Traddles’s house is one of the very houses--or it easily may have been--which he and Sophy used to parcel out,in their evening walks. It is a large house;but Traddles keeps his papers in his dressing-room and his boots with his papers;and he and Sophy squeeze themselves into upper rooms,reserving the best bedrooms for the Beauty and the girls. There is no room to spare in the house;for more of ‘the girls’ are here, and always are here, by some accident or other,than I know how to count. Here, when we go in, is a crowd of them, running down to the door,and handing Traddles about to be kissed, until he is out of breath. Here,established in perpetuity, is the poor Beauty, a widow with a little girl; here,at dinner on Sophy’s birthday, are the three married girls with their three husbands,and one of the husband’s brothers, and another husband’s cousin, and another husband’s sister,who appears to me to be engaged to the cousin. Traddles, exactly the same simple,unaffected fellow as he ever was, sits at the foot of the large table like a Patriarch;and Sophy beams upon him, from the head,across a cheerful space that is certainly not glittering with Britannia metal.
And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face,shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects,is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.
I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.
My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence,without which I were nothing, bears me company.
O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I,when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!