Stranica 174 [174]
OCR
126 with tears of happy expectation coursing down his face. Alas! the white house was empty, and there was a bill in the window—* To Let.” *“ Knock at the next door,” cried Mr. Losberne, taking Oliver’s arm in his. cc What has become of Mr. Brownlow, who used to live in the adjoining house, do you know?" The servant did not know; but would go and enquire. She presently returned, and said that Mr. Brownlow had sold off his goods, and gone to the West Indies six weeks before. Oliver clasped his hands, and sank feebly backwards. *“ Has his housekeeper gone too?" inpause. cc Yes, sir,” replied the servant. “ The old gentleman, the housekeeper, and a gentleman, a friend of Mr. Brownlow’s, all went together.” c Then turn towards home again,” said Losberne to the driver, “and don’t stop to bait the horse till you get out of this confounded London !” c The book-stall keeper, sir?” said Oliver. “I know the way there. See him, pray sir! Do see him!” c My poor boy, this is disappointment enough for one day,” said the doctor. * Quite enough for both of us. If we go to the book-stall keeper’s we shall certainly find that he is dead, or has set his house on fire, or run away. No; home again straight! And, in ohedience to the doctor’s first impulse, home they went. This bitter disappointment caused Oliver much sorrow and grief even in the midst of his happiness; for he had pleased himself many times during his illness with thinking of all that Mr. Brownlow and Mrs. Bedwin would say to him, and what delight it would be to tell them how many long days and nights he had passed in reflecting upon what they eruel separation. The hope of eventually clearing himself with them, too, and exlaining how he had. been forced away, had buoyed him up and sustained him under many of his recent trials; and now the idea that they should have gone so far, and carried with them the belief that he was an im r and robber,—a belief which might remain uncontradicted to his dying day,—was almost more than he could bear. The circumstance occasioned no alteration, however, in the behaviour of his benefactors. After another fortnight, when the fine warm weather had fairly | putting forth its young leaves and rich blossoms, they made preparations for quitting the house at Chertsey for some months. Sending the plate which had so excited the Jew’s cupidity to the banker’s, and leaving Giles and another servant in care of the house, they departed for a cottage some distance in the country, and took Oliver with them. Who can describe the pleasure and delight, the peace of mind and soft tranquillity, which the sickly boy felt in the rich woods of an inland village! Who can tell how scenes of peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness deep into their jaded hearts? Men who have lived in crowded pent-up streets, through whole lives of toil, and never wished for change; men to whom custom has indeed been second nature,and who have come almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their dail least for one short glimpse of Nature’s face, and carried far from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being, and crawling forth from day to day to some green sunny spot, have had such memories wakened up within them by the mere sight of sky, and hill, and plain, and glistening water, that a foretaste of Heaven itself has soothed their quick de. cline, and they have sunk into their tombs as peacefully as the sun, whose setting they watched from their lonely chamber window but a few hours before, faded from their dim and feeble sight! The memories which peaceful country scenes call up, are not of this world, or of its thoughts or hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we loved, may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old enmity and hatred; but, beneath all this there lingers in the least reflective mind a vague and half-formed consciousness of having held such feelings long before in some remote and distant time, which calls upsolemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and worldliness beneath it. It was a lovely spot to which they repaired, and Oliver, whose days had been spent among squalid crowds, and in the midst of noise and brawling, seemed to enter upon a new existence there. The
