"We went as children joyous, or oprest, In some absorbing care, or blest,
In nodding conversation—hand in hand."
                                            —HONORA SHEE (THE LOVER'S DIARY).
 
 
My aunt appeared to me to be failing in health a good deal at the beginning of 1888, and, though she sometimes seemed to be stronger, and chatted with all her old interest in the things of the past, there were days when she was so quiet and drowsy that I feared to rouse her by talking. At other times she would like me to talk and read to her as usual, but was so languid and tired that a little smile and pressure of the hand I held was the only response she made. In April she had a slight attack of bronchitis, and her doctor ordered her opium to ease her lungs. She much objected to all opiates, but her doctor's treatment seemed to ease her. She would not let me sleep in her house, as she thought, as usual, that it would "disorganize the household," but I went now nearly every night across the park in the fragrant spring nights to inquire, under her maid's window, if Mrs. "Ben" was asleep.
 
The owls had nested for years in a great tree by my aunt's bedroom windows, and I loved to watch them in the moonlight hawking for the food they had to supply in such abundance now to the screeching owlets in the nest. The old birds used to sit on Aunt Ben's window-sill, and hoot, and had done so, much to her pleasure, for the sixty {272} or seventy years of her residence in the house; but now her maid shook her head sadly, as she leant out of the window to tell me of her mistress's condition, saying "That's an omen, m'am; the dear mistress must be going soon." I answered irritably that the owls had hooted there since Mr. Benjamin's time, as her mistress had often told her, but felt her "Time will show, m'am," to be unanswerable.
 
On these May nights, if he was at home, Parnell would walk across the park with me and wait on a seat for me till I had obtained the latest bulletin.
 
One morning, very early, when her night had been restless, I made Mary Ann (my aunt's personal maid) come down and let me in. On going up to the great four-post bed where the dear little old lady lay, looking as small and frail as a child, she put out one, now feeble, white hand, and held mine. I told the maid she could go and rest a bit, and I would call her if my aunt wanted her.
 
When she was gone, my aunt, who was breathing with difficulty, whispered as I bent down to kiss her hand, "You do believe, do you not, my Swan?" I answered, "Yes, auntie, of course I do believe, most firmly." She said, "I am glad. I wish you could come with me, my darling!" and I sobbingly told her that I wished I could too.
 
I stayed by her side and smoothed her hand till she ceased to breathe, and then waited by her as all her servants who had been with her for many years filed past the bed, and took a last look at their stern but just and much-loved mistress.
 
She left a great void in my life, and the sensation of being always wanted and tied to one place that I had sometimes felt so keenly hard I would now have given {273} much to feel again. With this old lady died, so far as my acquaintance went, the last of the old world—that old world of leisure and books and gentle courtesy of days when men might wear their gallantry without foolishness, and women knew the value of their sex.
 
Through all those years in which I waited on my aunt I never heard her use a clipped word, or use a sentence not grammatically perfect and beautifully rounded off, and although in the hurry of modern life I sometimes felt impatient when chided for some swallowed pronunciation or ignored g's, I look back upon the years of my life spent in that old-world atmosphere as a very precious memory.
 
After my aunt's death Eltham became intolerable to me, and I took a small country house near Mottingham till I could let my own house. Directly we left Eltham the pretty garden was devastated by relic-hunters, who pulled the place to pieces in obtaining mementoes of "the house where Parnell had lived."
 
The house at Mottingham was damp, and we longed for the sea.
 
For various reasons we had been obliged to relinquish any idea of living in the little house we had finished, with so much pleasure, at Eastbourne, and at last we had removed the few things we had stored there, and in 1887 had finally decided to take the end house of Walsingham Terrace (No. 10), Brighton. Shortly after my aunt's death we went down to live there. The position then was attractive to us: cornfields from one side of the house away up to Shoreham basin and harbour, a waste of hay at the back of the house, an excellent train service and a sufficient distance from Brighton proper to enable us to avoid the crowd. While we were living there people used to walk and drive out to see "Parnell's house," but this was not {274} particularly annoying, as when he was at home we went out early, or late—anyhow, at a time when the average person is kept at home by appetite. Personally, if it was not glaringly inconvenient, I was always rather proud and interested in the popular attention Parnell attracted wherever he went.
 
Here Parnell had the dining-room as his own sitting-room, where he kept the roll-top desk I had given him for all his papers and political work, while down in the basement there was a room in which he had a furnace fitted up, and where we used to burn the crushed ore before assaying it. We spent many hours down there, and I sometimes feared the excessive heat must have been bad for him; but he did not think so, and would become so absorbed in this work that I used to have the greatest difficulty in getting him out for the gallop on his horse President across the Downs, which did him so much good.
 
I found at length the only way was to get his cap and whip and show them to the dogs. Immediately I did this they would begin to bark wildly and jump up at him to make him start for the run they loved so much. Parnell would then say reproachfully, "Oh, Queenie, how can you deceive the poor dogs like that?" and I would answer that the only way to keep them believing in us was to go at once for that belated ride. Once started none of the party, dogs or horses, enjoyed it more than he.
 
In this house we had from the side windows of Parnell's and from my room in which he afterwards died, a view of the most wonderful sunsets I have ever seen in England. Then the whole west was a veritable fairyland of gold and crimson, and the harbour and Shoreham town, with the little country church of Aldrington against the setting of the Downs, were touched with a pearly mist of {275} light that lifted them far out of the prosaic ugliness we knew by the blank light of midday. Parnell used to say to me as we walked away to the golden harbour, "Is it really like this, my Queen, or as we see it at noon?" I could only reply that it was both—the both that made life at once so interesting and so difficult.
 
Often in the following spring my King and I would drive out as far as the foot of the Downs near the training stables beyond Southwick; and then, climbing to the crest of the hills, go for long walks, away over the Downs, walking or resting as we felt inclined, returning as night fell, to drive home.
 
One sunny morning, lengthening into a brighter day, I especially remember, when the south-west wind sent the flickering shadows across the Downs where its sea-scents mingled with the sweet pungency of the young herbage. As we walked along hand in hand we were gay in the glorious spring of the year, feeling that while love walked so closely with us youth could not lag too far behind, and in the wide expanse of the South Downs, which appealed so much to both our natures, w............