CHAPTER XXIX.

BEREAVED.

"AFTER her husband's death," writes the niece Mary, "I was with her for a month at Brighton. Her calmness and power of living out of herself were amazing. She was then so filled with the sense of the nearness of the time when she had him that she did not seem to suffer as she

did later on. She used to say sometimes she was stunned. And then she had learned strong self-control from the long habit of keeping cheerful and bright before him when her heart was breaking. Later on the agony was keener. I can remember the look in her beautiful eyes as of some one in torture. How she suffered, with the whole capacity of her nature! Everything seemed an additional pain. Ah, and how she struggled not to sadden others! how to devise little pleasures and expeditions for me or any friend staying with her. How infinitely sweet and brave she was! We went together to Coniston, to a pretty cottage called How Head, quite near to the Tent Cottage where she had been so happy. The evening we got there, she found a letter saying that her dear friend Mrs. Jones was very ill in Edinburgh, had been ill for some little time, but did not wish Aunt Lucy to be told. The next morning after getting the news, tired as she was, and overpowered with the thought of being back at Coniston, she started for Edinburgh, alone; and was in time to see her friend and be with her at the last. Mrs. Jones said, 'You have never failed me.' My husband remembers so well seeing her at that time.

She was stay

ing for two or three days at her beloved friend Mrs. Stir

ling's, and he went to see her. She was in bed, but asked for him to go and see her. It was the first time they had met since her loss, and she could not speak, but when he came near she just opened her arms and folded them round him. She came back in a few days to Coniston, after seeing that all was arranged as Mrs. Jones would have wished, and writing to her friends and her many devoted priests. I was with her some weeks, and then, first of all, Vi, and then her beloved Hessie H, came to stay with her. I went to Ireland to see my father, and came back to her in the autumn, and soon she and I went to Edinburgh for some weeks. She had many friends there, loving and tender, but I remember her saying one day she was like a person with a dreadful wound, which the tenderest, lightest touch made still worse; only A seemed always like a soothing dressing of pure cold water."

To Lady Eastlake.

CONISTON, June 6, 1872. Dear, kind Lady Eastlake, in your full life to make time for thoughts of me! I thank our loved one [Mrs. Jones, who had been their common friend] for your letters as well as you. I had seen your little book on her table in London, and she confided to me that it was written by you. I took it up and dropped it with a sharp pang. I could not have read it. I could not then dare to realize this suffering. Now I have read it again and again, and thanked it for many tears. You know that I cannot go along with all but oh! I don't want to argue, only to be quite truthful. It is a wonderful analysis of this complicated sorrow a sorrow for each and all of us special — having incommunicable phases, tendernesses, yearnings, heart-piercings for which indeed there are no words. I can hardly understand what is commonly called rebellion against the decree that took

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away, or question why. My loved one warned me against letting angry or impatient feelings creep in." I can believe, too, that the time for him was the best time, as certainly the manner was most merciful. I see abundant cause for thankfulness in the past. And, as you say, "We are to suffer," and in what is natural, inevitable, there cannot be sin. When I said sorrow was not good for us I was thinking of the many spontaneous pleasantnesses and kindnesses it kills in us, as surely as the frost does the tender plants of sunny climes. The evil may bring forth fruit by and by- but much that others loved in us, as it seems to me, must vanish forever. That does not matter I used to care a good deal about being loved · a tenacious need, but this scotches it. The great danger seems to me the caring for nothing.

To Mr. and Mrs. Loomis.

CONISTON, AMBLESIDE, July 3, 1872. Dear, kind friends, how much I thank you for your letter, and how touched I am by the feeling that led you to make the effort! I grieve to think that dictation is attended by pain, and that writing is still impossible. Oh, I grieve over dear Mrs. Loomis's anxiety even more than for the privation to yourself! If you knew how often I have read your letter, and what soothing tears have fallen over it, you would be glad you sent it. I am so deeply thankful for tears, and some kind words go straight to the heart and a little lighten it. It is the unshed tears that torture. But you know what life with him was, what life without him must be. I am only going to write a few lines, because with this you will receive a printed letter. There were many that I wanted to tell something to, of his exquisite patience and serenity-something, very little and I could not go over the agonizing weeks and months again and again. There may be almost nothing in the letter that you do not know, but I wrote it once for

all, and dear Mr. Constable put it in print for me, and I like to believe that besides your own dear selves there may be some, who loved his writings, who will feel interested in knowing something of the man. It is a poor, meagre, and perhaps very trivial record—meant only for kind eyes.

I have long wanted to write, but I waited to send this. A few days ago a delightful article by Dr. Porter reached me. It is so true, so discriminating! You will judge best whether he will care to read my other letter.

Sometimes my heart feels dead and dull, and I have nothing to say, and hardly feel. Then the agony wakes. Indeed I try to bear it as he would have me do. I know how much I have to be thankful for. And it may bebut oh, my hope is dim and feeble! The difficulties so crushing! I can only cry for more faith in God's truth, and for power to think of others. I won't talk of my wretched self.

I shall indeed long to hear that you are better. I would that a voyage to England were prescribed. I did get the letter, and the picture of the little early gathered flower. May you be long spared to each other! It seems to me that there can come no crushing sorrow to two. Will you let me know how you are? Will you tell Dr. Porter that his article was very precious to me? I would he and William had met. I would he had heard the welcome that dear one's peculiarly touching and varied voice would have given him. I dare not recall his voice.

Dear friends, don't think me selfish. I am truly interested in all that concerns you.

In the July "Contemporary," William's last article appears. He wrote it last autumn when he seemed to be recovering. He was superhuman in his sweetness all through his illness and on his dying day. Never more serene. I forget now all I have said or not said in that printed letter. His tenderest words are not there.

Oh,