AMEN
And now there is little left for me to tell and my tale draws to its
end, for which I am thankful, for I am very old and writing is a
weariness to me, so great a weariness indeed that many a time during
the past winter I have been near to abandoning the task.
For a while Lily and I sat almost silent in this same room where I
write to-day, for our great joy and many another emotion that was mixed
with it, clogged our tongues. Then as though moved by one impulse, we
knelt down and offered our humble thanks to heaven that had preserved
us both to this strange meeting. Scarcely had we risen from our knees
when there was a stir without the house, and presently a buxom dame
entered, followed by a gallant gentleman, a lad, and a maiden. These
were my sister Mary, her husband Wilfred Bozard, Lily’s brother, and
their two surviving children, Roger and Joan. When she guessed that it
was I come home again and no other, Lily had sent them tidings by the
servant man John, that one was with her whom she believed they would be
glad to see, and they had hurried hither, not knowing whom they should
find. Nor were they much the wiser at first, for I was much changed and
the light in the room shone dim, but stood perplexed, wondering who
this stranger might be.
“Mary,” I said at length, “Mary, do you not remember me, my sister?”
Then she cried aloud, and throwing herself into my arms, she wept there
a while, as would any of us were our beloved dead suddenly to appear
before our eyes, alive and well, and her husband clasped me by the hand
and swore heartily in his amazement, as is the fashion of some men when
they are moved. But the children stood staring blankly till I called
the girl to me, who now was much what her mother had been when we
parted, and kissing her, told her that I was that uncle of whom perhaps
she had heard as dead many years ago.
Then my horse, that all this while had been forgotten, having been
caught and stabled, we went to supper and it was a strange meal to me,
and after meat I asked for tidings. Now I learned that the fortune
which my old master Fonseca had left to me came home in safety, and
that it had prospered exceedingly under Lily’s care, for she had spent
but very little of it for her maintenance, looking on it always as a
trust rather than as her own. When my death seemed certain my sister
Mary had entered on her share of my possessions, however, and with it
had purchased some outlying lands in Earsham and Hedenham, and the wood
and manor of Tyndale Hall in Ditchingham and Broome. These lands I made
haste to say she might keep as a gift from me, since it seemed that I
had greater riches than I could need without them, and this saying of
mine pleased her husband Wilfred Bozard not a little, seeing that it is
hard for a man to give up what he has held for many years.
Then I heard the rest of the story; of my father’s sudden death, of how
the coming of the gold had saved Lily from being forced into marriage
with my brother Geoffrey, who afterwards had taken to evil courses
which ended in his decease at the age of thirty-one; of the end of
Squire Bozard, Lily’s father and my old enemy, from an apoplexy which
took him in a sudden fit of anger. After this it seemed, her brother
being married to my sister Mary, Lily had moved down to the Lodge,
having paid off the charges that my brother Geoffrey had heaped upon
his heritage, and bought out my sister’s rights to it. And here at the
Lodge she had lived ever since, a sad and lonely woman, and yet not
altogether an unhappy one, for she gave much of her time to good works.
Indeed she told me that had it not been for the wide lands and moneys
which she must manage as my heiress, she would have betaken herself to
a sisterhood, there to wear her life away in peace, since I being lost
to her, and indeed dead, as she was assured,—for the news of the wreck
of the _carak_ found its way to Ditchingham,—she no longer thought of
marriage, though more than one gentleman of condition had sought her
hand. This, with some minor matters, such as the birth and death of
children, and the story of the great storm and flood that smote Bungay,
and indeed the length of the vale of Waveney in those days, was all the
tale that they had to tell who had grown from youth to middle age in
quiet. For of the crowning and end of kings and of matters politic,
such as the downfall of the power of the Pope of Rome and the sacking
of the religious houses which was still in progress, I make no mention
here.
But now they called for mine, and I began it at the beginning, and it
was strange to see their faces as they listened. All night long, till
the thrushes sang down the nightingales, and the dawn shone in the
east, I sat at Lily’s side telling them my story, and then it was not
finished. So we slept in the chambers that had been made ready for us,
and on the morrow I took it up again, showing them the sword that had
belonged to Bernal Diaz, the great necklace of emeralds which Guatemoc
had given to me, and certain scars and wounds in witness of its truth.
Never did I see folk so much amazed, and when I came to speak of the
last sacrifice of the women of the Otomie, and of the horrid end of de
Garcia who died fighting with his own shadow, or rather with the
shadows of his own wickedness, they cried aloud with fear, as they wept
when I told of the deaths of Isabella de Siguenza and of Guatemoc, and
of the loss of my sons.
But I did not tell all the story to this company, for some of it was
for Lily’s ear alone, and to her I spoke of my dealings with Otomie as
a man might speak with a man, for I felt that if I kept anything back
now there would never be complete faith between us. Therefore I set out
all my doubts and troublings, nor did I hide that I had learned to love
Otomie, and that her beauty and sweetness had drawn me from the first
moment when I saw her in the court of Montezuma, or that which had
passed between us on the stone of sacrifice.
When I had done Lily thanked me for my honesty and said it seemed that
in such matters men differed from women, seeing that SHE had never felt
the need to be delivered from the temptation of strange loves. Still we
were as God and Nature had made us, and therefore had little right to
reproach each other, or even to set that down as virtue which was but
lack of leaning. Moreover, this Otomie, her sin of heathenism
notwithstanding, had been a great-hearted woman and one who might well
dazzle the wandering eyes of man, daring more for her love’s sake than
ever she, Lily, could have dared; and to end with, it was clear that at
last I must choose between wedding her and a speedy death, and having
sworn so great an oath to her I should have been perjured indeed if I
had left her when my dangers were gone by. Therefore she, Lily, was
minded to let all this matter rest, nor should she be jealous if I
still thought of this dead wife of mine with tenderness.
Thus she spoke most sweetly, looking at me the while with her clear and
earnest eyes, that I ever fancied must be such as adorn the shining
faces of angels. Ay, and those same eyes of hers were filled with tears
when I told her my bitter grief over the death of my firstborn and of
my other bereavements. For it was not till some years afterwards, when
she had abandoned further hope of children, that Lily grew jealous of
those dead sons of mine and of my ever present love for them.
Now the tidings of my return and of my strange adventures among the
nations of the Indies were noised abroad far and wide, and people came
from miles round, ay, even from Norwich and Yarmouth, to see me and I
was pressed to tell my tale till I grew weary of it. Also a service of
thanksgiving for my safe deliverance from many dangers by land and sea
was held in the church of St. Mary’s here in Ditchingham, which service
was no longer celebrated after the rites of the Romish faith, for while
I had sojourned afar, the saints were fallen like the Aztec gods; the
yoke of Rome had been broken from off the neck of England, and though
all do not think with me, I for one rejoiced at it heartily who had
seen enough of priestcraft and its cruelties.
When that ceremony was over and all people had gone to their homes, I
came back again to the empty church from the Hall, where I abode a
while as the guest of my sister and her husband, till Lily and I were
wed.
And there in the quiet light of the June evening I knelt in the chancel
upon the rushes that strewed the grave of my father and my mother, and
sent my spirit up towards them in the place of their eternal rest, and
to the God who guards them. A great calm came upon me as I knelt thus,
and I felt how mad had been that oath of mine that as a lad I had sworn
to be avenged upon de Garcia, and I saw how as a tree from a seed, all
my sorrows had grown from it. But even then I could not do other than
hate de Garcia, no, nor can I to this hour, and after all it was
natural that I should desire vengeance on the murderer of my mother
though the wreaking of it had best been left in another Hand.
Without the little chancel door I met Lily, who was lingering there
knowing me to be within, and we spoke together.
“Lily,” I said, “I would ask you something. After all that has been,
will you still take me for your husband, unworthy as I am?”
“I promised so to do many a year ago, Thomas,” she answered, speaking
very low, and blushing like the wild rose that bloomed upon a grave
beside her, “and I have never changed my mind. Indeed for many years I
have looked upon you as my husband, though I thought you dead.”
“Perhaps it is more than I deserve,” I said. “But if it is to be, say
when it shall be, for youth has left us and we have little time to
lose.”
“When you will, Thomas,” she answered, placing her hand in mine.
Within a week from that evening we were wed.
And now my tale is done. God who gave me so sad and troublous a youth
and early manhood, has blessed me beyond measure in my middle age and
eld. All these events of which I have written at such length were done
with many a day ago: the hornbeam sapling that I set beneath these
windows in the year when we were married is now a goodly tree of shade
and still I live to look on it. Here in the happy valley of the
Waveney, save for my bitter memories and that longing for the dead
which no time can so much as dull, year after year has rolled over my
silvering hairs in perfect health and peace and rest, and year by year
have I rejoiced more deeply in the true love of a wife such as few have
known. For it would seem as though the heart-ache and despair of youth
had but sweetened that most noble nature till it grew well nigh divine.
But one sorrow came to us, the death of our infant child—for it was
fated that I should die childless—and in that sorrow, as I have told,
Lily shewed that she was still a woman. For the rest no shadow lay
between us. Hand in hand we passed down the hill of life, till at
length in the fulness of her days my wife was taken from me. One
Christmas night she lay down to sleep at my side, in the morning she
was dead. I grieved indeed and bitterly, but the sorrow was not as the
sorrows of my youth had been, since age and use dull the edge of mortal
griefs and I knew and know that we are no long space apart. Very soon I
shall join Lily where she is, and I do not fear that journey. For the
dread of death has left me at length, as it departs from all who live
long enough and strive to repent them of their sins, and I am well
content to leave my safety at the Gates and my heavenly comfort in the
Almighty Hand that saved me from the stone of sacrifice and has guided
me through so many perils upon this troubled earth.
And now to God my Father, Who holds me, Thomas Wingfield, and all I
have loved and love in His holy keeping, be thanks and glory and
praise! Amen.