_ Chapter XXXIX. A Friend--The Gate of Life
Hugh was staying in the country with his mother. It was a bright morning in the late summer, and he had just walked out on to the little gravel-sweep before the house, which commanded a view of a pleasant wooded valley with a stream running through; it was one of those fresh days, with a light breeze rustling in the trees, when it seemed good to be alive; rain had fallen in the night, and had washed the dust of a long drought off the trees; some soft aerial pigment seemed mingled with the air, lending a rich lustre to everything; the small woods on the hillside opposite had a mellow colour, and the pastures between were of radiant and transparent freshness; the little gusts whirled over the woodland, turning the under sides of the leaves up, and brightening the whole with a dash of lighter green.
Just at this moment a telegram was put into Hugh's hand, announcing the sudden death of an elderly lady, who had been a good friend to him for over twenty years. Death seemed to be everywhere about him, and the bright scene suddenly assumed an almost heartless aspect of mirth; but he put the thought from him, and strove rather to feel that life and death rejoiced together.
Later in the day he heard more particulars. His friend was a wealthy woman who had lived a very quiet life for many years in a pleasant country-house. She had often spoken to Hugh of her fear of a long and tedious illness, wearing alike to both the sufferer and those in attendance, when the mind may become fretful, fearful, and impatient in the last scene, just when one most desires that the latest memories of one's life may be cheerful, brave, and serene. Her prayer had been very tenderly answered; she had been ailing of late; but she had been sitting talking in her drawing-room the day before, to a quiet family group, when she had been seized with a sudden faintness, and had died gently, in a few minutes, smiling palely, and probably not even knowing that she was in any sort of danger.
Hugh spent the day mostly in solitude, and retraced in tender thought the stages of their long friendship. His friend had been a woman of strong and marked individuality, who had loved life, and had made many loyal friends. She was intensely, almost morbidly, aware of the suffering of the world, especially of animals; and Hugh remembered how she had once told him that a shooting-party in the neighbouring squire's woods had generally meant for her a sleepless night, at the thought of wounded birds and beasts suffering and bleeding the long hours through, couched in the fern, faint with pain, and wondering patiently what hard thing had befallen them. She had been a woman of strong preferences and prejudices, marked likes and dislikes; intensely critical of others, even of those she loved best. Her talk was lively, epigrammatic, and pungent; she was the daughter of a famous Whig house, and had the strong aristocratical prejudices, coupled with a theoretical belief in popular equality, so often found in old Whig families. But this superiority betrayed itself not in any obvious arrogance or disdain, but in a high and distinguished personal courtesy, that penetrated, as if by a subtle aroma, all that she said or did. Though careless of personal appearance, with no grace of beauty, and wearing habitually the oldest clothes, she was yet indisputably the first person in any society in which she found herself. She was intensely reserved about herself, her family, her possessions, and her past; but Hugh had an inkling that there had been some deep disappointment in the background, which had turned a passionately affectionate nature into a fastidious and critical temperament. She had a wonderful contralto voice, and a real genius for music; she could rarely be persuaded to touch an instrument; but occasionally, with a small and familiar party, she would sing a few old songs with a passion and a depth of melancholy feeling that produced an almost physical thrill in her audience. She was of an indolent temperament, read little, never worked, had few philanthropic or social instincts; she was always ready to talk, but was equally content to spend long afternoons sitting alone before a fire, just shielding her eyes from the blaze, meditating with an intentness that seemed as though she were revolving over and over again some particular memory, some old and sad problem for which she could find no solution. Hugh used to think that she blamed herself for something irreparable.
But her gift of humour, of incisive penetration, of serious enthusiasm, made it always refreshing to be with her; and Hugh found himself reflecting that though it had been in many ways so inarticulate and inactive a life, it yet seemed, by virtue of a certain vivid quality, a certain subdued fire, a life of imperishable worth. She had been both generous and severe in her judgments; but there had never been anything tame, or mild, or weak about her. She had always known her own mind; she yielded freely to impulse without ever expressing regret or repentance. Small as her circle had been, Hugh yet felt that she had somehow affected the world; and yet he could indicate nothing that she had accomplished, except for the fact that she had been a kind of bracing influence in the lives of all who had come near her.
Her last message to him had been an intensely sympathetic letter of outspoken encouragement. She had heard that a severe judgment had been passed upon Hugh's writings by a common friend. She knew that this had been repeated to Hugh, and judged rightly that it had hurt and wounded him. Her letter was to the effect that the judgment was entirely baseless, and that he was to pursue the line he had taken up without any attempt to deviate from it. It went to Hugh's heart that he had made little effort of late, owing to circumstances and pressure of work, to see her; but he knew that she was aware of his affection, and he had never doubted hers. He felt, too, that if there had been anything to forgive, any shadow of dissatisfaction, it was forgiven in that moment. Her death seemed somehow to Hugh to be the strongest proof he had ever received of the permanent identity of the soul; it was impossible to think of her as not there; equally impossible was it to think of her as wrapt in sleep, or even transformed to a heavenly meekness; he could think of her, with perhaps an added brightness of demeanour, at the knowledge of how easy a thing after all had been the passage she had feared, with the dark eyes that he knew so well, like wells of fire in the pale face, smiling almost disdainfully at the thought that others should grieve for her; she was one whom it was impossible ever to compassionate, and Hugh could not compassionate her now. She would have had no sort of tolerance for any melancholy or brooding grief; she would desire to be tenderly remembered, but she would have been utterly impatient of the thought that any grief for her should weaken or darken the outlook of her friends upon the world. Hugh resolved, with a great flood of strong love for his friend, that he would grieve for her as she would have had him grieve, as though they were but separated for a little.
She had left, he learnt, the most decisive direction that no one should be summoned to her funeral: that was so like her brave, sensible nature; she desired the grief for her to be wholesome and temperate grief, with no lingering over the sad accidents of mortality. Hugh felt the strong bond of friendship, that had existed between them, grow and blossom into a vigorous and enduring love. She seemed close beside him all that day, approving his efforts after a joyful tranquillity. He could almost see her, if he sank for a moment into a tearful sorrow, casting upward that impatient look he knew so well, if any instance of human weakness were related in her presence.
And thus the death of his old friend seemed, as the day drew on, to have brought a strange brightness into his life, by making the dark less terrible, the unknown more familiar. She was there, with the same brave courtesy, the same wholesome scorn, the same humorous decisiveness; and though the thought of the gap came like an ache into his mind, again and again, he resolved that he would not yield to ineffectual sadness; but that he would be worthy of the friendship which she had given him, not easily, he remembered, but after long testing and weighing his character; and that he would be faithful--he prayed that he might be that--to so pure and generous a gift. _