for Herbert. Probably he will never want a good friend so much as now.”
“Mamma!” cried Reine, changing from red to white, and from white to red in her dismay, “you are not going to invite Everard here?”
“Why not, my most dear? It is tout simple; unless thou hast something secret in thy heart against it, which I don’t know.”
“I have nothing secret in my heart,” cried Reine, her heart beating loudly, her eyes filling with tears; “but don’t do it – don’t do it; I don’t want him here.”
“Très-bien, my child,” said the mother calmly, “it was not for thee, but for thy brother. Is there anything against him?”
“No, no, no! There is nothing against him – nothing!”
“Then you are unreasonable, Reine,” said her mother; “but I will not go against you, my child. You are excited – the tears come to you in the eyes; you are not well – you have been too much alone, ma petite Reine.”
“No, no; I am quite well – I am not excited!” cried the girl.
Madame de Mirfleur kissed her, and smoothed her hair, and bid her put on her hat and come out.
“Come and listen a little to the sea,” she said. “It is soft, like the wind in our trees. I love to take advantage of the air when I am by the sea.”