ANTOINETTE.
She hath had her happy day—
She hath had her bud and blossom;
Now she pales and shrinks away,
Death, into thy gentle bosom!
She hath done her bidding here;
Angels dear,
Bear her loving soul above,
Seraph of the skies—dear love!
BARRY CORNWALL.
Net had never been on a long journey in her short life; and her present
one was very long, from the extreme north of England to the extreme
south, and it began in an obscure rural neighborhood and would terminate
at a secluded hamlet and manor-house, it involved several changes of
trains.
There was but one cab on the station waiting for the doubtful chance of
a fare. Net hired it.
Net got in and seated herself, and was soon rolling along an
unfrequented road.
In an hour they reached the village of Deloraine.
Passing out of the village, half an hour’s drive brought them to the
great park gate—a strong portal of iron, guarded by a gothic lodge.
Here the cabman drew up, alighted and rang a bell.
A bare-headed, red-armed girl, with her sleeves rolled up, ran out of
the lodge and swung open the wide doors of the gateway, closing the
gates with a clang when the cab had passed, and then flying into the
lodge and banging the door after her.
The cab finally reached the grand, old-style manor-house of dark-colored
brick.
The cabman got down from his seat, ran up the stairs and rang the bell,
and then ran down again and opened the door for the young lady to
alight.
Net paid him five shillings for her fare, and one over for his
moderation, before she left the cab. Then she got out and went up the
steps, followed by the cabman carrying her valise.
The house-door was already opened by a venerable old servant, whose gray
hair needed no powder and whose grave and well-preserved livery
expressed the good taste of his late masters.
“I hope Miss Deloraine is better this morning,” were the first words of
Net to this dignified old man.
“Much better, madam! Mrs. Fleming, I hope?” he said, with a low bow. “I
will show you up.”
The man opened a door on his right, and announced:
“Mrs. Fleming.” Then closed the door upon her and retired.
Net found herself in a luxurious boudoir where every sense of seeing,
hearing, smelling, feeling, was wooed to enjoyment.
In this lovely bower, in a deep, soft resting-chair sat Antoinette
Deloraine, wrapped in a warm, loose dressing-gown of pale blue satin,
lined and wadded with quilled white silk. Her rich black hair was done
up loosely in a net of white silk and pearl beads.
She held a handkerchief with some pungent essence on it, which now and
then she placed to her nose.
Net took all this in at a glance at the instant she crossed the
threshold of the room, and she could scarcely forbear a start and cry of
pity and dismay as she gazed on the beautiful wreck before her.
Antoinette had fallen away to mere skin and bone, and the white cambric
handkerchief she held in her fingers was not whiter than her hands and
face.
She arose to meet her visitor, and held out her hand with a smile that
seemed to break Net’s heart.
“My dearest, I hear that you are much better to-day?” said Net, striving
with all her might to repress her emotions—for she thought: “If _this_
is ‘better,’ what is worse?”
“Oh, yes, I am, indeed,” answered Antoinette, dropping back in her seat,
and smelling at her saturated handkerchief; “and I think it was the
anticipation of your visit that gave me new life. As soon as I got Lord
Beaudevere’s telegram from the Miston Branch Junction yesterday morning,
saying that he had just put you on the train, and that you would be here
to-day, I rallied at once, and have been better ever since. I thought
you would have arrived by the twelve noon train, and gave orders for the
carriage to meet you. Dear girl! You must have traveled all night to
have got here so soon.”
“Yes, I lost not an hour. I came straight on,” said Net, as she sank
down on a cushion at the side of her cousin.
“Why did not the baron tell me in his telegram that you would reach here
by the earliest train?” said Antoinette, in a vexed tone. “I could then
have sent the carriage for you.”
“He did not know it, dear. He had advised me to stop over night in
London, at his own town house, and he gave me a note to his housekeeper.
But when I got to London I preferred to come down here by the night
train. Antoinette, dearest, I wished to be with you as soon as
possible,” said Net, affectionately.
“Well, I am glad of the few more hours. Have you breakfasted? Your rooms
are all ready. They are next to mine. Quite a suite for you and the
children. Ah! but you have not brought the children?”
“No, dear; I thought it was better to leave them at Castle Montjoie in
the care of Arielle than to bring them a long journey in this wintry
weather.”
“Yet I should like to see the little ones; but I suppose it was wise to
leave them. Here I am talking and not thinking of your needs, Net. Have
you breakfasted?”
“Yes, dearest, I have.”
“Comfortably?”
“Oh, yes! I ate and drank good food with a good appetite—at the
Deloraine Arms.”
“Oh, yes! that is a very respectable little country inn, supposed to be
under the special protection of the lords and ladies of the Manor of
Deloraine! Ah, Net! I wonder if any prevising spirit whispered the fat
landlady or her pompous headwaiter that it was their future lady of the
manor they were serving with breakfast?”
“Oh, Antoinette, dearest, do not talk in that way,” said Net, in a tone
of pain.
“Why not? You are the heiress presumptive and you will soon be the
mistress of the manor,” said the young girl, with great calmness.
“Oh, no! Do not say so! I trust, Antoinette, you will yet recover, and
live to be a happy wife and mother, and leave heirs behind you to
enjoy—to inherit Deloraine Park,” said Net, in a faltering and broken
voice, forcing herself to hope against hope.
“_Now_, Net! for _you_ to turn flatterer! But you mean well, my dear.
No, Net, _I_ know, and _you_ know, if you will look the truth in the
face, and be candid with yourself and me, that I shall never live to do
as you say. I _cannot_ live a month longer! I _may_ not live an hour.
But what of it, pray? Who am _I_ that I should not go in my youth as
countless myriads have gone before me? Every tick of that clock is the
knell of some passing soul. Every hour sees many go—some, a second old,
who only gasp and go! And others of all ages from that to an hundred
years and more! I have lived to be nineteen. I have enjoyed my short
life, but I do not fear to leave it. While I was in doubt whether I
should stay or go, then indeed I was uneasy with uncertainty; but now
that I know my fate, I am quite, quite satisfied,” said the dying girl.
“Antoinette, dear, are you not talking too much for your strength?”
tenderly inquired Net, who noticed, with grief, the faintness and
occasional failure of her cousin’s voice.
“No, because I am so much better, just at present! Besides, even if it
hurt me, I should talk all the same! I like to talk!”
For all answer, Net kissed and caressed the hand that she still held in
her own, as she sat on the cushion at her cousin’s side, where she could
come nearest in contact with her.
“Yes, Net, I am satisfied to go. I have faith enough to believe in the
infinite wisdom and goodness of God; that He is the absolute Lord of
life and death; that whenever He sees fit for a human being to go out of
this world, that human being—he or she—will go, and it will be the very
best thing that could happen to him or to her. Infinite Love and Wisdom
is doing the best for us, all the time, whether we believe it or not.”
At this moment a rosy, middle-aged matron, clothed in a soft gray woolen
dress, white muslin cap and black silk apron, came softly into the room,
with a small silver waiter in her hand, having on it something covered
over with a white napkin.
This was the day-nurse of the heiress of Deloraine Park.
She courtesied to the visitor, and then went on to the side of the young
invalid.
Net pressed the thin hand she had held up to this moment, and then
released it and arose to make way for the nurse.
“Miss Deloraine, my dear, you must not talk any more this morning. Here
is your beef tea and port wine. You are to take it, dear, and then try
to sleep.”
“If I can,” replied the girl, with a wan smile.
The nurse drew a little, spider-legged stand, of inlaid mother of pearl,
to the side of the invalid’s chair, and set the waiter upon it, saying:
“Now, dear, try a little of the port. It will give you an appetite.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Nolliss. Will you please to touch the bell for me?”
The matron complied, and a fresh-looking young girl in a pretty calico
dress, with white apron, and cap trimmed with blue ribbons, entered the
room, courtesied, and said:
“If you please, ma’am, Mrs. Trimmer have gone to the village on your
message, which she left word I was to—to take the liberty to answer her
bell, which I am sure I beg your pardon for making so bold, ma’am”—with
another courtesy.
Antoinette smiled, and murmured to Net:
“She comes from the estate, and is as verdant as its own herbage in
spring-time; but she is good, and she is your maid.”
Then turning to the girl, she said:
“Quite right, Cally. It was you I wanted, not Trimmer. This lady is the
mistress you are to serve.”
The girl turned and dropped a courtesy to Mrs. Fleming.
“Now, show your mistress to her room, and wait her orders there. Net,
dear,” the young lady continued, turning to her guest, “I hope you will
make yourself at home; order everything you require, and be as
comfortable as if I were up and about and able to see to you myself.”
Net stooped and kissed her cousin, and then hurried from the room, and
was conducted by the little maid to the apartments prepared for her, and
consisting of sitting-room, bed chamber, and dressing closet _en suite_,
and all upholstered in blue.
Net had no sooner reached the first of these than she turned to the
little maid and said:
“You may go now. I do not need anything at present. When I do I will
call you.”
The girl courtesied and withdrew.
Net locked the door, threw off her hat and shawl, and cast herself
headlong down upon the sofa, and gave vent to the storm of tears and
sobs whose repression had nearly suffocated her.
She wept and sobbed long and hard before the paroxysm of passionate
grief had exhausted itself. And after that she still lay upon the sofa,
panting and gasping in the subsidence of the tempest.
There was one drop of comfort in her grief for Antoinette. It was in the
recollection of her own firmness in resisting all the arguments and
persuasion of her step-father and his lawyers, that might have led to
the assertion and establishment of her own claim to Deloraine Park at
the expense of her innocent cousin—Antoinette’s disinheritance and
disgrace.
Ah! what a consolation it was to her at this hour to reflect that by her
own forbearance Antoinette had lived, and would die, the undisputed
inheritrix of her father’s illustrious old name and her father’s grand
old manor!
After more than an hour Net arose and went into her dressing closet to
wash and bathe her face, and to change her dress for the lunch or
dinner, whichever might be the rule of the family in the middle of the
day.
When she had done all this, and stood up in her neat black silk dress,
trimmed with black crape, and with throat and wrist ruffles of white
crepe lisse, and put a white rose in her dark hair, luncheon was
announced.
Net dispatched her dainty luncheon with very little appetite, and was
just rising from the table, when she was accosted by the nurse, who
stood within the open door and said:
“She insists on seeing you, Mrs. Fleming. I begged her to rest, but she
will not, and opposition excites her and hurts her more than even giving
her her own way and letting her talk could. We have a hard time with our
patient, me and the doctor do.”
“I will go to my cousin at once, and I will not let her excite herself
by too much conversation,” said Net, passing out into the hall.
“Oh, won’t you, ma’am?” inquired the nurse, with an incredulous smile,
as she led the way.