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.