The Romance of a Pro-Consul Part 15

An illness brought that life very near the ebb, and friends wondered, of an evening, if next morning they would hear his simple, tender, 'Good-bye to you.' Sir George waited ready, abiding in the faith, witnessing of it, 'Man should have religion as his guide in all things. I feel that G.o.d communicates with His creatures when they please. He lets them know what is right and wrong, even argues with them.

'It was a comfort to me, in trying hours, to feel that I was working according to the way of my Maker, so far as I could comprehend it.

Perhaps I most experienced this nearness of an all-wise Providence while I was amid the heathen acres of the far south. You seemed to be communing with the Great Spirit more intimately in these lonely haunts than elsewhere. I have always been supported by the belief in G.o.d's goodness, as manifested to me. My judgment is that man cannot prosper if he falls from faith, by which I mean trust in a Supreme Being.'

There were no shadows, no terrors for Sir George Grey, in what we chilly term death. He could look blithely along the road, ready to greet it with outstretched hand when it turned the corner. Just, he waited to go, as he might have waited for a sure arm on which to lean. He saw the lamps afar.

'When one has reached an old age,' was his vista, 'the thought of death should not be a sad thought. It is not sad with me, but on the contrary pleasant, meaning a happy event to be welcomed. Death! I do not believe in death, except that the flesh dies; for the spirit goes on and on.

Terror of death is necessary, in order to keep men and animals from killing themselves. That is all.

'The future is mystery, for none have returned to inform us what is there. But our knowledge of the, Creator teaches us that His goodness will be greater and greater towards His creatures. If the babe leaves the womb, to come into such a beautiful world as ours, how beautiful a world may we not pa.s.s into? It was terrible to the babe to be torn from the womb, but it had no idea what loving hands were waiting for it.

'We have G.o.d's a.s.surance that He is always good to His creatures who die, and we may be satisfied. Really, there is a lovely romance in death, in the spirit being released from the clay, which, through ill-health or old age, has grown to burden it. That spirit, struggling onward and upward, shakes itself free and soars off, bright, fresh, eternal, to the other world for which it had been preparing. It purifies itself, by throwing aside a weight, and thus death is not death but life; another birth, life in death.'

Not then, not for another year and more, was the departure to be. 'Put my watch under my pillow,' he looked up cheerily to those at his bedside; 'and thank you for taking care of it while I have been ill. It's the watch the Queen gave me, and I like to have it near.' But that illness sapped and mined him, even while he proposed, 'Oh, yes, we'll go down to Chelsea and inspect Carlyle's old house. I'll try and fill it again with him, in particular the room at the top which he built to be noise-proof, and which wasn't.' The visit was never paid, but the celebration of the Queen's reign of sixty years still found Sir George able to be about.

That was right well, for how many had made such a contribution to the history and dominion of the reign? Truly, dreams had come about, since he listened to the bells of Plymouth, when taking pa.s.sage by the "Beagle."

Here was goodly proof of things achieved for the happiness of men, such as even he had scarce dared to imagine. The fairies had been working.

Sir George followed, in imagination, the nations of the realm as they walked through London, its capital, while all the world .wondered. He attended, in heart, the simple service at St. Paul's Cathedral, where he himself was to find a last resting-place, sleeping with the worthies. He could picture the great fleet, seal of the sea-power which made all possible, spread itself athwart the Solent. Yes Sir George Grey heard, from afar, the 'tumult and the shouting,' and they rounded off his own career as the True Briton and True Imperialist.

He heard also, amid the glorious rumble, of another royal progress made by the Queen. It was at her Highland home, the spectators the eternal hills which lie about it. For caparisoning there was a donkey-chaise, and for escort a Highlander, carrying the shawls. The Queen was bound for the manse, across the fields by the river-side, to pray with the minister's wife that he, being ill, might be made whole.

That was the royal progress Sir George Grey would best have liked to see, because it held the key to the other. From it, he sent, by his friend the Prime Minister of New Zealand, a last message to Greater Britain. 'Give the people of New Zealand my love,' it ran, 'and may G.o.d have you in His keeping? It was the closing of the book, save for the blank pages which occur at the end.

'It's all light,' was Selwyn's dying exclamation in Maori. None knew the Maori words that Sir George Grey murmured, and none doubted what they were. To us, the island race of two worlds,

Under the Cross of Gold, That shines over city and river, There he shall rest for ever, Among the wise and the bold.

THE END