I might have been—how soon I know not—but that I was mercifully snatched from the edge of the precipice.
The summer was over, the autumn days were darkening and growing chill, and the wan water of Fendie carried showers of faded leaves upon its bosom, and grew husky and dark with frequent floods. The transition from the fierce summer sunlight soothed me. These six terrible months had done on me the work of years. I was young—almost a lad still—but I had always been older than my years, and pain brings with it unenviable maturity. In my solitude I felt untimely age come upon me; I carried in my youth’s frame a man’s worn-out heart.
My housekeeper, Nancy Mense, suffered no one to come near me but herself; and her own services were rendered in silence, with something of that compassionating awe, which we hear is paid to the victims of mental malady in the East. I had never observed this until the day of which I am about to speak.
It was a dim, cloudy October day, overcast with showers, and I was subdued and softened; the drooping, disconsolate sky and damp air seemed to hush the fiery pains within me. Mrs Mense entered my apartment, and, without speaking, laid a letter upon the table. I noticed a painful solicitude in her face, as she looked at me before she left the room; I took up the letter—it was from Lucy Murray.
“We shall be far away before you receive this, Adam. I write, because hereafter you might think I did you wrong in sending you no farewell. Of our own affairs I can tell you little, even if now you cared to hear of them. I can guess that my father gives up almost all he has; all the land, everything but a bare pittance that will merely maintain us—and the house. He has not parted with Murrayshaugh itself. He vows he never will—but utterly reduced in means as we must be, we must leave it now—perhaps—perhaps sometime, if good days ever come, to return home again.
“I dare not tell you where we are going; indeed, I do not even know. You know my father’s harsh and haughty pride; he says no one shall see our poverty who has ever heard our name before. He might have lingered longer, I believe, had I not told him of your generous offer; he took it, as I fancied he would, with hard and bitter anger as a humiliation. Yet thank you again, Adam, for thus cheering me, when the world indeed was black enough around us.
“For yourself, what can I say, Adam Graeme? that you are not alone; but alas! that is small consolation. Who can tell the appointed place which this trial has in the lives of each of us, the appointed purpose for which it has been sent? Adam, let us not look upon those wrecks of the vain dreams we fancied true; all is not untrue, though these are; all is not dark because these lights have failed. The feverish flashing of these meteors is gone for ever; but there remains the sober, stedfast, healthful light of day, the sunshine of heaven over all.
“Adam, let us awake; let us think no longer of those who have done us wrong, but of Him who took so grievous wrong upon Himself for our deliverance. It is not meet that the lives for which he paid so wonderful a price should go down ignobly to the grave; do I need to say more to you? do I need to do more than bid you arise, Adam, for His sake, and do the devoir of a man, whether He send sunshine or gloom, a dark day or a bright.
“I have only one word to say more; be careful, Adam: look well to your words and deeds, lest the tempter take advantage of them to bring more sin among us. I cannot venture to speak more plainly, but as you would have others—others whom both of us have held very dear—preserved from a deadly snare and sin, look heedfully to yourself, and let this wild grief engross you no more.
“Write to Hew; and remember us all if we never meet again. Farewell, Adam, and farewell.