BERNARDINE

The crisp mountain air and the warm sunshine began slowly to have their effect on Bernardine, in spite of the Disagreeable Man’s verdict. She still looked singularly lifeless, and appeared to drag herself about with painful effort; but the place suited her, and she enjoyed sitting in the sun listening to the music which was played by a scratchy string band. Some of the Kurhaus guests, seeing that she was alone and ailing, made some attempts to be kindly to her. She always seemed astonished that people should concern themselves about her; whatever her faults were, it never struck her that she might be of any importance to others, however important she might be to herself. She was grateful for any little kindness which was shewn her; but at first she kept very much to herself, talking chiefly with the Disagreeable Man, who, by the way, had surprised every one but no one more than himself by his unwonted behaviour in bestowing even a fraction of his companionship on a Petershof human being.

There was a great deal of curiosity about her, but no one ventured to question her since Mrs. Reffold’s defeat. Mrs. Reffold herself rather avoided her, having always a vague suspicion that Bernardine tried to make fun of her. But whether out of perversity or not, Bernardine never would be avoided by her, never let her pass by without a: few words of conversation, and always went to her for information, much to the amusement of Mrs. Reffold’s faithful attendants. There was always a twinkle in Bernardine’s eye when she spoke with Mrs. Reffold. She never fastened herself on to any one; no one could say she intruded. As time went, on there was a vague sort of feeling that she did not intrude enough. She was ready to speak if any one cared to speak with her, but she never began a conversation except with Mrs. Reffold. When people did talk to her, they found her genial. Then the sad face would smile kindly, and the sad eyes speak kind sympathy. Or some bit of fun would flash forth, and a peal of young laughter ring out. It seemed strange that such fun could come from her.

Those who noticed her, said she appeared always to be thinking.

She was thinking and learning.

Some few remarks roughly made by the Disagreeable Man had impressed her deeply.

“You have come to a new world,” he said, “the world of suffering. You are in a fury because your career has been checked, and because you have been put on the shelf; you, of all people. Now you will learn how many quite as able as yourself, and abler, have been put on the shelf too, and have to stay there. You are only a pupil in suffering. What about the professors? If your wonderful wisdom has left you with any sense at all, look about you and learn.”

So she was looking, and thinking, and learning. And as the days went by, perhaps a softer light came into her eyes.

All her life long, her standard of judging people had been an intellectual standard, or an artistic standard: what people had done with outward and visible signs; how far they had contributed to thought; how far they had influenced any great movement, or originated it; how much of a benefit they had been to their century or their country; how much social or political activity, how much educational energy they had devoted to the pressing need of the times.

She was undoubtedly a clever, cultured young woman; the great work of her life had been self-culture. To know and understand, she had spared neither herself nor any one else. To know, and to use her acquired knowledge intellectually as teacher and, perhaps, too, as writer, had been the great aim of her life. Everything that furthered this aim won her instant attention. It never struck her that she was selfish. One does not think of that until the great check comes. One goes on, and would go on. But a barrier rises up. Then, finding one can advance no further, one turns round; and what does one see?

Bernardine saw that she had come a long journey. She saw what the Traveller saw. That was all she saw at first. Then she remembered that she had done the journey entirely for her own sake. Perhaps it might not have looked so dreary if it had been undertaken for some one else.

She had claimed nothing of any one; she had given nothing to any one. She had simply taken her life in her own hands and made what she could of it. What had she made of it?

Many women asked for riches, for position, for influence and authority and admiration. She had only asked to be able to work. It seemed little enough to ask. That she asked so little placed her, so she thought, apart from the common herd of eager askers. To be cut off from active life and earnest work was a possibility which never occurred to her.

It never crossed her mind that in asking for the one thing for which she longed, she was really asking for the greatest thing. Now, in the hour of her enfeeblement, and in the hour of the bitterness of her heart, she still prided herself upon wanting so little.

“It seems so little to ask,” she cried to herself time after time. “I only want to be able to do a few strokes of work. I would be content now to do so little, if only I might do some. The laziest day-labourer on the road would laugh at the small amount of work which would content me now.”

She told the Disagreeable Man that one day.

“So you think you are moderate in your demands,” he said to her. “You are a most amusing young woman. You are so perfectly unconscious how exacting you really are. For, after all, what is it you want? You want to have that wonderful brain of yours restored, so that you may begin to teach, and, perhaps, write a book. Well, to repeat my former words: you are still at phase one, and you are longing to be strong enough to fulfil your ambitions and write a book. When you arrive at I phase four, you will be quite content to dust one of your uncle’s books instead: far more useful work and far more worthy of encouragement. If every one who wrote books now would be satisfied to dust books already written, what a regenerated world it would become!”

She laughed good-temperedly. His remarks did not vex her; or, at least, she showed no vexation. He seemed to have constituted himself as her critic, and she made no objections. She had given him little bits of stray confidence about herself, and she received everything he had to say with that kind of forbearance which chivalry bids us show to the weak and ailing. She made allowances for him; but she did more than that for him: she did not let him see that she made allowances. Moreover, she recognized amidst all his roughness a certain kind of sympathy which she could not resent, because it was not aggressive. For to some natures the expression of sympathy is an irritation; to be sympathized with means to be pitied, and to be pitied means to be looked down upon. She was sorry for him, but she would not have told him so for worlds; he would have shrunk from pity as much as she did. And yet the sympathy which she thought she did not want for herself, she was silently giving to those around her, like herself, thwarted, each in a different way perhaps, still thwarted all the same.

She found more than once that she was learning to measure people by a standard different from her former one; not by what they had done or been, but by what they had suffered. But such a change as this does not come suddenly, though, in a place like Petershof, it comes quickly, almost unconsciously.

She became immensely interested in some of the guests; and there were curious types in the Kurhaus. The foreigners attracted her chiefly; a little Parisian danseuse, none too quiet in her manner, won Bernardine’s fancy.

“I so want to get better, chérie,” she said to Bernardine. “Life is so bright. Death: ah, how the very thought makes one shiver! That horrid doctor says I must not skate; it is not wise. When was I wise? Wise people don’t enjoy themselves. And I have enjoyed myself, and will still.”

“How can you go about with that little danseuse?” the Disagreeable Man said to Bernardine one day. “Do you know who she is?”

“Yes,” said Bernardine; “she is the lady who thinks you must be a very ill-bred person because you stalk into meals, with your hands in your pockets. She wondered how I could bring myself to speak to you.”

“I dare say many people wonder at that,” said Robert Allitsen rather peevishly.

“Oh no,” replied Bernardine; “they wonder that you talk to me. They think I must either be very clever or else very disagreeable.”

“I should not call you clever,” said Robert Allitsen grimly.

“No,” answered Bernardine pensively. “But I always did think myself clever until I came here. Now I am beginning to know better. But it is rather a shock, isn’t it?”

“I have never experienced the shock,” he said.

“Then you still think you are clever?” she asked.

“There is only one man my intellectual equal in Petershof, and he is not here any more,” he said gravely. “Now I come to remember, he died. That is the worst of making friendships here; people die.”

“Still, it is something to be left king of the intellectual world,” said Bernardine. “I never thought of you in that light.”

There was a sly smile about, her lips as she spoke, and there was the ghost of a smile on the Disagreeable Man’s face.

“Why do you talk with that horrid Swede?” he said suddenly. “He is a wretched low foreigner. Have you heard some of his views?”

“Some of them,” answered Bernardine cheerfully. “One of his views is really amusing: that it is very rude of you to read the newspaper during meal-time; and he asks if it is an English custom. I tell him it depends entirely on the Englishman, and the Englishman’s neighbour!”

So she too had her raps at him, but always in the kindest way.

He had a curious effect on her. His very bitterness seemed to check in its growth her own bitterness. The cup of poison of which he himself had drunk deep, he passed on to her. She drank of it, and it did not poison her. She was morbid, and she needed cheerful companionship. His dismal companionship and his hard way of looking at life ought by rights to have oppressed her. Instead of which she became less sorrowful.

Was the Disagreeable Man, perhaps, a reader of character? Did he know how to help her in his own grim gruff way? He himself had suffered so much; perhaps he did know.