“Please don’t make him talk,” cried Reine. “He is a little better. Oh, Bertie, Bertie, dear, be still. If he is quite quiet, it will pass off all the sooner. I am not the least frightened,” she said, though her heart beat loud in her throat, belying her words; but Reine had seen Farrel-Austin’s face, hungry and eager, over his daughters’ shoulders. “He is not really so bad; he has had it before. Only he must, he must be still. Oh, Sophy, for the love of heaven, do not make him speak!”
“Nonsense—I am all right,” he said.
“Of course he can speak,” cried Sophy, triumphantly; “you are making a great deal too much fuss, Reine. Make him eat something, that will do him good. There’s some grouse. Everard, fetch him some grouse—one can eat that when one can eat nothing else—and I’ll run and get him a glass of champagne.”
“Oh, go away—oh, keep her away!” cried Reine, joining her hands in eager supplication.
Everard, to whom she looked, shrugged his shoulders, for it was not so easy a thing to do. But by dint of patience the room was cleared at last; and though Sophy would fain have returned by the open window, “just to say good-bye,” as she said, “and to cheer Bertie up, for they were all making too great a fuss about him,” the whole party were finally got into their carriages, and sent away. Sophy’s last words, however, though they disgusted the watchers, were balm to Herbert.
“She is a jolly girl,” he said; “you are making—too—much fuss. It’s—going off. I’ll be—all right—directly.”
And then in the grateful quiet that followed, which no one disturbed, with his two familiar nurses, who had watched him so often, by his side, the excitement really began to lessen, the palpitation to subside. Reine and Everard sat side by side, in the silence, saying nothing to each other, almost forgetting, if that were possible, what they had been saying to each other as they glided, in absolute seclusion from all other creatures, down the soft twilight river. All the recent past seemed to melt into the clouds for them, and they were again at Appenzell, at Kandersteg, returned to their familiar occupation nursing their sick together, as they had so often nursed him before.
Everard had despatched a messenger to Whiteladies, when he sent for the doctor; and Miss Susan, careful of Reine as well as of Herbert, obeyed the summons along with the anxious François, who understood the case in a moment. The doctor, on his arrival, gave also a certain consolation to the watchers. With quiet all might be well again; there was nothing immediately alarming in the attack; but he must not exert himself, and must be content for the moment at least to retire to the seclusion of an invalid. They all remained in Water Beeches for the night, but next morning were able to remove the patient to Whiteladies. In the morning, before they left, poor Everard, once more thrown into a secondary place, took possession of Reine, and led her all over his small premises. It was a misty morning, touched with the first sensation of Autumn, though Summer was all ablaze in the gardens and fields. A perfect tranquillity of repose was everywhere, and as the sun got power, and the soft white mists broke up, a soft clearness of subdued light, as dazzling almost as full sunshine, suffused the warm still atmosphere. The river glided languid under the heat, gleaming white and dark, without the magical colors of the previous day. The lazy shadows drooped over it from the leafy banks, so still that it was hard to say which was substance and which shadow.
“We are going to finish our last-night’s talk,” said Everard.
“Finish!” said Reine half-smiling, half-weeping, for how much had happened since that enchanted twilight! “what more is there to say?” And I don’t think there was much more to say—though he kept her under the trees on the river side, and in the shady little wood by the pond where the skating had been when he received her letter—saying it; so long, that Miss Susan herself came out to look for them, wondering. As she called “Reine! Reine!” through the still air, wondering more and more, she suddenly came in sight of them turning the corner of a great clump of roses, gay in their second season of bloom. They came toward her arm-in-arm with a light on their faces which it needed no sorcerer to interpret. Miss Susan had never gone through these experiences herself, but she understood at once what this meant, and her heart gave one leap of great and deep delight. It was so long since she had felt what it was to be happy, that the sensation overpowered her. It was what she had hoped for and prayed for, so long as her hopes were worth much, or her prayers. She had lost sight of this secret longing in the dull chaos of preoccupation which had swallowed her up for so long; and now this thing for which she had never dared to scheme, and which lately she had not had the courage even to wish for, was accomplished before her eyes.