CHAPTER XVI.

“Now draws he to the west, and noble clouds Near to his royal person all the day Attend him to his chamber. In his eye, His broad, full, fearless eye, no faint or chill Is visible; grandly and solemnly, As who hath well done work which shall remain, He marches to his rest. Lift up thy gorgeous curtains, thou great sky! That he may enter in. Fall back, O clouds! Where now he goeth, he must go alone.”

“I did not think,” wrote Adam Graeme, as he took up the narrative he had concluded long ago, “that I should ever add more to this record; but strange things have happened with me, since in this quiet study of mine I recorded my resolutions here. My resolutions! I find no trace of them anywhere, except on this page which already begins to grow yellow, and fade into the guise of old age like its human neighbours. They are gone, like the winter ice into the bosom of our wan water, pleasantly melted under the sunshine, into the stream which gave them birth.

“For yonder, with the light mercifully shining on it, stands Charlie’s chair; and beside me on this table are the first lilies of May, with dew upon their snowy leaves. They remind me of my child; not of the dead only, who long ago trod down the early blossoms of my life into the dust, but of the living Lilias, who is mine, not to be lost to me by any change. She has gone away from my old house now, with her bridegroom, but she is still my child. They blend together in my mind, the mother and the daughter, and in memory and in presence they cling to me, where neither jealousy nor fear can interpose, always my own.

“And through the open turret window yonder, I hear the sound of a frank, bold voice; my heir, the manful and stout representative of the old Graemes. He is not like me, and it is well; his honest, joyous, youthful strength will raise up the decaying race. I cannot give my thoughts to Halbert--I cannot bequeath to him my old faculty of dreams--nor would I if I could. Some one, whom I know not, will inherit from me this contemplative life. I would not give it, if I had the power with all its sadnesses and glooms, to Halbert: he has the lands, the old honour, the good name. I am glad that I leave them to him pure, and that he is true and honest, and has not the spirit of his father. His father--who can tell? the greater mysteries of truth might open to him dying, who, living, heeded them not; but we do not speak of Charlie Graeme. Humbly in awe and silence we leave him in the great Hand which has taken him away; ourselves having pity on the dead.

“For Hew and Lucy are with me again, gray-haired people in their father’s house; and Lucy’s son and my Lilias are our common hope. The three of us have had diverse lots, parted in far distant places, exposed to strange fortunes; but we end as we began, with kindred aims and kindred fancies, and travel together towards the one conclusion of mortal life, which is the same to all.

“Hew’s troubles have been those of captivity and exile. To his warm heart, which always has answered so tenderly to voices of kindred and friendship, a very hard and bitter form of the inevitable discipline; but he has borne it bravely, and the frank, simple, guileless spirit has come unaltered through all. When we wander together by our Waterside, when I feel Hew’s arm diving through mine as it used to do thirty years ago, when I hear his unchanged voice addressing me, ‘Man, Adam!’ I close my eyes and thank God. We are young again; the intervening time floats on the air about us, a dream which we have dreamed together, and the enthusiast lads who leaned over yonder wall upon the dim hill-side, looking out dreamily over the royal city, are here, on the banks of the home river, as hopeful, as undoubting, and scarcely wiser than when they parted.

“Heavy wisdoms that come with years, dark experiences that close men’s hearts, let us be thankful that they have not fallen on us--that we are as we were; carrying young hearts with us, into the purer country.

“Lucy has had sorrows other than these. Long patience, the silent burden of slow years and quietness such as only women bear; tending the weakness of the stern old man who lived so long in his solitary pride, and after some year or two of tranquil gladness--no longer, I think--weeping the tears of a widow. We reverence her calmer peace, as we reverenced her youthful gravity long ago, when we were boys, and when the budding woman called us so, and was gentle to us in her young wisdom. It is true her hair is white as the leaves of my lilies, and that her cheek is colourless, and has something of the ashy hue of age; but Lucy, like Hew, is unchanged. Graver, wiser, more serious still than we are, smiling the old gentle composed smile at our boyish fancies, speaking the old words of quiet counsel, directing us in the old calm playful fashion. Isabell at Murrayshaugh, simple, kind heart, wept for the broken romance, the fair, lost Miss Lucy: but I, who knew her better than Isabell, cannot think thus, for she is still Lucy Murray, the same as she ever was.

“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.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

simplicity, philosphers=> simplicity, philosophers {pg 9}

many distinctions as as=> many distinctions as {pg 71}

mighty precints=> mighty precincts {pg 95}

Helen--Miss Buchanau=> Helen--Miss Buchanan {pg 103}

more graceml=> more graceful {pg 181}

as Saunders call them=> as Saunders calls them {pg 203}

after an inval=> after an interval {pg 253}

in was a new hysteric=> it was a new hysteric {pg 269}

an outer and in inner=> an outer and an inner {pg 284}

Lucy Murray bowed ber head=> Lucy Murray bowed her head {pg 301}

in some suprise=> in some surprise {pg 318}

Isabel at Murrayshaugh=> Isabell at Murrayshaugh {pg 322 x 2}