XXIII
IN THE FURROWS OF LIFE
“Days—when gone—
Gone! they ne’er go; when past they haunt us still.”
—Edward Young.
“What used to be joy is joy no longer: but what is pain is easier because they have not to bear it.”—George Eliot.
“To live for the shorter or longer remainder of my days with the simple bravery, veracity, and piety of her that is gone, that would be a right learning from her death, and a right honouring of her memory.”—Carlyle.
“Dieu donne la robe selon le froid.”—Pascal.
Journal.
“DEC. 1882.—With what a numbed feeling of desolate sadness do I look back upon the last chapter. My home existence is so intensely changed by the blank which the dear old friend of my whole life has left. It was long before I could bear to go into her changed rooms, and I still wake nightly with the sad inward outcry, ‘Can it be—can it be? Is every one gone who shared our home life? Is there no one left who is associated with all our wealthy past?’ ‘Entbehren sollst du—sollst entbehren.’ And when my friends urge me to marry, I feel the utter desolateness of attempting to make new ties with any one who knows nothing and cares nothing of those with whom all my earlier life was bound up. I have happily still a great power of enjoyment when anything pleasant comes to me, but oh! how seldom it happens. Griefs and worries—griefs and worries come round with wheel-like recurrence. I often think of Aubrey de Vere’s lines:—
‘When I was young, I said to Sorrow,
“Come, and I will play with thee.”
He is near me now all day;
And at night returns to say,
“I will come again to-morrow,
I will come and stay with thee.”
“Archbishop Tait, long a kind friend, is dead. I hear that at his funeral, in the beautiful churchyard at Addington, a little robin perched on an adjoining tombstone and poured forth a flood of song, apparently unconscious of all present. ‘How our father would have liked to have seen it,’ said one of the daughters.”
“Jan. 12, 1883.—Tea with Dowager Lady Donoughmore,[386] who was very pleasant. She described walking in Ireland with a stingy old gentleman. A beggar came up to them, and he said, ‘I have not got a penny to give you.’ The beggar retorted, ‘You’ve got an awful ugly face: I hope you may die soon, but I pity the worms that will have to eat you.’