Walter Besant

Now am I come to the last event of this history, and I have to write down the confession of my own share in that event. For the others—for Alice and for Robin—the thing must be considered as the crown and completion of all the mercies. For me—what is it? But you shall hear. When the secrets of all hearts are laid open, then will Alice hear it also: what she will then say, or what think, I know not. It was done for her sake—for her happiness have I laid this guilt upon my soul. Nay, when the voice of conscience doth exhort me to repent, and to confess my sin, then there still ariseth within my soul, as it were, the strain of a joyful hymn, a song of gratitude that I was enabled to return her to freedom and the arms of the man she loved. If any learned Doctor of Divinity, or any versed in that science which the Romanists love (they call it casuistry), should happen to read this chapter of confession, I pray that they consider my case, even though it will then be useless as far as I myself am concerned, seeing that I shall be gone before a Judge who will, I hope (even though my earthly affections do not suffer me to separate my sin from the consequences which followed), be more merciful than I have deserved.

While, then, I stood watching this signal example of God's wrath, I was plucked gently by the sleeve, and, turning, saw one whose countenance I knew not. He was dressed as a lawyer, but his gown was ragged, and his bands yellow; he looked sunk in poverty; and his face was inflamed with those signs which proclaim aloud the habit of immoderate drinking.

'Sir,' he said, 'if I mistake not, you are Dr. Humphrey Challis?'

'The same, Sir; at your service,' I replied with some misgivings. And yet, being one of the Prince's following, there needed none.

'I have seen you, Sir, in the chambers of your cousin, Mr. Benjamin Boscorel, my brother learned in the law. We drank together, though (I remember) you still passed the bottle. It is now four or five years ago. I wonder not that you have forgotten me. We change quickly, we who are the jolly companions of the bottle; we drink our noses red, and we paint our cheeks purple; nay, we drink ourselves out of our last guinea, and out of our very apparel. What then, Sir? a short life and a merry. Sir, yonder is a sorry sight. The first Law Officer of the Crown thus to be haled along the streets by a howling mob. Ought such a thing to be suffered? 'Tis a sad and sorry sight, I say!'

'Sir,' I replied hotly, 'ought such villains as Judge Jeffreys to be suffered to live?'

He considered a little, as one who is astonished and desires to collect his thoughts. Perhaps he had already taken more than a morning draught.

'I remember now,' he said. 'My memory is not so good as it was. We drink that away as well. Yes, I remember—I crave your forgiveness, Doctor. You were yourself engaged with Monmouth. Your cousin told me as much. Naturally you love not this good Judge, who yet did nothing but what the King, his master, ordered him to do. I, Sir, have often had the honour of sitting over a bottle with his Lordship. When his infirmities allowed (though not yet old, he is grievously afflicted) he had no equal for a song or a jest, and would drink so long as any were left to keep him company. Ha! they have knocked him down—now they will kill him. No; he is again upon his feet; those who protect him close in. So—they have passed out of our sight. Doctor, shall we crack a flask together? I have no money, unhappily; but I will with pleasure drink at your expense.'

I remembered the man's face now, but not his name. 'Twas one of Ben's boon companions. Well; if hard drinking brings men so speedily to rags and poverty, even though it be a merry life (which I doubt), give me moderation.

'Pray, Sir,' I said coldly, 'to have me excused. I am no drinker.'

'Then, Doctor, you will perhaps lend me, until we meet again, a single guinea?'

I foolishly complied with this request.

'Doctor, I thank you,' he said. 'Will you now come and drink with me at my expense? Sir, I say plainly, you do not well to refuse a friendly glass. I could tell you many things, if you would but drink with me, concerning my Lord Jeffreys. There are things which would make you laugh. Come, Doctor; I love not to drink alone. Your cousin, now, was always ready to drink with any man, until he fell ill'—

'How? is my cousin ill?'

'Assuredly; he is sick unto death. Yesterday I went to visit him, thinking to drink a glass with him, and perhaps to borrow a guinea or two, but found him in bed and raving. If you will drink with me, Doctor, I can tell you many curious things about your cousin. And now I remember, you were sent to the Plantations; your cousin told me so. You have returned before your time. Well, the King hath run away; you are, doubtless, safe. Your cousin hath gotten his grandfather's estate. Lord Jeffreys, who loved him mightily, procured that grant for him. When your cousin wakes at night he swears that he sees his grandfather by his bedside looking at him reproachfully, so that he drinks the harder; 'tis a merry life. He hath also married a wife, and she ran away from him at the church door, and he now cannot hear of her or find her anywhere, so that he curses her and drinks the harder. Oh! 'tis always the jolliest dog. They say that he is not the lawyer that he was, and that his clients are leaving him. All mine have left me long since. Come and drink with me, Doctor.'

I broke away from the poor toper who had drunk up his wits as well as his money, and hurried to my cousin's chambers, into which I had not thought to enter save as one who brings reproaches—a useless burden.

Benjamin was lying in bed: an old crone sat by the fire, nodding. Beside her was a bottle, and she was, I found, half drunk. Her I quickly sent about her business. No one else had been attending him. Yet he was laid low, as I presently discovered, with that kind of fever which is bred in the villainous air of our prisons—the same fever which had carried off his grandfather.

Perhaps, if there were no foul and stinking wards, jails, and clinks, this kind of fever would be banished altogether, and be no more seen. So, if we could discover the origin and cause of all diseases, we might once more restore man to his primitive condition, which I take to have been one free from any kind of disease or infirmity, designed at first by his Creator so to live for ever, and, after the Fall, enabled (when medicine shall be so far advanced) to die of old age after such prolongation of life and strength as yet we cannot even understand.

'Cousin,' I said, 'I am sorry to find thee lying in this condition.'

'Ay,' he replied, in a voice weak and low, not like his old blustering tones. 'Curse me and upbraid me, if thou wilt. How art thou come hither? Is it the ghost of Humphrey? Art thou dead like my grandfather? Are we on the Plantations of Barbadoes?'

'Indeed, I am no ghost, Benjamin. As for curses, I have none; and as for reproaches, I leave them to thy conscience.'

'Humphrey, I am sore afflicted. I am now so low that I cannot even sit upright in my bed. But thou art a doctor—thou wilt bring me back to health. I am already better only for seeing thee here.'

I declare that as yet I had no thought, no thought at all, of what I was to do. I was but a physician in presence of a sick man, and therefore bound to help him if I could.

I asked him first certain questions, as physicians use, concerning his disorder and its symptoms. I learned that, after attending at the Court, he was attacked by fits of shivering and of great heat, being hot and cold alternately, and that in order to expel the fever he had sat drinking the whole evening—a most dangerous thing to do. Next, that in the morning he had been unable to rise from his bed, and, being thirsty, had drunk more wine—a thing enough of itself to kill a man in such a fever. Then he lost his head, and could tell me no more what had happened until he saw me standing by his bedside. In short, he had been in delirium, and was now in a lucid interval, out of which he would presently fall a-wandering again, and, perhaps, raving, and so another lucid interval, after which he would die, unless something could be done for him.

I liked not his appearance nor the account which he gave me, nor did I like his pulse, nor the strange look in his eyes—death doth often show his coming by such a prophetic terror of the eyes.

'Humphrey,' he said pitifully. 'It was no fault of mine that thou wast sent to the Plantations.'

'That I know full well, Cousin,' I answered him. 'Be easy on that score.'

'And as for Alice,' he went on. 'All is fair in love.'

I made no reply, because at this point a great temptation assailed my soul.

You have heard how I learned many secrets of the women while I was abroad. Now, while we were in Providence Island I found a woman of the breed they call half caste—that is, half Indian and half Portuguese—living in what she called wedlock with an English sailor, who did impart to me a great secret of her own people. I obtained from her not only the knowledge of a most potent drug (known already to the Jesuits), but also a goodly quantity of the drug itself. This, with certain other discoveries and observations of my own, I was about to communicate to the College in Warwick Lane.

As for this drug, I verily believe it is the most potent medicine ever yet discovered. It is now some years since it was first brought over to Europe by the Jesuits, and is therefore called Pulvis Jesuiticus, and sometimes Peruvian Bark. When administered at such a stage of the fever as had now been reached by my unhappy cousin, it seldom fails to vivify the spirits, and so to act upon the nerves as to restore the sinking, and to call back to life a man almost moribund.

Remembering this, I lugged the packet out of my pocket and laid it on the table.

'Be of good cheer, Cousin,' I said; 'I have a drug which is strong enough, with the help of God, to make a dying man sit up again. Courage, then!'

When I had said these words my temptation fell upon me. It came in the guise of a voice which whispered in my ear.

'Should this man die,' it said, 'there will be freedom for Alice. She can then marry the man she loves. She will be restored to happiness. While he lives, she must still continue in misery, being cut off from love. Let him die therefore.'

'Humphrey,' said Ben; 'in this matter of Alice: if she will come to me, I will make her happy. But I know not where she is hidden. Things go ill with me since that unlucky day. I would to God I had not done it! Nothing hath gone well since; and I drink daily to hide her face. Yet at night she haunts me—with her father, who threatens, and her mother, who weeps, and my grandfather, who reproaches. Humphrey—tell me—what is it, man? What mean thy looks?'

For while he spoke that other voice was in my ears also.

'Should he die, Alice will be happy again. Should he live, she will continue in misery.' At these words (which were but my own thoughts, yet involuntary), I felt so great a pity, such an overwhelming love for Alice, that my spirit was wholly carried away. To restore her freedom! Oh! what price was too great for such a gift? Nay—I was seized with the thought that to give her so great a thing, even my own destruction would be a light price to pay. Never, until that moment, had I known how fondly and truly I loved her. Why, if it were to be done over again—but this matters not. I have to make my confession.

'Humphrey, speak!' I suppose that my trouble showed itself in my face.

'Thou art married to Alice,' I said slowly. 'That cannot be denied. So long as thou livest, Benjamin, so long will she be robbed of everything that she desires, so long will she be unhappy. Now, if thou shouldst die'——

'Die? I cannot die; I must live.' He tried to raise himself, but he was too weak. 'Cousin, save my life.'

'If thou shouldst die, Benjamin,' I went on, regardless of his words, 'she will be set free. It is only by thy death that she can be set free. Say then to thyself: "I have done this poor woman so great an injury that nothing but my death can atone for it. Willingly, therefore, will I lay down my life, hoping thus to atone for this abominable wickedness."'

'Humphrey, do not mock me. Give me—give me—give me speedily the drug of which you spoke. I die—I die!—Oh!—give me of thy drug.'

Then I took the packet containing the Pulvis Jesuiticus and threw it upon the fire, where in a moment it was a little heap of ashes.

'Now, Benjamin,' I said, 'I cannot help thee. Thou must surely die.'

He shrieked, he wept, he implored me to do something—something to keep him alive. He began to curse and to swear.

'No one can now save thee, Benjamin,' I told him. 'Not all the College of Physicians; not all the medicines in England. Thou must die. Listen and heed: in a short time, unless thy present weakness causeth thee to expire, there will fall upon thee another fit of fever and delirium, after which another interval of reason: perhaps another—but yet thou must surely die. Prepare thy soul, therefore. Is there any message for Alice that thou wouldst send to her, being now at the point of death?'

His only answer was to curse and weep alternately.

Then I knelt beside his bed, and prayed aloud for him. But incessantly he cried for help, wearing himself out with prayers and curses.

'Benjamin,' I said, when I had thus prayed a while, but ineffectually, 'I shall take to Alice, instead of these curses, which avail nothing, a prayer for pardon, in order to touch her heart and cause her to think of thee with forgiveness, as of one who repented at the end. This I shall do for her sake. I shall also tell thy father that thy death was repentant, and shall take to him also a prayer for forgiveness as from thee. This will lighten his sorrow, and cause him to remember thee with the greater love. And to Robin, too, so that he may cease to call thee villain, I will carry, not these ravings, but a humble prayer (as from thyself) for forgiveness.'

This is my confession: I, who might have saved my cousin, suffered him to die.

The sick man, when he found that prayers or curses would not avail, fell to moaning, rolling his head from side to side. When he was thus quiet I prayed again for him, exhorting him to lift up his soul to his Judge, and assuring him of our full forgiveness. But, indeed, I know not if he heard or understood. It was then about four of the clock, and growing dark. I lit a candle, and examined him again. I think that he was now unconscious. He seemed as if he slept. I sat down and watched.

I think that at midnight, or thereabouts, I must have fallen asleep.

When I awoke the candle was out, and the fire was out. The room was in perfect darkness. I laid my hand upon my cousin's forehead. He was cold and dead.

Then I heard the voice of the watchman in the street: 'Past two o'clock, and a frosty morning!'

The voice I had heard before whispered again in my ear.

'Alice is free—Alice is free! Thou—thou—thou alone hast set her free! Thou hast killed her husband!'

I threw myself upon my knees and spent the rest of that long night in seeking for repentance; but then, as now, the lamentation of a sinner is also mingled with the joy of thinking that Alice was free at last, and by none other hand than mine.

This I repeat is my confession: I might have saved my cousin, and I suffered him to die. Wherefore I have left the profession in which it was my ambition to distinguish myself, and am no longer anything but a poor and obscure person, living on the charity of my friends in a remote village.

Two days afterwards I was sitting at the table, looking through the dead man's papers, when I heard a footstep on the stair.

It was Barnaby, who broke noisily into the room.

'Where is Benjamin?' he cried. 'Where is that villain?'

'What do you want with him?'

'I want to kill him. I am come to kill him.'

'Look upon the bed, Barnaby.' I laid back the sheet and showed him the pale face of the dead man.

'The hand of the Lord—or that of another—hath already killed him. Art thou now content?'