第134章 CHAPTER III(8)

Her health and spirits were sorely shaken; and much as he naturally longed to see his only remaining child, he felt it right to persuade her to take, with her friend, a few more weeks' change of scene,--though even that could not bring change of thought. Late in June the friends returned homewards,--parting rather suddenly (it would seem) from each other, when their paths diverged.

"July, 1849.

"I intended to have written a line to you to-day, if I had not received yours. We did indeed part suddenly; it made my heart ache that we were severed without the time to exchange a word;and yet perhaps it was better. I got here a little before eight o'clock. All was clean and bright waiting for me. Papa and the servants were well; and all received me with an affection which should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange ecstasy. I am certain they regarded me as the harbinger of others. The dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those who had been so long absent were not far behind.

"I left Papa soon, and went into the dining-room: I shut the door--I tried to be glad that I was come home. I have always been glad before--except once--even then I was cheered. But this time joy was not to be the sensation. I felt that the house was all silent--the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the three were laid--in what narrow dark dwellings--never more to reappear on earth. So the sense of desolation and bitterness took possession of me. The agony that WAS to be undergone, and WAS NOTto be avoided, came on. I underwent it, and passed a dreary evening and night, and a mournful morrow; to-day I am better.

"I do not know how life will pass, but I certainly do feel confidence in Him who has upheld me hitherto. Solitude may be cheered, and made endurable beyond what I can believe. The great trial is when evening closes and night approaches. At that hour, we used to assemble in the dining-room--we used to talk. Now Isit by myself--necessarily I am silent. I cannot help thinking of their last days, remembering their sufferings, and what they said and did, and how they looked in mortal affliction. Perhaps all this will become less poignant in time.

"Let me thank you once more, dear E----, for your kindness to me, which I do not mean to forget. How did you think all looking at your home? Papa thought me a little stronger; he said my eyes were not so sunken.""July 14th, 1849.

"I do not much like giving an account of myself. I like better to go out of myself, and talk of something more cheerful. My cold, wherever I got it, whether at Easton or elsewhere, is not vanished yet. It began in my head, then I had a sore throat, and then a sore chest, with a cough, but only a trifling cough, which I still have at times. The pain between my shoulders likewise amazed me much. Say nothing about it, for I confess I am too much disposed to be nervous. This nervousness is a horrid phantom. Idare communicate no ailment to Papa; his anxiety harasses me inexpressibly.

"My life is what I expected it to be. Sometimes when I wake in the morning, and know that Solitude, Remembrance, and Longing are to be almost my sole companions all day through--that at night Ishall go to bed with them, that they will long keep me sleepless--that next morning I shall wake to them again,--sometimes, Nell, I have a heavy heart of it. But crushed I am not, yet; nor robbed of elasticity, nor of hope, nor quite of endeavour. I have some strength to fight the battle of life. Iam aware, and can acknowledge, I have many comforts, many mercies. Still I can GET ON. But I do hope and pray, that never may you, or any one I love, be placed as I am. To sit in a lonely room--the clock ticking loud through a still house--and have open before the mind's eye the record of the last year, with its shocks, sufferings, losses--is a trial.

"I write to you freely, because I believe you will hear me with moderation--that you will not take alarm or think me in any way worse off than I am."