I am drawing near the end of my course. I earnestly desire to have my mind preserved from the resentment and pain of being again brought into immediate contact with those who have so deeply injured me, or with their representatives. For this reason I have never seen Halbert Graeme, and am firmly resolved not to see him. The lad shall have full justice; I will refuse him no needful help in any profession he may choose; but though he is the last representative of our ancient name, he shall not be the heir of Mossgray. I have given Monikie all freedom in providing for him, in a way becoming his father’s son—but he is not mine. I do this with no feeling of revenge towards the dead, but I cannot adopt or cherish the son of Charlie Graeme.
And Lilias—I have heard that she too has one child—a girl called by her own name—but these also I cannot dare ever to look upon. Edward Maxwell is dead; he has lived the life of a weakling, and his widow remains in England where he died. I have learned now, in my old age, to think of the Lilias of my imagination as of one who died in the early fragrance of youth, and almost to dream that her gentle, shadowy presence hovers near me, in the twilight of summer nights, when the stately flowers which bear her name shine like gleams of moonlight in the dim borders of my garden. I can bear the neighbourhood of these lilies now; their pensive beauty soothes me; but though the softening shadows of memory and years have enshrined this lily of my youth, in that radiance of tender melancholy with which we surround those who have gone down early to peaceful graves, I yet cannot and dare not enter the presence of that Lilias who has made me a solitary, joyless man. Let me be kept from them and from their children. I cannot endure the pain which their very names inflict upon me—I must always avoid and shun them. I wish them well—all health, and peace, and happiness be with them, and a brighter lot than mine; but let me be left with my dreams; the sole remaining companions, which are with me in my old age, and were with me in my youth.
Walter Johnstone is the only surviving member of our joyous boyish party. He is struggling still in the Maelstrom of care and business, maintaining his place well, as I hear, among his compeers, and training, as he can, a large family of sons and daughters. He still retains Greenshaw, but never visits it; for Walter’s wife and children are fashionables in their degree, and think it expedient, as my good friend Mrs Oswald tells me, to leave the gentle enchantment of distance and ignorance about the very minute property from which their father acquires the landed designation to which we attach a considerable share of importance in Scotland.
Greenshaw is let to strangers—I hear it is greatly altered; but I avoid it in my limited walks, the last association of deadly pain it has having obliterated in my mind all the former ones of youthful joy and sunshine. It is not in my way indeed, for the water and I travel together—I seldom leave the green line of its banks; I pursue its windings up and down with constant interest and pleasure. We never weary of each other; those ripples which I have heard all my life have an articulate tongue to me—they are connected with all the gladness I have dreamt, with all the grief I have undergone; and there are creeks and sunny promontories there which recall the shining thread of youthful visions till I can almost think I am weaving them again—
“My eyes are filled with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
As in those days I heard.”
This spell of local association has always been strong upon me. As I pass along the banks of my ancient and well-beloved companion, the wan water, the changes of my life rise up before me, each with its separate scene and dwelling-place—these dells and pensive glens—these broad glades, and grouped brotherhoods of old trees—they are peopled with the things that have been; they bear upon them, as upon so many several pages, the story of my life.
And so I dwell among them, and at my pleasure am again a solitary child, a dreaming youth, a stricken man—I feel myself of kin to myself in all these changes. Swiftly these years have carried me over the world’s broad highway, but with this white hair upon my head I am still the child to whose first dreams this water murmured its plaintive symphony. I know myself little wiser, and in nothing more thoughtful. It is the things around us that change—it is not we.
For I confess myself as credulous still of ideal generosity and truth, as I was when I had counted only twenty summers. I have not been able yet to tutor myself to suspicion—the vision splendid has not quite departed—I cannot put the lustre of that celestial light, which once apparelled all things, away out of my eyes, even when those eyes are old; and Nature in her grave nobleness is not less, but more dear now, when I remember that I shall soon bid her good even, to enter into the presence of her Lord and mine. New heavens and a new earth—I cannot sever my human heart from mine own land; and who shall say that those noble countries, casting off all impurity in the fiery trial that awaits them, shall not be our final heaven?
I love to think that it may be so; I love to think that the Lord, in His humanity, looks tenderly upon the mortal soil on which He sojourned in His wondrous life, and that here, perchance, in these very lands, made holy by His grace and power, our final rest shall be. It may be but a fancy; but it comes upon me with gentle might, like the whispered comfort of an angel. A new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness—a glorified humanity which, remaining human, is mortal no longer! with the judgment, and the condemnation, and the wars of the Lord over-past, and the earth and the heaven one fair broad country, and Himself over all, blessed for ever. These are the old man’s dreams; and they shed new glory over the pleasant places in which my lines have fallen—
“Oh, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves!
Forbode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might.
I only have relinquished one delight,
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks that down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped, lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet—
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality.”