I sit for a moment breathless. My hands are cold and
damp. I rise with a great sigh, and look out on the sweet green landscape
and pastoral hills, and see the flowers and birds and the waving boughs of
glorious trees--all images of liberty and safety; and as the tremendous
nightmare of my youth melts into air, I lift my eyes in boundless gratitude
to the God of all comfort, whose mighty hand and outstretched arm delivered
me. When I lower my eyes and unclasp my hands, my cheeks are wet with
tears. A tiny voice is calling me 'Mamma!' and a beloved smiling face, with
his dear father's silken brown tresses, peeps in.
'Yes, darling, our walk. Come away!'
I am Lady Ilbury, happy in the affection of a beloved and noblehearted
husband. The shy useless girl you have known is now a mother--trying to be
a good one; and this, the last pledge, has lived.
I am not going to tell of sorrows--how brief has been my pride of early
maternity, or how beloved were those whom the Lord gave and the Lord has
taken away. But sometimes as, smiling on my little boy, the tears gather
in my eyes, and he wonders, I can see, why they come, I am thinking--and
trembling while I smile--to think, how strong is love, how frail is life;
and rejoicing while I tremble that, in the deathless love of those who
mourn, the Lord of Life, who never gave a pang in vain, conveys the sweet
and ennobling promise of a compensation by eternal reunion.
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