“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.