“And the stars—they shall fall, and the Angels go weeping,
Ere I cease to love her, my Queen, my Queen.”
I
“OUR Queen” she was to me and Ronald, ever since we first met her at
Broadwater, and Ronald had dared to love her. And now that she is gone
from us there is little fear that her title will ever be questioned.
Neither he nor I need any coarser picture of her than that engraved by
memory. But for others—for those who knew her little, or less well—let
me try to call her back in clearer and less shadowy outline.
A woman this, to whom you gave your confidence with your first greeting,
and never afterwards withdrew it.
Not the face to tempt an artist by its regularity of feature or beauty of
colouring. Madonna-like some would call it, and so it was in sweet and
loving trustfulness, but far too mobile and human, too full of interest
and human sympathy to suggest the reposeful placidity of conventional
art. Instinct, rather, with the life and animation that inspires the
best work of Gainsborough and Reynolds, and frank with a simplicity that
is careless of its surroundings, and therefore conquers them. The centre
of her interest was home; thence it radiated outwards. From her family
to her friends, from friends to neighbours, her influence passed in ever
widening circles like a ripple that, stirred in the centre of some pool,
travels to the extremest edge.
Nature creates not many such. Happy the man who has known and honoured
one.
Over and over again I have tried to unravel the secret of her
inexplicable charm. Seating myself in some sequestered nook, where
Ronald himself would find it hard to discover me, it has been my
pleasure, through a long evening’s entertainment, to watch her in every
graceful word and greeting that she exchanged with her friends. It was a
satisfaction even to see her walk across the room—a lost art (they tell
us) in these hurried and inartistic days. I tried to learn the mystery
from her conversation. The words told nothing, but the tone was less
secretive; and, after all, how much more the tone always does tell of the
spirit of the speaker than the conventional coinage we have devised in
words.
“And how’s that sweet little bairn of yours, Mrs. Macpherson?” (She was
half Scotch by birth, and now and again her descent betrayed itself in a
pretty mannerism of word and accent.) “I lost my heart to her, I did,
when I met her yesterday on the Parade with her nurse.” A greeting old
as time can make it, but new, entirely new, in the sympathy she threw
into it right from the depths of her heart. No one could hear her and
not believe; and Mrs. Macpherson was won. Sometimes, almost awestruck, I
asked myself, Is there, _can_ there be a human nature so nearly
approximating to the divine as to possess the verity of universal
sympathy? And, knowing this woman so nearly and so closely as I knew
her, it was impossible, I found, to answer the question with a negative.
“If you are in doubt, play trumps” used to be the rule in whist, and “If
you are in doubt, wear black” would be my advice to a lady in difficulty
about her dress. And Ronald’s wife suggested it.
To-night she was looking her best—in black, and silver and diamonds. She
and Ronald were giving their largest ball of the season, due regularly at
this period of the year, and every family of standing for miles round had
sent its representative. For a wonder I hadn’t been watching her that
evening, and was surprised to feel her gentle touch on my arm.
“Come with me, Fred,” she said, “I want you for a few minutes upstairs.
Poor old nurse is dying. We’ve been expecting it, you know, at any
moment for some weeks past. But I wish it hadn’t come to-night. It
looks so heartless to have all these people about us; and yet I know she
wouldn’t have had the ball put off. She was the last person ever to
think of self. Still it _does_ look unfeeling to go to her straight from
all this light and merriment. Yet I feel it less than most would. Life
and death seem to me so closely mixed, that wherever one is there you may
expect the other.”
“Of course I’ll come. But oughtn’t Ronald to be there too?”
“Yes; but, you see, we cannot both be spared. He must be here to make
excuses for me if I am missed. I don’t want to spoil the pleasure of all
these young things during their one great evening of the year.”
“But you’ll change your dress?” I said aghast.
“No, I think not. If death is always so very near to us, it hardly seems
worth while to change one’s dress to meet him. Besides, I have a special
reason in this case. All her life long dear old nurse has liked to see
me in my ball-room dress, and I’m sure she will to-night. She said it
gave her an idea of what the angels were like better than did her Bible.
And if it could give her one comforting thought to help her, I’d have
dressed on purpose as I am.”
There was little need for Ronald to make excuses for our absence. The
old woman was dying when they called us. But her eyes opened and
brightened as she saw her mistress.
“What! an angel?” she cried. “No, but my own dear mistress, the best
angel of them all, and dressed as I would have her—not yet in her robe of
white—not yet.” And, with her mistress’ face pressed close to hers, and
the diamonds and silver rippling and shimmering about her pillow, our old
nurse died as she would have chosen. Half-an-hour later “Our Queen” was
back in the ball-room: bright, and, to all appearance, cheerful as the
rest. None that saw her would have guessed the scene from which she had
come back to them. “Heartless” they would have said, and will say so
still. But Ronald and I knew better. Her heart was in the nursery up
stairs.
She wears her white robe now. But, in reverence be it written, I would
fain see her come to welcome me, clothed, as she was clothed that night,
in black and silver and diamonds.