About this time, indeed, persons in the play of Mary Lee were dying
Hamletwise. One after another, swiftly, bodies were being trundled off
the stage.
Aunt Jael's leadership of the Seven Old Maids of Tawborough was
maintained in death. It was edifying to note that just as sixty years
ago they had briskly emulated her Conversion, now with equal alacrity
they followed her to her Home above.
Within three months Miss Glory Clinker departed. One February morning
she went away; wide-eyed, stuttering, triumphant. I heard her last
words. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand--er-er-er." Her eyes
lit up; a beatific happiness brightened the kind foolish old face.
"Er-er-er--." She was stammering before the Throne.
Of the Seven, Salvation alone survived for long: till her one hundred
and fourth year, a few years only before the time at which I write,
almost into the new century that is at hand. Her last words were
incoherent. I could not catch them, though I tried to.
Pentecost Dodderidge outlived his most famous convert by seven months
only. He was in his one hundredth year. A stroke of paralysis came
suddenly, followed by a restless ten days, in which he suffered intense
pain and displayed eternal patience, and which he filled with edifying
epigrams and godly saws and instances, all reverently collected by the
faithful ones around his bed and embodied in his _Choice Sayings_.
(The volume is before me as I write.) As the last saved soul to whom
he had stood Baptist, and as the grand-niece and grandchild of "those
two eminent bright jewels in our Saviour's crown," I was specially in
request at the old man's bedside. His last words, spoken clearly and
solemnly, with all the actor-like sincerity of his greatest days, were
these, each utterance coming a clear moment or two after the other:
"Peace within and rest."
"I have peace with God."
"The Peace of God which passeth all understanding--"
This, his last utterance, was given at about a quarter past eight. Some
forty minutes later he passed away: voyaging peacefully to Heaven.
Of another death I knew only by hearsay. It was a Bonapartist intriguer
who, just before the dynasty's disaster, had ratted to the Republicans,
and in the struggle with the Red Commune of Paris became a spy for
the Versaillais. I first saw the name and the bare fact in the French
newspapers, but a fuller story reached me in another way. Of the Grand
Rouquette, Red gaolers, a cage. A name on a list. One word at the
foot: Condemned. A yard, a high wall covered with vines and creepers.
A May morning, six priests who died like heroes, filthy insults,
levelled rifles. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. _Fire!_ an explosion. A
curled-up corpse upon the ground.
His former employer lived a few years longer, keeping Death at bay
by sheer fussiness. Her last gesture, Gabrielle wrote me, was a
deprecatory shrug of the shoulder; her last (recorded) utterance
"Enfin--"
In another, an uglier death than any, the human creature gave way to
the passion of extreme sickening fear, to fawning appeals for God's
mercy, to every last licence--except the use of the first person
singular. I stood outside; Aunt Martha would not let me enter the room
for very shame, though I peeped in once and saw the pale face livid
with fear, streaming with sweat, contorted with agony of body and soul.
"Forgive, Lord, forgive!" he was whining, "all has been done for Thy
sake. One sees one's filthy sinfulness, one sees the error of one's
ways--"
Not in such cowardly supplication, but in arrogant prayer, prayer as
to an equal, prayer to his young friend God, died a braver, wickeder
old man. They found him kneeling against his bed: heart-failure, said
the doctor. His face was insolent, beautiful, serene. His soul had
strolled disdainfully into Heaven, as a gentleman's should. Among his
papers were found two worn photographs; one of my mother, the only one
she had ever had taken, showing her in all the innocent beauty of her
maidenhood, the other of myself, taken in France, which, against my
will Grandmother had managed to convey to him. On the back of each of
them was written, in his hand-writing:--"I have kissed this picture to
shreds. They do not know. God knows."
For me, those are his Last Words.