Margaret Oliphant - Whiteladies

“Yes; but I don’t want you to do anything. Sit down by me, Reine; I am tired of my own company, that is all.”

“And so am I – of everybody’s company but yours,” she said, sitting down by the bed-side and stooping her pretty, shining head to kiss his thin hand.

“Thanks, dear, for saying such pretty things to me. But, Reine, I heard voices; you were talking – was it with mamma? – not so softly as you do to me.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” said Reine, with a flush. “Did you hear us, poor boy? Oh, that was wicked! Yes, you know there are things that make me – I do not mean angry – I suppose I have no right to be angry with mamma – ”

“Why should you be angry with any one?” he said, softly. “If you had to lie here, like me, you would think nothing was worth being angry about. My poor Reine! you do not even know what I mean.”

“Oh, no; there is so much that is wrong,” said Reine; “so many things that people do – so many that they think – their very ways of doing even what is right enough. No, no; it is worth while to be angry about many, many things. I do not want to learn to be indifferent; besides, that would be impossible to me – it is not my nature.”

The invalid smiled and shook his head softly at her. “Your excuse goes against yourself,” he said. “If you are ruled by your nature, must not others be moved by theirs? You active-minded people, Reine, you would like every one to think like you; but if you could accomplish it, what a monotonous world you would make! I should not like the Kanderthal if all the mountain-tops were shaped the same; and I should not perhaps love you so much if you were less yourself. Why not let other people, my Reine, be themselves, too?”

The brother and sister spoke French, which, more than English, had been the language of their childhood.

“Herbert, don’t say such things!” cried the girl. “You do not love me for this or for that, as strangers might, but because I am I, Reine, and you are you, Herbert. That is all we want. Ah, yes, perhaps if I were very good I should like to be loved for being good. I don’t know; I don’t think it even then. When they used to promise to love me if I was good at Whiteladies, I was always naughty – on purpose? – yes, I am afraid. Herbert, should not you like to be at Whiteladies, lying on the warm, warm grass in the orchard, underneath the great apple-tree, with the bees humming all about, and the dear white English clouds floating and floating, and the sky so deep, deep, that you could not fathom it? Ah!” cried Reine, drawing a deep breath, “I have not thought of it for a long time; but I wish we were there.”

The sick youth did not say anything for a moment; his eyes followed her look, which she turned instinctively to the open window. Then he sighed; then raising himself a little, said, with a gleam of energy, “I am certainly better, Reine. I should like to get up and set out across the Gemmi, down the side of the lake that must be shining so in the sun. That’s the brightest way home.” Then he laughed, with a laugh which, though feeble, had not lost the pleasant ring of youthfulness. “What wild ideas you put into my head!” he said. “No, I am not up to that yet; but, Reine, I am certainly better. I have such a desire to get up: and I thought I should never get up again.”

“I will call François!” cried the girl, eagerly. He had been made to get up for days together without any will of his own, and now that he should wish it seemed to her a step toward that recovery which Reine could never believe impossible. She rushed out to call his servant, and waited, with her heart beating, till he should be dressed, her thoughts already dancing forward to brighter and brighter possibilities.

“He has never had the good of the mountain air,” said Reine to herself, “and the scent of the pine-woods. He shall sit on the balcony to-day, and to-morrow go out in the chair, and next week, perhaps – who knows? – he may be able to walk up to the waterfall, and – O God! O Dieu tout-puissant! O doux Jesu!” cried the girl, putting her hands together, “I will be good! I will be good! I will endure anything; if only he may live! – if only he may live!”

This little scene took place in the village of Kandersteg, at the foot of the hills, exactly on the day when Miss Susan executed her errand in the room behind the shop, in low-lying Bruges, among the flat canals and fat Flemish fields. The tumult in poor Reine’s heart would have been almost as strange to Miss Susan as it was to Reine’s mother; for it was long now since Herbert had been given up by everybody, and since the doctors had all said, that “nothing short of a miracle” could save him. Neither Miss Susan nor Madame de Mirfleur believed in miracles. But Reine, who was young, had no such limitation of mind, and never could or would acknowledge that anything was impossible. “What does impossible mean?” Reine cried in her vehemence, on this very evening, after Herbert had accomplished her hopes, had stayed for an hour or more on the balcony and felt himself better for it, and ordered François to prepare his wheeled chair for to-morrow. Reine had much ado not to throw her arms around François’s neck, when he pronounced solemnly that “Monsieur est mieux, décidément mieux.” “Même,” added François, “il a un petit air de je ne sais quoi – quelque chose – un rien – un regard – ”

“N’est ce pas, mon ami!” cried Reine transported. Yes, there was a something, a nothing, a changed look which thrilled her with the wildest hopes, – and it was after this talk that she confronted Madame de Mirfleur with the question, “What does impossible mean? It means only, I suppose, that God does not interfere – that He lets nature go on in the common way. Then nothing is impossible; because at any moment, God may interfere if He pleases. Ah! He has His reasons, I suppose. If He were never to interfere at all, but leave nature to do her will, it is not for us to blame Him,” cried Reine, with tears, “but yet always He may: so there is always hope, and nothing is impossible in this world.”

“Reine, you speak like a child,” said her mother. “Have I not prayed and hoped too for my boy’s life? But when all say it is impossible – ”

“Mamma,” said Reine, “when my piano jars, it is impossible for me to set it right – if I let it alone, it goes worse and worse; if I meddle with it in my ignorance, it goes worse and worse. If you, even, who know more than I do, touch it, you cannot mend it. But the man comes who knows, et voilà! c’est tout simple,” cried Reine. “He touches something we never observed, he makes something rise or fall, and all is harmonious again. That is like God. He does not do it always, I know. Ah! how can I tell why? If it was me,” cried the girl, with tears streaming from her eyes, “I would save every one – but He is not like me.”

“Reine, you are impious – you are wicked; how dare you speak so?”

“Oh, no, no! I am not impious,” she cried, dropping upon her knees – all the English part in her, all her reason and self-restraint broken down by extreme emotion. “The bon Dieu knows I am not! I know, I know He does, and sees me, the good Father, and is sorry, and considers with Himself in His great heart if He will do it even yet. Oh, I know, I know!” cried the weeping girl, “some must die, and He considers long; but tell me He does not see me, does not hear me, is not sorry for me – how is He then my Father? No!” she said softly, rising from her knees and drying the tears from her face, “what I feel is that He is thinking it over again.”

Madame de Mirfleur was half afraid of her daughter, thinking she was going out of her mind. She laid her hand on Reine’s shoulder with a soothing touch. “Chérie!” she said, “don’t you know it was all decided and settled before you were born, from the beginning of the world?”