Thus life passed on with all the personages involved in this history. The only other incident that happened just then was one which concerned the little party in Switzerland. Everard was summoned home in haste, when he had scarcely done more than escort his cousins to their new quarters, and so that little romance, if it had ever been likely to come to a romance, was nipped in the bud. He had to come back about business, which, with the unoccupied and moderately rich, means almost invariably bad fortune. His money, not too much to start with, had been invested in doubtful hands; and when he reached England he found that he had lost half of it by the delinquency of a manager who had run away with his money, and that of a great many people besides. Everard, deprived at a blow of half his income, was fain to take the first employment that offered, which was a mission to the West Indies, to look after property there, partly his own, partly belonging to his fellow-sufferers, which had been allowed to drop into that specially hopeless Slough of Despond which seems natural to West Indian affairs. He went away, poor fellow, feeling that life had changed totally for him, and leaving behind both the dreams and the reality of existence. His careless days were all over. What he had to think of now was how to save the little that remained to him, and do his duty by the others who, on no good grounds, only because he had been energetic and ready, had intrusted their interests to him. Why they should have trusted him, who knew nothing of business, and whose only qualification was that gentlemanly vagabondage which is always ready to go off to the end of the world at a moment’s notice, Everard could not tell; but he meant to do his best, if only to secure some other occupation for himself when this job was done.
This was rather a sad interruption, in many ways, to the young man’s careless life; and they all felt it as a shock. He left Herbert under the pine-trees, weak but hopeful, looking as if any breeze might make an end of him, so fragile was he, the soul shining through him almost visibly, yet an air of recovery about him which gave all lookers-on a tremulous confidence; and Reine, with moisture in her eyes which she did not try to conceal, and an ache in her heart which she did conceal, but poorly. Everard had taken his cousin’s privilege, and kissed her on the forehead when he went away, trying not to think of the deep blush which surged up to the roots of her hair. But poor Reine saw him go with a pang which she could disclose to nobody, and which at first seemed to fill her heart too full of pain to be kept down. She had not realized, till he was gone, how great a place he had taken in her little world; and the surprise was as great as the pain. How dreary the valley looked, how lonely her life when his carriage drove away down the hill to the world! How the Alpine heights seemed to close in, and the very sky to contract! Only a few days before, when they arrived, everything had looked so different. Now even the friendly tourists of the Kanderthal would have been some relief to the dead blank of solitude which closed over Reine. She had her brother, as always, to nurse and care for, and watch daily and hourly on his passage back to life, and many were the forlorn moments when she asked herself what did she want more? what had she ever desired more? Many and many a day had Reine prayed, and pledged herself in her prayers, to be contented with anything, if Herbert was but spared to her; and now Herbert was spared and getting better—yet lo! she was miserable. The poor girl had a tough battle to fight with herself in that lonely Swiss valley, but she stood to her arms, even when capable of little more, and kept up her courage so heroically, that when, for the first time, Herbert wrote a little note to Everard as he had promised, he assured the traveller that he had scarcely missed him, Reine had been so bright and so kind. When Reine read this little letter, she felt a pang of mingled pain and pleasure. She had not betrayed herself. “But it is a little unkind to Everard to say I have been so bright since his going,” she said, feeling her voice thick with tears. “Oh, he will not mind,” said Herbert, lightly, “and you know it is true. After all, though he was a delightful companion, there is nothing so sweet as being by ourselves,” the sick boy added, with undoubting confidence. “Oh, what a trickster I am!” poor Reine said to herself; and she kissed him, and told him that she hoped he would think so always, always! which Herbert promised in sheer lightness of heart.
And thus we leave this helpless pair, like the rest, to themselves for a year; Herbert to get better as he could, Reine to fight her battle out, and win it so far, and recover the calm of use and wont. Eventually the sky widened to her, and the hills drew farther off, and the oppression loosened from her heart. She took Herbert to Italy in October, still mending; and wrote long and frequent letters about him to Whiteladies, boasting of his walks and increasing strength, and promising that next Summer he should go home. I don’t want the reader to think that Reine had altogether lost her heart during this brief episode. It came back to her after awhile, having been only vagrant, errant, as young hearts will be by times. She had but learned to know, for the first time in her life, what a difference happens in this world according to the presence or absence of one being; how such a one can fill up the space and pervade the atmosphere; and how, suddenly going, he seems to carry everything away with him. Her battle and struggle and pain were half owing to the shame and distress with which she found out that a man could do this, and had done it, though only for a few days, to herself; leaving her in a kind of blank despair when he was gone. But she got rid of this feeling (or thought she did), and the world settled back into its right proportions, and she said to herself that she was again her own mistress. Yet there were moments when the stars were shining, when the twilight was falling, when the moon was up—or sometimes in the very heat of the day, when a sensible young woman has no right to give way to folly—when Reine all at once would feel not her own mistress, and the world again would all melt away to make room for one shadow. As the Winter passed, however, she got the better of this sensation daily, she was glad to think. To be sure there was no reason why she should not think of Everard if she liked; but her main duty was to take care of Herbert, and to feel, once more, if she could, as she had once felt, and as she still professed to feel, poor child, in her prayers, that if Herbert only lived she would ask for nothing more.
CHAPTER XXII.
About two years after the events I have just described, in the Autumn, when life was low and dreary at Whiteladies, a new and unexpected visitor arrived at the old house. Herbert and his sister had not come home that Summer, as they had hoped—nor even the next. He was better, almost out of the doctor’s hands, having taken, it was evident, a new lease of life. But he was not strong, nor could ever be; his life, though renewed, and though it might now last for years, could never be anything but that of an invalid. So much all his advisers had granted. He might last as long as any of the vigorous persons round him, by dint of care and constant watchfulness; but it was not likely that he could ever be a strong man like others, or that he could live without taking care of himself, or being taken care of. This, which they would all have hailed with gratitude while he was very ill, seemed but a pale kind of blessedness now when it was assured, and when it became certain his existence must be spent in thinking about his health, in moving from one place to another as the season went on, according as this place or the other “agreed with him,” seeking the cool in Summer and the warmth in Winter, with no likelihood of ever being delivered from this bondage. He had scarcely found this out himself, poor fellow, but still entertained hopes of getting strong, at some future moment always indefinitely postponed. He had not been quite strong enough to venture upon England during the Summer, much as he had looked forward to it; and though in the meantime he had come of age, and nominally assumed the control of his own affairs, the celebration of this coming of age had been a dreary business enough. Farrel-Austin, looking black as night, and feeling himself a man swindled and cheated out of his rights, had been present at the dinner of the tenantry, in spite of himself, and with sentiments toward Herbert which may be divined; and with only such dismal pretence at delight as could be shown by the family solicitor, whose head was full of other things, the rejoicings had passed over. There had been a great field-day, indeed, at the almshouse chapel, where the old people, with their cracked voices, tried to chant Psalms xx. and xxi., and were much bewildered in their old souls as to whom “the king” might be whose desire of his heart they thus prayed God to grant. Mrs. Matthews alone, who was more learned, theologically, than her neighbors, having been brought up a Methody, professed to some understanding of it; but even she was wonderfully confused between King David and a greater than he, and poor young Herbert, whose birthday it was. “He may be the squire, if you please, and if so be as he lives,” said old Sarah, who was Mrs. Matthews’s rival, “many’s the time I’ve nursed him, and carried him about in my arms, and who should know if I don’t? But there ain’t no power in this world as can make young Mr. Herbert king o’ England, so long as the Prince o’ Wales is to the fore, and the rest o’ them. If Miss Augustine was to swear to it, I knows better; and you can tell her that from me.”
“He can’t be King o’ England,” said Mrs. Matthews, “neither me nor Miss Augustine thinks of anything of the kind. It’s awful to see such ignorance o’ spiritual meanings. What’s the Bible but spiritual meanings? You don’t take the blessed Word right off according to what it says.”
“That’s the difference between you and me,” said old Sarah, boldly. “I does; and I hope I practise my Bible, instead of turning of it off into any kind of meanings. I’ve always heard as that was one of the differences atween Methodies and good steady Church folks.”
“Husht, husht, here’s the doctor a-coming,” said old Mrs. Tolladay, who kept the peace between the parties, but liked to tell the story of their conflicts afterward to any understanding ear. “I dunno much about how Mr. Herbert, poor lad, could be the King myself,” she said to the vicar, who was one of her frequent auditors, and who dearly liked a joke about the almshouses, which were a kind of imperium in imperio, a separate principality within his natural dominions; “but Miss Augustine warn’t meaning that. If she’s queer, she ain’t a rebel nor nothing o’ that sort, but says her prayers for the Queen regular, like the rest of us. As for meanings, Tolladay says to me, we’ve no call to go searching for meanings like them two, but just to do what we’re told, as is the whole duty of man, me and Tolladay says. As for them two, they’re as good as a play. ‘King David was ’im as had all his desires granted ’im, and long life and help out o’ Zion,’ said Mrs. Matthews. ‘And a nice person he was to have all his wants,’ says old Sarah. I’d ha’ shut my door pretty fast in the man’s face, if he’d come here asking help, I can tell you. Call him a king if you please, but I calls him no better nor the rest—a peepin’ and a spyin’—’ ”
“What did she mean by that?” asked the vicar, amused, but wondering.
“ ’Cause of the woman as was a-washing of herself, sir,” said Mrs. Tolladay, modestly looking down. “Sarah can’t abide him for that; but I says as maybe it was a strange sight so long agone. Folks wasn’t so thoughtful of washings and so forth in old times. When I was in service myself, which is a good bit since, there wasn’t near the fuss about baths as there is nowadays, not even among the gentlefolks. Says Mrs. Matthews, ‘He was a man after God’s own heart, he was.’ ‘I ain’t a-goin’ to find fault with my Maker, it ain’t my place,’ says Sarah; ‘but I don’t approve o’ his taste.’ And that’s as true as I stand here. She’s a bold woman, is old Sarah. There’s many as might think it, but few as would say it. Anyhow, I can’t get it out o’ my mind as it was somehow Mr. Herbert as we was a chanting of, and never King David. Poor man, he’s dead this years and years,” said Mrs. Tolladay, “and you know, as well as me, sir, that there are no devices nor labors found, nor wisdom, as the hymn says, underneath the ground.”