Walter Besant

I n the decline of years, when the sixtieth birthday is near at hand and one looks not to live much longer, and the future hath no fresh joy to bring with it (but only infirmities of age and pain), it is profitable and pleasant to look back upon the past, to observe the guidance of the Unseen Hand, to repent one's sins, and to live over again those seasons, whether of sorrow or of joy, which we now perceive to have been Providentially ordered.

This have I done, both in reading the history of our lives as related by my Mistress, and in writing this latter part. To the former have I added nothing, nor have I subtracted anything therefrom, because I would not suffer the sweet and candid soul of her whom I have always loved to be tarnished by any words of mine, breaking in upon her own, as jarring notes in some lovely harmony. It is strictly laid upon me to deliver her words just as she hath written them down.

Now, after the death of Benjamin, I took it upon myself, being his cousin, in the absence of his father, to examine the papers which he had left. Among them I found abundance of songs, chiefly in praise of wine and women, with tavern bills. Also, there were notes of legal cases, very voluminous, and I found notes of payment made to various persons engaged in inquiring after his wife, in those towns of the West Country where her father's name would procure friends for her. But there was no will; Benjamin had died (never looking for so early an end) without making any will. Therefore the estate of Bradford Orcas, with the old house, became the property of the Rector, Benjamin's father. And he, being moved to make reparation for his son's sin, and out of the great love which he bore to Alice, conveyed the whole to Robin on the day of his marriage. Thus the confiscated estate returned to the ancient family who had always held it, and promise to hold it still, so long as the good old stock shall last.

It is thirty years ago and more. King William III. is dead; Queen Anne is dead; King George (who cannot, they say, speak English, but is a stout Protestant) sits upon our throne; the Nonconformists are free, save that they cannot enter the Universities, and are subject to other disabilities, which will, doubtless, be removed in the course of years. But English people, I think, love power beyond all earthly things; and so long as the Church is in a majority the Churchmen will exercise their power and will not part with it. To us of Bradford Orcas it matters little. We worship at the parish church. Every Sunday I contemplate, as I did fifty years ago, the monument of Filipa kneeling apart, and of her husband and his second wife kneeling together. There is a new tablet in the chancel put up to the memory of Sir Christopher, and another to that of Dr. Comfort Eykin. Their bodies lie somewhere among the mounds on the north side of Ilminster Church.

Forty years ago, as you have seen, there stood three boys in the garden of the Manor House discoursing on their future. One wished never to go anywhere, but to remain always a country gentleman, like his grandfather; one would be a great lawyer, a Judge, even the Lord Chancellor; the third would be a great Physician. Lo! the end of all! The first, but after divers miseries, perils, and wanderings, hath attained to his desire; the second lies buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew's, Holborn, forgotten long since by his companions (who, indeed, are now with him in the pit), and remembered only among his own kin for the great wickedness which he wrought before the Lord. And, as for the third and last, no illustrious physician is he; but one who lives obscure (but content) in a remote village (in the very cottage where his Mistress was born), with books and music, and the society of the sweetest woman who ever graced this earth for his solace. She was always gracious: she was gracious in her childhood; gracious as a maiden; more gracious still is she in these latter days when her hair is grey, and her daughters stand about her, tall and comely.

Now, had I administered that powder—that sovereign remedy, the Pulvis Jesuiticus—what would have been her lot?

'Humphrey,' said Robin, 'a penny for thy thoughts.'

'Robin, I was thinking—it is not a new thing, but twenty years old and more—that Cousin Benjamin never did anything in his life so useful as to die.'

'Ay, poor Benjamin! That he had at the end the grace to ask our forgiveness and to repent hath in it something of a miracle. We have long forgiven him. But consider, Cousin. We were saved from the fight; we were saved from the sea; we were saved from slavery; we were enabled to strike the last blow for the Protestant religion—what were all these blessings worth if Benjamin still lived? To think, Humphrey, that Alice would never have been my wife and never a mother; and all these children would have remained unborn! I say that, though we may not desire the death of a sinner, we were not human if we rejoiced not at the death of our poor cousin.'

Yes; that is the thought which will not suffer me to repent. A single pinch of the Pulvis Jesuiticus, and he might have been living unto this very day: then would Alice have lost the crowning blessing of a woman's life.

Yet—I was, it is true, a physician—whose duty it is to save life, always to save life, even the life of the wretched criminal who is afterwards to die upon the gallows.

Yet, again, if he had been saved! As I write these lines I see my Mistress walking down the village street. She looks over my garden-gate; she lifts the latchet and enters, smiling gravely and tenderly. A sober happiness sits upon her brow. The terror of her first marriage has long been forgotten.

Why, as I watch her tranquil life, busy with her household and her children, full of the piety which asks not (as her father was wont to ask) how and where the mercy of Heaven is limited, and if, indeed, it will embrace all she loves; as I mark the tender love of husband and of children, which lies around her like a garment and prevents all her doings, there comes back to me continually a bed-room in which a man lies dying. Again in memory, again in intention, I throw upon the fire that handful of Pulvis Jesuiticus which should have driven away his fever and restored him to health again. A great and strong man he was, who might have lived till eighty years: where then would have been that love? where those children? where that tranquil heart and that contented mind? 'I WILL NOT SAVE HIS LIFE.' I say again in my mind: 'I WILL NOT SAVE HIM; HE SHALL DIE.'

'Humphrey,' my Mistress says, 'leave thy books awhile and walk with me: the winter sun is warm upon the hills. Come, it is the day when Benjamin died—repentant—what better could we wish? What greater blessing could have been bestowed upon him and upon us than a true repentance and to die? Oh! dear Brother, dear Humphrey, let us walk and talk of these blessings which have been showered upon my undeserving head.

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