“It is some time since we married our children. He is a good youth this Hew of ours, worthy of his mother and of my Lily. My good Lily! I miss her, now that she has left me, perhaps more than if all her time of dwelling here had been happy. I remember the long sad days in which my poor child parted with all her hopes, almost with regret. It seems to me sometimes that there was a blessing in this grief.
“I had fainted unless I had believed to see the ‘goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.’ Great hope and glorious, which speaks of another country—grand as it is, it does not fill up all the requirements of this humanity. To live, we must have some hope for the mortal life, some expectation warm with the human blood. It is only men who divorce and separate the two—the wonderful grace of Heaven gives us both.
“They are to come to us when the autumn comes, and it is coming apace. I agree with them that it is right—that Hew while he is young is doing well to work what work he can, and provide for days of home-dwelling; but I feel that the absence of Lilias makes a great void, and I may innocently wish that this needful work was done, and that we might keep them here beside us.
“The other youthful people have begun their course pleasantly; fair fall this sunny power of change: I felt that Mr Oswald’s resolution must come to an untimely end, like mine, and it is very well that he has yielded gracefully, before it was too late.
“The changed and the unchanged, how they blend and mingle. We are here again, we three, in these old houses, by this wan water; scarcely a tree has fallen, scarcely an acre of those far-spreading banks has been altered, since we were here in our youth, and in our youth our most cherished fancy was to return and meet thus again. Thus, nay, not thus; other dreams were in each heart of us. We thought of others joining us here, in the time of which we smiled to speak, when we should be old. We thought of prosperous lives, of names grown famous, of households and of heirs; but one by one, the old hopes have gone down to the grave of such, and only the oldest of all survives. We are here, we are together, but not as we dreamed.
“Solitary, aged people, alone but not sad; for now we speak of One, of whom then we spoke not ever, of Him who has been with us through all this length of way, the One known when all were strangers, the One present when all forsook us. We speak of Him in His tenderness so near to us, a man touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and we speak of Him in awe and love, as God over all, blessed for ever. A little time and we shall enter His presence, hopeful to be like Him, seeing Him as He is; and while we remain in this fair earthly country, we speak of the heavenly which is to come. Another country—perhaps indeed this familiar world with its change and fiery ordeal past; and again I say I love to think it will be so. I love to anticipate the time when I may watch and wait yonder for that sublime morning which shall restore to me my human frame, my human dwelling-place; and when I look upon this water, my faithful, long companion, I think I see it flowing on under the sunshine of a grand and holy prime, for which these ages of tumult and anguish and misery have but ripened and prepared this world.
“And while we remain here, human gladnesses abound about us, and hold us fast in their silken chains. We are much together; we live abroad under the free heaven, my brother Hew and I, and in the evening we call out Lucy to see the sun go down.
“Bravely going down in light and hope to the other world which waits for him; and thus we travel in peace and happily, on towards the west which comes nearer every day—on to the setting sun!”
THE END.
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.