But never a
word did he say to her of this change, and without a word she knew it,
and when she spoke to us on the subject nearest to her heart and he
listened in respectful silence, she knew the thought and feeling - that
was in him-that he loved her above everybody but was free of her
creed.
He had been able to cast it off with a light heart because of his
perfect health, since in that condition death is not in the mind - the
mind refuses to admit the thought of it, so remote is it in that state
that we regard ourselves as practically immortal. And, untroubled by
that thought, the mind is clear and vigorous and unfettered. What, I
have asked myself, even when striving after faith, would faith in
another world have mattered to me if I had not been suddenly sentenced
to an early death, when the whole desire of my soul was life, nothing
but life - to live for ever!
Then my mother died. Her perfect health failed her suddenly, and her
decline was not long. But she suffered much, and on the last occasion
of my being with her at her bedside she told me that she was very
tired and had no fear of death, and would be glad to go but for the
thought of leaving me in such a precarious state of health and with a
mind distressed. Even then she put no questions to me, but only
expressed the hope that her prayers for me would be answered and that
at the last we should be together again.
I cannot say, as I might say in the case of any other relation or
friend, that I had lost her. A mother's love for the child of her body
differs essentially from all other affections, and burns with so clear
and steady a flame that it appears like the one unchangeable thing in
this earthly mutable life, so that when she is no longer present it is
still a light to our steps and a consolation.
It came to me as a great surprise a few years ago to have my secret
and most cherished feelings about my own mother expressed to me as I
had never heard them expressed before by a friend who, albeit still
young, has made himself a name in the world, one who had never known a
mother, she having died during his infancy. He lamented that it had
been so, not only on account of the motherless childhood and boyhood
he had known, but chiefly because in after life it was borne in on him
that he had been deprived of something infinitely precious which
others have - the enduring and sustaining memory of a love which is
unlike any other love known to mortals, and is almost a sense and
prescience of immortality.
