Tom Brown at Rugby Part 55

He pa.s.sed through the vestibule[19] and then paused for a moment to glance over the empty benches. His heart was still proud and high, and he walked up to the seat which he had last occupied as a sixth-form boy, and sat himself down there to collect his thoughts.

[19] #Vestibule#: entrance hall or anteroom.

And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order not a little. The memories of eight years were all dancing through his brain, and carrying him about whither they would; while beneath them all, his heart was throbbing with a dull sense of a loss that could never be made up to him. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly through the painted windows above his head, and fell in gorgeous colors on the opposite wall, and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit little by little. And he turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then, leaning forward with his head on his hands, groaned aloud, "If he could only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes, have told him all that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved and reverenced him, and would, by G.o.d's help, follow his steps in life and death, he could have borne it all without a murmur.

But that he should have gone away forever 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 felt himself 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 gla.s.s came--and the subscription for the painted gla.s.s, 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, n.o.bler 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 honored 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 were 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.

Here let us leave him--where better could we leave him than at the altar, before which he had first caught a glimpse of the glory of his birth-right,[20] and felt the dawning of the bond which links all living souls together in one brotherhood--at the grave, beneath the altar, of him who had opened his eyes to see that glory, and softened his heart till it could feel that bond?

[20] #Birth-right#: here, the highest manhood. (See Ephesians iv. 13.)

And let us not be hard on him, if at that moment his soul is fuller of the tomb and him who lies there than of the altar and Him of whom it speaks. Such stages have to be gone through, I believe, by all young and brave souls who must win their way, through hero wors.h.i.+p, to the wors.h.i.+p of Him who is the King and Lord of heroes. For it is only through our mysterious human relations.h.i.+ps, through the love, and tenderness, and purity of mothers, and sisters, and wives, through the strength, and courage, and wisdom of fathers, and brothers, and teachers, that we can come to the knowledge of Him, in whom alone the love, and the tenderness, and the purity, and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all these dwell for ever and ever in perfect fulness.