Das Denken ist nur ein Traum des Fühlens, ein erstorbenes Fühlen, ein blass-graues, schwaches Leben.
Thinking is only a dream of feeling; a dead feeling; a pale-grey, feeble life.
NOVALIS.—Die Lehrlinge zu Sais.
For where’s no courage, there’s no ruth nor mone.
Faerie Queene: vi. 7, 18.
One morning, as soon as she waked, Euphra said:
“Have I been still all the night, Margaret?”
“Quite still. Why do you ask?”
“Because I have had such a strange and vivid dream, that I feel as if I must have been to the place. It was a foolish question, though; because, of course, you would not have let me go.”
“I hope it did not trouble you much.”
“No, not much; for though I was with the count, I did not seem to be there in the body at all, only somehow near him, and seeing him. I can recall the place perfectly.”
“Do you think it really was the place he was in at the time?”
“I should not wonder. But now I feel so free, so far beyond him and all his power, that I don’t mind where or when I see him. He cannot hurt me now.”
“Could you describe the place to Mr. Sutherland? It might help him to find the count.”
“That’s a good idea. Will you send for him?”
“Yes, certainly. May I tell him for what?”
“By all means.”
Margaret wrote to Hugh at once, and sent the note by hand. He was at home when it arrived. He hurriedly answered it, and went to find Falconer. To his delight he was at home—not out of bed, in fact.
“Read that.”
“Who is it from?”
“Miss Cameron’s maid.”
“It does not look like a maid’s production.”
“It is though. Will you come with me? You know London ten thousand times better than I do. I don’t think we ought to lose a chance.”
“Certainly not. I will go with you. But perhaps she will not see me.”
“Oh! yes, she will, when I have told her about you.”
“It will be rather a trial to see a stranger.”
“A man cannot be a stranger with you ten minutes, if he only looks at you;—still less a woman.”
Falconer looked pleased, and smiled.
“I am glad you think so. Let us go.”
When they arrived, Margaret came to them. Hugh told her that Falconer was his best friend, and one who knew London perhaps better than any other man in it. Margaret looked at him full in the face for a moment. Falconer smiled at the intensity of her still gaze. Margaret returned the smile, and said:
“I will ask Miss Cameron to see yet.”
“Thank you,” was all Falconer’s reply; but the tone was more than speech.
After a little while, they were shown up to Euphra’s room. She had wanted to sit up, but Margaret would not let her; so she was lying on her couch. When Falconer was presented to her, he took her hand, and held it for a moment. A kind of indescribable beam broke over his face, as if his spirit smiled and the smile shone through without moving one of his features as it passed. The tears stood in his eyes. To understand all this look, one would need to know his history as I do. He laid her hand gently on her bosom, and said: “God bless you!”
Euphra felt that God did bless her in the very words. She had been looking at Falconer all the time. It was only fifteen seconds or so; but the outcome of a life was crowded into Falconer’s side of it; and the confidence of Euphra rose to meet the faithfulness of a man of God.—What words those are!—A man of God! Have I not written a revelation? Yes—to him who can read it—yes.
“I know enough of your story, Miss Cameron,” he said, “to understand without any preface what you choose to tell me.”
Euphra began at once:
“I dreamed last night that I found myself outside the street door. I did not know where I was going; but my feet seemed to know. They carried me, round two or three corners, into a wide, long street, which I think was Oxford-street. They carried me on into London, far beyond any quarter I knew. All I can tell further is, that I turned to the left beside a church, on the steeple of which stood what I took for a wandering ghost just lighted there;—only I ought to tell you, that frequently in my dreams—always in my peculiar dreams—the more material and solid and ordinary things are, the more thin and ghostly they appear to me. Then I went on and on, turning left and right too many times for me to remember, till at last I came to a little, old-fashioned court, with two or three trees in it. I had to go up a few steps to enter it. I was not afraid, because I knew I was dreaming, and that my body was not there. It is a great relief to feel that sometimes; for it is often very much in the way. I opened a door, upon which the moon shone very bright, and walked up two flights of stairs into a back room. And there I found him, doing something at a table by candlelight. He had a sheet of paper before him; but what he was doing with it, I could not see. I tried hard; but it was of no use. The dream suddenly faded, and I awoke, and found Margaret.—Then I knew I was safe,” she added, with a loving glance at her maid.
Falconer rose.
“I know the place you mean perfectly,” he said. “It is too peculiar to be mistaken. Last night, let me see, how did the moon shine?—Yes. I shall be able to tell the very door, I think, or almost.”
“How kind of you not to laugh at me!”
“I might make a fool of myself if I laughed at any one. So I generally avoid it. We may as well get the good out of what we do not understand—or at least try if there be any in it. Will you come, Sutherland?”
Hugh rose, and took his leave with Falconer.
“How pleased she seemed with you, Falconer!” said he, as they left the house.
“Yes, she touched me.”
“Won’t you go and see her again?”
“No; there is no need, except she sends for me.”
“It would please her—comfort her, I am sure.”
“She has got one of God’s angels beside her, Sutherland. She doesn’t want me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that maid of hers.”
A pang—of jealousy, was it?—shot through Hugh’s heart. How could he see—what right had he to see anything in Margaret?
Hugh might have kept himself at peace, even if he had loved Margaret as much as she deserved, which would have been about ten times as much as he did. Is a man not to recognize an angel when he sees her, and to call her by her name? Had Hugh seen into the core of that grand heart—what form sat there, and how—he would have been at peace—would almost have fallen down to do the man homage. He was silent.
“My dear fellow!” said Falconer, as if he divined his feeling—for Falconer’s power over men and women came all from sympathy with their spirits, and not their nerves—“if you have any hold of that woman, do not lose it; for as sure as there’s a sun in heaven, she is one of the winged ones. Don’t I know a woman when I see her!”
He sighed with a kind of involuntary sigh, which yet did not seek to hide itself from Hugh.
“My dear boy,” he added, laying a stress on the word, “—I am nearly twice your age—don’t be jealous of me.”
“Mr. Falconer,” said Hugh humbly, “forgive me. The feeling was involuntary; and if you have detected in it more than I was aware of, you are at least as likely to be right as I am. But you cannot think more highly of Margaret than I do.”
And yet Hugh did not know half the good of her then, that the reader does now.
“Well, we had better part now, and meet again at night.”
“What time shall I come to you?”
“Oh! about nine I think will do.”
So Hugh went home, and tried to turn his thoughts to his story; but Euphra, Falconer, Funkelstein, and Margaret persisted in sitting to him, the one after the other, instead of the heroes and heroines of his tale. He was compelled to lay it aside, and betake himself to a stroll and a pipe.
As he went down stairs, he met Miss Talbot.
“You’re soon tired of home, Mr. Sutherland. You haven’t been in above half an hour, and you’re out again already.”
“Why, you see, Miss Talbot, I want a pipe very much.”
“Well, you ain’t going to the public house to smoke it, are you?”
“No,” answered Hugh laughing. “But you know, Miss Talbot, you made it part of the agreement that I shouldn’t smoke indoors. So I’m going to smoke in the street.”
“Now, think of being taken that way!” retorted Miss Talbot, with an injured air. “Why, that was before I knew anything about you. Go up stairs directly, and smoke your pipe; and when the room can’t hold any more, you can open the windows. Your smoke won’t do any harm, Mr. Sutherland. But I’m very sorry you quarrelled with Mrs. Appleditch. She’s a hard woman, and over fond of her money and her drawing-room; and for those boys of hers—the Lord have mercy on them, for she has none! But she’s a true Christian for all that, and does a power of good among the poor people.”
“What does she give them, Miss Talbot?”
“Oh!—she gives them—hm-m—tracts and things. You know,” she added, perceiving the weakness of her position, “people’s souls should come first. And poor Mrs. Appleditch—you see—some folks is made stickier than others, and their money sticks to them, somehow, that they can’t part with it—poor woman!”
To this Hugh had no answer at hand; for though Miss Talbot’s logic was more than questionable, her charity was perfectly sound; and Hugh felt that he had not been forbearing enough with the mother of the future pastors. So he went back to his room, lighted his pipe, and smoked till he fell asleep over a small volume of morbid modern divinity, which Miss Talbot had lent him. I do not mention the name of the book, lest some of my acquaintance should abuse me, and others it, more than either deserves. Hugh, however, found the best refuge from the diseased self-consciousness which it endeavoured to rouse, and which is a kind of spiritual somnambulism, in an hour of God’s good sleep, into a means of which the book was temporarily elevated. When he woke he found himself greatly refreshed by the influence it had exercised upon him.
It was now the hour for the daily pretence of going to dine. So he went out. But all he had was some bread, which he ate as he walked about. Loitering here, and trifling there, passing five minutes over a volume on every bookstall in Holborn, and comparing the shapes of the meerschaums in every tobacconist’s window, time ambled gently along with him; and it struck nine just as he found himself at Falconer’s door.
“You are ready, then?” said Falconer.
“Quite.”
“Will you take anything before you go? I think we had better have some supper first. It is early for our project.”
This was a welcome proposal to Hugh. Cold meat and ale were excellent preparatives for what might be required of him; for a tendency to collapse in a certain region, called by courtesy the chest, is not favourable to deeds of valour. By the time he had spent ten minutes in the discharge of the agreeable duty suggested, he felt himself ready for anything that might fall to his lot.
The friends set out together; and, under the guidance of the two foremost bumps upon Falconer’s forehead, soon arrived at the place he judged to be that indicated by Euphra. It was very different from the place Hugh had pictured to himself. Yet in everything it corresponded to her description.
“Are we not great fools, Sutherland, to set out on such a chase, with the dream of a sick girl for our only guide?”
“I am sure you don’t think so, else you would not have gone.”
“I think we can afford the small risk to our reputation involved in the chase of this same wild-goose. There is enough of strange testimony about things of the sort to justify us in attending to the hint. Besides, if we neglected it, it would be mortifying to find out some day, perhaps a hundred years after this, that it was a true hint. It is altogether different from giving ourselves up to the pursuit of such things.—But this ought to be the house,” he added, going up to one that had a rather more respectable look than the rest.
He knocked at the door. An elderly woman half opened it and looked at them suspiciously.
“Will you take my card to the foreign gentleman who is lodging with you, and say I am happy to wait upon him?” said Falconer.
She glanced at him again, and turned inwards, hesitating whether to leave the door half-open or not. Falconer stood so close to it, however, that she was afraid to shut it in his face.
“Now, Sutherland, follow me,” whispered Falconer, as soon as the woman had disappeared on the stair.
Hugh followed behind the moving tower of his friend, who strode with long, noiseless strides till he reached the stair. That he took three steps at a time. They went up two flights, and reached the top just as the woman was laying her hand on the lock of the back-room door. She turned and faced them.
“Speak one word,” said Falconer, in a hissing whisper, “and—”
He completed the sentence by an awfully threatening gesture. She drew back in terror, and yielded her place at the door.
“Come in,” bawled some one, in second answer to the knock she had already given.
“It is he!” said Hugh, trembling with excitement.
“Hush!” said Falconer, and went in.
Hugh followed. He know the back of the count at once. He was seated at a table, apparently writing; but, going nearer, they saw that he was drawing. A single closer glance showed them the portrait of Euphra growing under his hand. In order to intensify his will and concentrate it upon her, he was drawing her portrait from memory. But at the moment they caught sight of it, the wretch, aware of a hostile presence, sprang to his feet, and reached the chimney-piece at one bound, whence he caught up a sword.
“Take care, Falconer,” cried Hugh; “that weapon is poisoned. He is no every-day villain you have to deal with.”
He remembered the cat.
Funkelstein made a sudden lunge at Hugh, his face pale with hatred and anger. But a blow from Falconer’s huge fist, travelling faster than the point of his weapon, stretched him on the floor. Such was Falconer’s impetus, that it hurled both him and the table across the fallen villain. Falconer was up in a moment. Not so Funkelstein. There was plenty of time for Hugh to secure the rapier, and for Falconer to secure its owner, before he came to himself.
“Where’s my ring?” said Hugh, the moment he opened his eyes.
“Gentlemen, I protest,” began Funkelstein, in a voice upon which the cord that bound his wrists had an evident influence.
“No chaff!” said Falconer. “We’ve got all our feathers. Hand over the two rings, or be the security for them yourself.”
“What witness have you against me?”
“The best of witnesses—Miss Cameron.”
“And me,” added Hugh.
“Gentlemen, I am very sorry. I yielded to temptation. I meant to restore the diamond after the joke had been played out, but I was forced to part with it.”
“The joke is played out, you see,” said Falconer. “So you had better produce the other bauble you stole at the same time.”
“I have not got it.”
“Come, come, that’s too much. Nobody would give you more than five shillings for it. And you knew what it was worth when you took it. Sutherland, you stand over him while I search the room. This portrait may as well be put out of the way first.”
As he spoke, Falconer tore the portrait and threw it into the fire. He then turned to a cupboard in the room. Whether it was that Funkelstein feared further revelations, I do not know, but he quailed.
“I have not got it,” he repeated, however.
“You lie,” answered Falconer.
“I would give it you if I could.”
“You shall.”
The Bohemian looked contemptible enough now, despite the handsomeness of his features. It needed freedom, and the absence of any urgency, to enable him to personate a gentleman. Given those conditions, he succeeded. But as soon as he was disturbed, the gloss vanished, and the true nature came out, that of a ruffian and a sneak. He quite quivered at the look with which Falconer turned again to the cupboard.
“Stop,” he cried; “here it is.”
And muttering what sounded like curses, he pulled out of his bosom the ring, suspended from his neck.
“Sutherland,” said Falconer, taking the ring, “secure that rapier, and be careful with it. We will have its point tested. Meantime,”—here he turned again to his prisoner—“I give you warning that the moment I leave this house, I go to Scotland Yard.—Do you know the place? I there recommend the police to look after you, and they will mind what I say. If you leave London, a message will be sent, wherever you go, that you had better be watched. My advice to you is, to stay where you are as long as you can. I shall meet you again.”
They left him on the floor, to the care of his landlady, whom they found outside the room, speechless with terror.
As soon as they were in the square, on which the moon was now shining, as it had shone in Euphra’s dream the night before, Falconer gave the ring to Hugh.
“Take it to a jeweller’s, Sutherland, and get it cleaned, before you give it to Miss Cameron.”
“I will,” answered Hugh, and added, “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Then don’t,” said Falconer, with a smile.
When they reached the end of the street, he turned, and bade Hugh good night.
“Take care of that cowardly thing. It may be as you say.”
Hugh turned towards home. Falconer dived into a court, and was out of sight in a moment.
Thou hast beenAs one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;A man that fortune’s buffets and rewardsHast ta’en with equal thanks; and blessed are thoseWhose blood and judgment are so well commingledThat they are not a pipe for fortune’s fingerTo sound what stop she please.
Hamlet.
Most friends befriend themselves with friendship’s show.
Hugh took the ring to Mrs. Elton’s, and gave it into Margaret’s hand. She brought him back a message of warmest thanks from Euphra. She had asked for writing materials at once, and was now communicating the good news to Mr. Arnold, in Madeira.
“I have never seen her look so happy,” added Margaret. “She hopes to be able to see you in the evening, if you would not mind calling again.”
Hugh did call, and saw her. She received him most kindly. He was distressed to see how altered she was. The fire of one life seemed dying out—flowing away and spending from her eyes, which it illuminated with too much light as it passed out. But the fire of another life, the immortal life, which lies in thought and feeling, in truth and love divine, which death cannot touch, because it is not of his kind, was growing as fast. He sat with her for an hour, and then went.
This chapter of his own history concluded, Hugh returned with fresh energy to his novel, and worked at it as his invention gave him scope. There was the more necessity that he should make progress, from the fact that, having sent his mother the greater part of the salary he had received from Mr. Arnold, he was now reduced to his last sovereign. Poverty looks rather ugly when she comes so close as this. But she had not yet accosted him; and with a sovereign in his pocket, and last week’s rent paid, a bachelor is certainly not poverty-stricken, at least when he is as independent, not only of other people, but of himself, as Hugh was. Still, without more money than that a man walks in fetters, and is ready to forget that the various restraints he is under are not incompatible with most honourable freedom. So Hugh worked as hard as he could to finish his novel, and succeeded within a week. Then the real anxiety began. He carried it, with much doubtful hope, to one of the principal publishing houses. Had he been more selfishly wise, he would have put it into the hands of Falconer to negotiate for him. But he thought he had given him quite trouble enough already. So he went without an introduction even. The manuscript was received politely, and attention was promised. But a week passed, and another, and another. A human soul was in commotion about the meat that perisheth—and the manuscript lay all the time unread,—forgotten in a drawer.
At length he reached his last coin. He had had no meat for several days, except once that he dined at Mrs. Elton’s. But he would not borrow till absolutely compelled, and sixpence would keep him alive another day. In the morning he had some breakfast (for he knew his books were worth enough to pay all he owed Miss Talbot), and then he wandered out. Through the streets he paced and paced, looking in at all the silversmiths’ and printsellers’ windows, and solacing his poverty with a favourite amusement of his in uneasy circumstances, an amusement cheap enough for a Scotchman reduced to his last sixpence—castle-building. This is not altogether a bad employment where hope has laid the foundation; but it is rather a heartless one where the imagination has to draw the ground plan as well as the elevations. The latter, however, was not quite Hugh’s condition yet.—He returned at night, carefully avoiding the cook-shops and their kindred snares, with a silver groat in his pocket still. But he crawled up stairs rather feebly, it must be confessed, for a youth with limbs moulded in the fashion of his.
He found a letter waiting him, from a friend of his mother, informing him that she was dangerously ill, and urging him to set off immediately for home. This was like the blast of fiery breath from the dragon’s maw, which overthrew the Red-cross knight—but into the well of life, where all his wounds were healed, and—and—well—board and lodging provided him gratis.
When he had read the letter, he fell on his knees, and said to his father in heaven: “What am I to do?”
There was no lake with golden pieces in its bottom, whence a fish might bring him a coin. Nor in all the wide London lay there one he could claim as his, but the groat in his pocket.
He rose with the simple resolution to go and tell Falconer. He went. He was not at home. Emboldened by necessity, Hugh left his card, with the words on it: “Come to me; I need you.” He then returned, packed a few necessaries, and sat down to wait. But he had not sat five minutes before Falconer entered.
“What’s the matter, Sutherland, my dear fellow? You haven’t pricked yourself with that skewer, have you?”
Hugh handed him the letter with one hand; and when he had read it, held out the fourpenny piece in the other hand, to be read likewise. Falconer understood at once.
“Sutherland,” he said, in a tone of reproof, “it is a shame of you to forget that men are brothers. Are not two who come out of the heart of God, as closely related as if they had lain in the womb of one mother? Why did you not tell me? You have suffered—I am sure you have.”
“I have—a little,” Hugh confessed. “I am getting rather low in fact. I haven’t had quite enough to eat.”
He said this to excuse the tears which Falconer’s kindness—not hunger—compelled from their cells.
“But,” he added, “I would have come to you as soon as the fourpence was gone; or at least, if I hadn’t got another before I was very hungry again.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Falconer, half angrily. Then pulling out his watch, “We have two hours,” said he, “before a train starts for the north. Come to my place.”
Hugh rose and obeyed. Falconer’s attendant soon brought them a plentiful supper from a neighbouring shop; after which Falconer got out one of his bottles of port, well known to his more intimate friends; and Hugh thought no more about money than if he had had his purse full. If it had not been for anxiety about his mother, he would have been happier than he had ever been in his life before. For, crossing in the night the wavering, heaving morass of the world, had he not set his foot upon one spot which did not shake; the summit, indeed, of a mighty Plutonic rock, that went down widening away to the very centre of the earth? As he sped along in the railway that night, the prophecy of thousands of years came back: “A man shall be a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” And he thought it would be a blessed time indeed, when this was just what a man was. And then he thought of the Son of Man, who, by being such first, was enabling all his friends to be such too. Of him Falconer had already learned this “truth in the inward parts”; and had found, in the process of learning it, that this was the true nature which God had made his from the first, no new thing superinduced upon it. He had had but to clear away the rubbish of worldliness, which more or less buries the best natures for a time, and so to find himself.
After Hugh had eaten and drunk, and thus once more experienced the divinity that lay in food and wine, he went to take leave of his friends at Mrs. Elton’s. Like most invalids, Euphra was better in the evening: she requested to see him. He found her in bed, and much wasted since he saw her last. He could not keep the tears from filling his eyes, for all the events of that day had brought them near the surface.
“Do not cry, dear friend,” she said sweetly. “There is no room for me here any more, and I am sent for.”
Hugh could not reply. She went on:
“I have written to Mr. Arnold about the ring, and all you did to get it. Do you know he is going to marry Lady Emily?”
Still Hugh could not answer.
Margaret stood on the other side of the bed, the graceful embodiment of holy health, and in his sorrow, he could not help feeling the beauty of her presence. Her lovely hands were the servants of Euphra, and her light, firm feet moved only in ministration. He felt that Euphra had room in the world while Margaret waited on her. It is not house, and fire, and plenty of servants, and all the things that money can procure, that make a home—not father or mother or friends; but one heart which will not be weary of helping, will not be offended with the petulance of sickness, nor the ministrations needful to weakness: this “entire affection hating nicer hands” will make a home of a cave in a rock, or a gipsy’s tent. This Euphra had in Margaret, and Hugh saw it.
“I trust you will find your mother better, Hugh” said Euphra.
“I fear not,” answered he.
“Well, Margaret has been teaching me, and I think I have learned it, that death is not at all such a dreadful thing as it looks. I said to her: ‘It is easy for you, Margaret, who are so far from death’s door.’ But she told me that she had been all but dead once, and that you had saved her life almost with your own. Oh, Hugh! she is such a dear!”
Euphra smiled with ten times the fascination of any of her old smiles; for the soul of the smile was love.
“I shall never see you again, I daresay,” she went on. “My heart thanks you, from its very depths, for your goodness to me. It has been a thousand times more than I deserve.”
Hugh kissed in silence the wasted hand held out to him in adieu, and departed. And the world itself was a sad wandering star.
Falconer had called for him. They drove to Miss Talbot’s, where Hugh got his ‘bag of needments,’ and bade his landlady good-bye for a time. Falconer then accompanied him to the railway.
Having left him for a moment, Falconer rejoined him, saying: “I have your ticket;” and put him into a first-class carriage.
Hugh remonstrated. Falconer replied:
“I find this hulk of mine worth taking care of. You will be twice the good to your mother, if you reach her tolerably fresh.”
He stood by the carriage door talking to him, till the train started; walked alongside till it was fairly in motion; then, bidding him good-bye, left in his hand a little packet, which Hugh, opening it by the light of the lamp, found to consist of a few sovereigns and a few shillings folded up in a twenty-pound-note.
I ought to tell one other little fact, however. Just before the engine whistled, Falconer said to Hugh:
“Give me that fourpenny piece, you brave old fellow!”
“There it is,” said Hugh. “What do you want it for?”
“I am going to make a wedding-present of it to your wife, whoever she may happen to be. I hope she will be worthy of it.”
Hugh instantly thought within himself:
“What a wife Margaret would make to Falconer!”
The thought was followed by a pang, keen and clear.
Those who are in the habit of regarding the real and the ideal as essentially and therefore irreconcileably opposed, will remark that I cannot have drawn the representation of Falconer faithfully. Perhaps the difficulty they will experience in recognizing its truthfulness, may spring from the fact that they themselves are un-ideal enough to belong to the not small class of strong-minded friends whose chief care, in performing the part of the rock in the weary land, is—not to shelter you imprudently. They are afraid of weakening your constitution by it, especially if it is not strong to begin with; so if they do just take off the edge of the tempest with the sharp corners of their sheltering rock for a moment, the next, they will thrust you out into the rain, to get hardy and self-denying, by being wet to the skin and well blown about.
The rich easily learn the wisdom of Solomon, but are unapt scholars of him who is greater than Solomon. It is, on the other hand, so easy for the poor to help each other, that they have little merit in it: it is no virtue—only a beauty. But there are a few rich, who, rivalling the poor in their own peculiar excellences, enter into the kingdom of heaven in spite of their riches; and then find that by means of their riches they are made rulers over many cities. She to whose memory this book is dedicated, is—I will not say was—one of the noblest of such.
There are two ways of accounting for the difficulty which a reader may find in believing in such a character: either that, not being poor, he has never needed such a friend; or that, being rich, he has never been such a friend.
Or if it be that, being poor, he has never found such a friend; his difficulty is easy to remove:—I have.
Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom Which brings a taper to the outward room, Whence thou spy’st first a little glimmering light; And after brings it nearer to thy sight: For such approaches doth heaven make in death.
Hugh found his mother even worse than he had expected; but she rallied a little after his arrival.
In the evening, he wandered out in the bright moonlit snow.
How strange it was to see all the old forms with his heart so full of new things! The same hills rose about him, with all the lines of their shapes unchanged in seeming. Yet they were changing as surely as himself; nay, he continued more the same than they; for in him the old forms were folded up in the new. In the eyes of Him who creates time, there is no rest, but a living sacred change, a journeying towards rest. He alone rests; and he alone, in virtue of his rest, creates change.
He thought with sadness, how all the haunts of his childhood would pass to others, who would feel no love or reverence for them; that the house would be the same, but sounding with new steps, and ringing with new laughter. A little further thought, however, soon satisfied him that places die as well as their dwellers; that, by slow degrees, their forms are wiped out; that the new tastes obliterate the old fashions; and that ere long the very shape of the house and farm would be lapped, as it were, about the tomb of him who had been the soul of the shape, and would vanish from the face of the earth.
All the old things at home looked sad. The look came from this, that, though he could sympathize with them and their story, they could not sympathize with him, and he suffused them with his own sadness. He could find no refuge in the past; he must go on into the future.
His mother lingered for some time without any evident change. He sat by her bedside the most of the day. All she wanted was to have him within reach of her feeble voice, that she might, when she pleased, draw him within touch of her feeble hand. Once she said:
“My boy, I am going to your father.”
“Yes, mother, I think you are,” Hugh replied. “How glad he will be to see you!”
“But I shall leave you alone.”
“Mother, I love God.”
The mother looked at him, as only a mother can look, smiled sweetly, closed her eyes as with the weight of her contentment, fell asleep holding his hand, and slept for hours.
Meanwhile, in London, Margaret was watching Euphra. She was dying, and Margaret was the angel of life watching over her.
“I shall get rid of my lameness there, Margaret, shall I not?” said Euphra, one day, half playfully.
“Yes, dear.”
“It will be delightful to walk again without pain.”
“Perhaps you will not get rid of it all at once, though.”
“Why do you think so?” asked Euphra, with some appearance of uneasiness.
“Because, if it is taken from you before you are quite willing to have it as long as God pleases, by and by you will not be able to rest, till you have asked for it back again, that you may bear it for his sake.”
“I am willing, Margaret, I am willing. Only one can’t like it, you know.”
“I know that,” answered Margaret.
She spoke no more, and Margaret heard her weeping gently. Half an hour had passed away, when she looked up, and said:
“Margaret, dear, I begin to like my lameness, I think.”
“Why, dear?”
“Why, just because God made it, and bade me bear it. May I not think it is a mark on me from his hand?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Why do you think it came on me?”
“To walk back to Him with, dear.”
“Yes, yes; I see it all.”
Until now, Margaret had not known to what a degree the lameness of Euphra had troubled her. That her pretty ancle should be deformed, and her light foot able only to limp, had been a source of real distress to her, even in the midst of far deeper.
The days passed on, and every day she grew weaker. She did not suffer much, but nothing seemed to do her good. Mrs. Elton was kindness itself. Harry was in dreadful distress. He haunted her room, creeping in whenever he had a chance, and sitting in corners out of the way. Euphra liked to have him near her. She seldom spoke to him, or to any one but Margaret, for Margaret alone could hear with ease what she said. But now and then she would motion him to her bedside, and say—it was always the same—
“Harry, dear, be good.”
“I will; indeed I will, dear Euphra,” was still Harry’s reply.
Once, expressing to Margaret her regret that she should be such a trouble to her, she said:
“You have to do so much for me, that I am ashamed.”
“Do let me wash the feet of one of his disciples;” Margaret replied, gently expostulating; after which, Euphra never grumbled at her own demands upon her.
Again, one day, she said:
“I am not right at all to-day, Margaret. God can’t love me, I am so hateful.”
“Don’t measure God’s mind by your own, Euphra. It would be a poor love that depended not on itself, but on the feelings of the person loved. A crying baby turns away from its mother’s breast, but she does not put it away till it stops crying. She holds it closer. For my part, in the worst mood I am ever in, when I don’t feel I love God at all, I just look up to his love. I say to him: ‘Look at me. See what state I am in. Help me!’ Ah! you would wonder how that makes peace. And the love comes of itself; sometimes so strong, it nearly breaks my heart.”
“But there is a text I don’t like.”
“Take another, then.”
“But it will keep coming.”
“Give it back to God, and never mind it.”
“But would that be right?”
“One day, when I was a little girl, so high, I couldn’t eat my porridge, and sat looking at it. ‘Eat your porridge,’ said my mother. ‘I don’t want it,’ I answered. ‘There’s nothing else for you,’ said my mother—for she had not learned so much from my father then, as she did before he died. ‘Hoots!’ said my father—I cannot, dear Euphra, make his words into English.”
“No, no, don’t,” said Euphra; “I shall understand them perfectly.”
“‘Hoots! Janet, my woman!’ said my father. ‘Gie the bairn a dish o’ tay. Wadna ye like some tay, Maggy, my doo?’ ‘Ay wad I,’ said I. ‘The parritch is guid eneuch,’ said my mother. ‘Nae doot aboot the parritch, woman; it’s the bairn’s stamack, it’s no the parritch.’ My mother said no more, but made me a cup of such nice tea; for whenever she gave in, she gave in quite. I drank it; and, half from anxiety to please my mother, half from reviving hunger, attacked the porridge next, and ate it up. ‘Leuk at that!’ said my father. ‘Janet, my woman, gie a body the guid that they can tak’, an’ they’ll sune tak’ the guid that they canna. Ye’re better noo, Maggy, my doo?’ I never told him that I had taken the porridge too soon after all, and had to creep into the wood, and be sick. But it is all the same for the story.”
Euphra laughed a feeble but delighted laugh, and applied the story for herself.
So the winter days passed on.
“I wish I could live till the spring,” said Euphra. “I should like to see a snowdrop and a primrose again.”
“Perhaps you will, dear; but you are going into a better spring. I could almost envy you, Euphra.”
“But shall we have spring there?”
“I think so.”
“And spring-flowers?”
“I think we shall—better than here.”
“But they will not mean so much.”
“Then they won’t be so good. But I should think they would mean ever so much more, and be ever so much more spring-like. They will be the spring-flowers to all winters in one, I think.”
Folded in the love of this woman, anointed for her death by her wisdom, baptized for the new life by her sympathy and its tears, Euphra died in the arms of Margaret.
Margaret wept, fell on her knees, and gave God thanks. Mrs. Elton was so distressed, that, as soon as the funeral was over, she broke up her London household, sending some of the servants home to the country, and taking some to her favourite watering place, to which Harry also accompanied her.
She hoped that, now the affair of the ring was cleared up, she might, as soon as Hugh returned, succeed in persuading him to follow them to Devonshire, and resume his tutorship. This would satisfy her anxiety about Hugh and Harry both.
Hugh’s mother died too, and was buried. When he returned from the grave which now held both father and mother, he found a short note from Margaret, telling him that Euphra was gone. Sorrow is easier to bear when it comes upon sorrow; but he could not help feeling a keen additional pang, when he learned that she was dead whom he had loved once, and now loved better. Margaret’s note informed him likewise that Euphra had left a written request, that her diamond ring should be given to him to wear for her sake.
He prepared to leave the home whence all the homeness had now vanished, except what indeed lingered in the presence of an old nurse, who had remained faithful to his mother to the last. The body itself is of little value after the spirit, the love, is out of it: so the house and all the old things are little enough, after the loved ones are gone who kept it alive and made it home.
All that Hugh could do for this old nurse was to furnish a cottage for her out of his mother’s furniture, giving her everything she liked best. Then he gathered the little household treasures, the few books, the few portraits and ornaments, his father’s sword, and his mother’s wedding-ring; destroyed with sacred fire all written papers; sold the remainder of the furniture, which he would gladly have burnt too, and so proceeded to take his last departure from the home of his childhood.