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.