But that he should have gone
away for ever without knowing it all, was too much to bear. "But am I
sure that he does not know it all?" The thought made him start. "May he
not even now be near me, in this very chapel? If he be, am I sorrowing
as he would have me sorrow, as I should wish to have sorrowed when I
shall meet him again?"
He raised himself up and looked round, and after a minute rose and
walked humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat down on the very seat
which he had occupied on his first Sunday at Rugby. And then the old
memories rushed back again, but softened and subdued, and soothing him
as he let himself be carried away by them. And he looked up at the great
painted window above the altar, and remembered how, when a little boy,
he used to try not to look through it at the elm-trees and the rooks,
before the painted glass came; and the subscription for the painted
glass, and the letter he wrote home for money to give to it. And there,
down below, was the very name of the boy who sat on his right hand on
that first day, scratched rudely in the oak panelling.
And then came the thought of all his old schoolfellows; and form after
form of boys nobler, and braver, and purer than he rose up and seemed to
rebuke him. Could he not think of them, and what they had felt and were
feeling--they who had honoured and loved from the first the man whom he
had taken years to know and love? Could he not think of those yet dearer
to him who was gone, who bore his name and shared his blood, and were
now without a husband or a father? Then the grief which he began to
share with others became gentle and holy, and he rose up once more, and
walked up the steps to the altar, and while the tears flowed freely down
his cheeks, knelt down humbly and hopefully, to lay down there his share
of a burden which had proved itself too heavy for him to bear in his own
strength.
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