That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but natural, and we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana watched her father's decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte—with that happy soul for whom life and love wore their brightest smile, before whose light joyous footsteps stretched so fair a pathway!
The illness, whatever it was—and neither Mr. Sheldon nor the portly and venerable physician whom he called in could find a name for it—crept upon the patient with stealthy and insidious steps. Dizziness, trembling, faintness; trembling, faintness, dizziness; the symptoms alternated day by day. Sometimes there was a respite of a few days; and Charlotte—the youthful, the sanguine, the happy—declared that her enemy had left her.
"I am sure mamma is right, Di," she said on these occasions. "My nerves are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if I could get the better of my nerves, I should be as well as ever. I don't wonder that the idea of my symptoms makes mamma almost cross. You see, she has been accustomed to have the symptoms all to herself; and for me to plagiarise them, as it were, must seem quite an impertinence. For a strong young thing like me, you know, Di dear—who have only just broken myself of plunging downstairs two and three steps at a time, and plunging upstairs in the same vulgar manner—to intrude on mamma's shattered nerves, and pirate mamma's low spirits, is utterly absurd and abominable; so I have resolved to look my nerves straight in the face, and get the better of them."
"My darling, you will get the better of them if you try," said Diana, who did at times beguile herself with the hope that her friend's ailments were mental rather than bodily. "I dare say your monotonous life has something to do with your altered health; you want change of scene, dear."
"Change of scene, when I have you and Valentine! No, Di. It would certainly be very nice to have the background shifted now and then; to see Capability Brown's prim gardens melt into Alpine heights or southern vineyards, or even into Russian steppes or Hungarian forests. One does get a little tired of toujours Bayswater; and Mr. Sheldon; and crimped skate; and sirloin of beef, and the inevitable discussion as to whether it is in a cannibal state of rawness or burnt to a cinder; and the glasses of pale sherry; and the red worsted doyleys and blue finger-glasses; and the almonds and raisins, and crisp biscuits, that nobody ever eats; and the dreary, dreary funereal business of dinner, when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma's peevish complaints about Ann Woolper's ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr. Sheldon's perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the evening through; and such papers!—Money Market Monitor, Stockholder's Vade-Mecum, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used never to feel these things an annoyance, you know, dear, till I made the acquaintance of my nerves; but from the moment I allowed my nerves to get the better of me, all these trifles have worried and excruciated me. But I am happy with you, darling; and I am happy with Valentine. Poor Valentine!"
She pronounced his name with a sigh; and then, after a pause, repeated mournfully, "Poor Valentine!"
"Why do you speak of him so sadly, dear?" asked Diana, very pale.
"Because—because we have planned such a happy life together, dear, and—"
"Is that a thing to be sad about, darling?"
"And—if it should happen, after all, that we have to part, and he go on alone, the world may seem so sad and lonely to him."