Ethel Churchill/Chapter 114
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Over that pallid face were wrought
The characters of painful thought;
But on that lip, and in that eye,
Were patience, faith, and piety.
The hope that is not of this earth,
The peace that has in pain its birth;
As if, in the tumult of this life,
Its sorrow, vanity, and strife,
Had been but as the lightning's shock,
Shedding rich ore upon the rock:
Though in the trial scorched and riven,
The gold it wins, is gold from heaven.
The window of Walter Maynard's small and wretched chamber looked into a churchyard, the same on which he had gazed the night of his arrival in London. It was one of those dreary burial places, where nothing redeems the desolate aspect of mortality. The square, upright tombstones were crowded together as if there were not room for the very dead. It may be a weakness, though growing out of all that is most redeeming in our nature,—the desire that is in us to make the City of the Departed beautiful, as well as sacred. The green yew that flings down its shadow, the wild-flowers that spring up in the long grass, take away from the desolation, they are the type and sign of a world beyond themselves. Even as spring brings back the leaf to the bough, the blossom to the grass, so will a more glorious spring return to that which is now but a little human dust.
Suddenly, Walter Maynard turned from the window, out of which he had been gazing long and silently: "And there," exclaimed he, "I shall be laid in the course of a few days, it may be hours. I loathe those dull, damp stones. Do you care where you are buried?" said he, turning suddenly to Lavinia.
"Not the least! What difference can it make?" asked she.
"It is strange," continued he, "that the profession of both has its existence in opinion, and yet you care nothing for what is abstract and picturesque in it."
"You have cared only too much," replied she, gazing upon him sadly.
"Not so," returned he earnestly, a last gleam of enthusiasm kindling up his large clear eyes; "I have not cared enough. Deeply do I feel at this moment, when the scattered thoughts obey my bidding no longer, and the hand, once so swift to give them tangible shape, lies languid at my side, that I have not done half that I ought to have done. How many hours of wasted time, how many worse than wasted, now rise up in judgment against me! And, oh, my God! have I sufficiently felt the moral responsibility of gifts like my own? Have I not questioned, sometimes too rashly, of what it was never meant mortal mind should measure? Have I not sometimes flung the passing annoyance of a wounded feeling too bitterly on my pages? I repent me of it now!"
He paused, for the dews gathered on his forehead; but again the transient light kindled in his face, till it was even as that of an angel. Earthly passion, whether of anger or of sorrow, had faded from that pure white brow; the eyes looked back the heaven on which they gazed—they were full of it.
"Oh, my Creator!" exclaimed he, clasping his thin, wan hands, "I am not worthy of the gifts bestowed upon me! Let me not forget that, though this worn and fevered frame perish, the soul ascends hopeful, meekly hopeful, of its native heaven; and my mind remains behind to influence and to benefit its race: may what was in aught evil of its creations be forgotten; may aught that was good, endure to the end. There is a deep and sacred assurance at my heart, that what I have done will not be quite in vain. Even at this last moment, I feel it is sweet to bequeath my memory to the aspirations and sympathies of my kind."
He leaned back—pale, faint, but calm; and, at that moment, Lavinia, who had been occupied by anxious expectation of Miss Churchill's arrival, was called from the room.
"Can you," said she, on her return, "receive a visitor whom, only yesterday, you were wishing to see?"
An instinct of the heart seemed to tell Walter who the visitor was, and a faint colour came, for a moment, over his face.
"She has come!" exclaimed he; "let me look upon her, and die happy!"
He strove to rise, but the next moment Ethel's gentle hand forced him to be seated; as, in a broken voice, she said, "Oh, Walter! was it kind to let your old friends find you thus?"
He looked at her with a sweet, calm smile, as he answered, "They find me happy!"