Still more did these remorseful feelings awake, when, her task being almost done, she found one letter addressed thus:
“For my daughter, Olive. Not to be opened till her mother is dead, and she is alone in the world.”
Alone in the world! His fatherly tenderness had looked forward, then, even to that bitter time—far off, she prayed God!—when she would be alone—a woman no longer young, without parents, husband, or child, or smiling home. She doubted not that her father had written this letter to counsel and comfort her at such a season of desolation, years after he was in the dust.
His daughter blessed him for it; and her tender tears fell upon words which he had written, as she saw by the date outside, on that night—the last he ever spent at home. She never thought of breaking his injunction, or of opening the letter before the time; and after considering deeply, she decided that it was too sacred even for the ear of her mother, to whom it would only give pain. Therefore she placed it in the private drawer of her father's desk—now her own—to wait until time should bring about the revealing of this solemn secret between her and the dead.
Then she went to bed, wearied and worn; and creeping close to her slumbering mother, thanked God that there was one warm living bosom to which she could cling, and which would never cast her out.
O mother! O daughter! who, when time has blended into an almost sisterly bond the difference of years, grow together, united, as it were, in one heart and one soul by that perfect love which is beyond even “honour” and “obedience,” because including both—how happy are ye! How blessed she, who, looking on her daughter—woman grown—can say, “Child, thou art bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, as when I brought thee into the world!” And thrice blessed is she who can answer, “Mother, I am all thine own—I desire no love but thine—I bring to thee my every joy; and my every grief finds rest on thy bosom.”
Let those who have this happiness rejoice! Let those who only have its memory pray always that God would make that memory live until the eternal meeting, at the resurrection of the just!
CHAPTER XIX.
In one of the western environs of London is a region which, lying between two great omnibus outlets, is yet as retired and old-fashioned as though it had been miles and miles distant from the metropolis. Fields there are few or none, certainly; but there are quiet, green lanes (where in springtime you may pluck many a fragrant hawthorn branch), and market-gardens, and grand old trees; while on summer mornings you may continually hear a loud chorus of birds—especially larks—though these latter “blithe spirits” seem to live perpetually in the air, and one marvels how they ever contrive to make their nests in the potato-grounds below. Perhaps they do so in emulation of their human neighbours—authors, actors, artists, who in this place “most do congregate,” many of them, poor souls! singing their daily songs of life out in the world, as the larks in the air; none knowing what a mean, lowly, sometimes even desolate home, is the nest whence such music springs.