I was shortly to prove both.
The Murrays were gone, no one knew whither; a single servant remained in the house, but she could give me no information as to the retreat of her master. I felt that I did wrong to ask her, and when I wrote to Hew, I did not repeat the question.
In the beginning of the year, Hew answered my letter. I remember noticing with sudden fear that the address was not written in his hand; but the long letter within reässured me, and I did not observe, in my eagerness to read it, another brief note which dropped from the enclosure upon the table.
There was a tone of subdued and unexpressed sympathy in the letter which touched me deeply. No one in this world, not even Lucy, could enter into my feelings as Hew could, and what he said was the inferred sorrow of closest friendship; the sympathy which does not speak of your grief, but which enters into your heart, and stands at your own stand-point, and thinks as you think—as you think, but more gently—as you will think when your grief is further away, and in the hushed and quiet land of memory it has become dim and calm.
“Cheerly, Adam,” wrote Hew Murray, “we are becoming men; and if there are harder processes involved in that than in the old disciplines we used to share together, we must nevertheless bear the heavier means for the sake of the greater end. Manlike and masterful as our fathers were, when the old steel breast-plates at Murrayshaugh and Mossgray covered brave hearts beating high to the natural warfare which they carried over the Border. They too must have had foes, less tangible than the rough barons and yeomen of Cumberland, those fighting men of other generations; and I begin to think, Adam, that the natural element of us all is war—active contention, strife of one kind or another—and that we depart from our most healthful state when we lay down our weapons, and endeavour to halt in the inevitable contest. No longer for imprisoned princesses—though there is right good meaning and simple wisdom in these stories of our youth—nor yet any longer for los and fame, but because there is true life and health in the warfare, and because—
“Adam, we have had much and intimate intercourse, but scarcely ever have we spoken together of Him who is the centre of this world’s history, the wonderful Presence that pervades all the changes of its many ages past and to come. But, Adam, because He bids, because He leads, because He himself for the strife and for the victory’s sake was clothed as one of us. It is a wonderful history, that, of this long struggle ascending up to the very source of time, of the good and the evil, the righteousness of heaven, and the sin of earth; and now to mark the individual ways by which we solitary units, thus far down in the stream of the world’s existence, are wakened by so many different obstacles, each in his own separate course, to carry on the warfare. To turn from our idolatry of the false beautiful here, to lawful worship of the true sublime yonder; to take up arms for the Lord’s sake and do valiant service against His enemy and ours, that ancient Titan, Sin. The true work of a man, the great war worthy this humanity, which He shares who saved it.
“I think it is a gracious and blessed thing, Adam, that this natural propensity to strife within us should have so noble an outgate. Do you ever think how we used to dream long ago of delivering Scotland? and there are foes greater than the old Edward scheming against her purity and freedom now. Ah, Adam! you are happy, you are at home, and can do your devoir for our own land and people, while I, a stranger and a sojourner here, can only strive to maintain the ancient honour of our name, and commend our faith to minds which know not how to receive the one religion—the one Lord. I think I am not the kind of stuff which the mission-man should be made of, for continually I yearn for home.
“You do not tell me if you saw Lucy before she left Murrayshaugh; and I want to ask you a delicate question, Adam, which I should not put to any one whom I trusted less entirely—Charlie Graeme—what of him? Lucy does not speak of him as she once did; her last letter indeed intimates vaguely, that from the change in her own feelings towards him she has seen it necessary to break the engagement between them. Do you know anything of this? Whether Lucy is sinned against or sinning, I cannot tell—from her letter I should fancy the latter; though certainly she is the last person in the world whom I could think of as likely to change.”
Poor Lucy!—in her solitary bravery, her woman’s pride, she was stouter of heart than I.
My spirit rose to the encouraging words of Hew. I too had been thinking more of late of the true end and aim of life; that momentous matter which always stands out in the twilight of grief, sometimes indeed arrayed in fantastic lights and shadows, but sometimes distinct and clear as it has been revealed. I had begun to discover how much my wayward soul was out of tune with the infinite mind disclosed to us in revelation, and the harmonious universe around. The warfare was begun within me. Hew Murray’s letter was such as I needed; it stirred me to better things, it made me ashamed of my indolent brooding, my cumbering of the ground.