“It is an evil, an unforgiving, an unchristian frame of mind,” quoth the parson.
“That’s as may be,” replied my father, doggedly. “But what’s born in the bone will out in the flesh. For my part I’st uphowd George, an’ if he’d said he forgave that spawn o’ the devil I should ha’ thowt he met be a saint, but he wer’ a liar an’ a hypocrite for all that. It’s agen natur, Mr. Webster, it’s agen natur.”
Mr. Webster hastened to change the subject. “George sent a message for yo’, Ben. He knows how it is between you and Mary and he wishes you all happiness, and asks you to forget and forgive the hasty words he spoke when last you parted. He said you would know what he meant.”
“God bless him, sir, I had forgiven them long ago.”
“And if it will not go too hard against the grain he wants you to be at the execution and to stand where his eye can fall upon you. He says he should like his last thoughts to be of Holme and the dear ones there. He seems strangely wrapped up in the old spot even to the exclusion of his own mother.”
“Aye,” said my father. “George never got over Matty marryin’ again. If ’oo’d never wed that John Wood but made a home for her own flesh an’ blood this met never ha’ happened. But what is to be will be, an’ that’s good Scripture anyway.”
“Foreseen and foreordained even from the beginning,” assented Mr. Webster.
Now this request of George was to me of all things most painful. It was common enough in those days for people to witness public executions; and public executions were common enough in all conscience. But I had ever a horror of such ghastly exhibitions. Nay I liked not even the cock–fighting and bull–baiting that were as much our ordinary pastimes in my youth as cricket has come to be the sport of my grand–children. People called me Miss Nancy and mawkish and molly–coddle; but none the less, neither for such sports, if sports they must be called, nor for prize fighting, had I any stomach. But if it could give any help to George to know one was in that vast crowd whose heart bled for him and whose prayers went heavenwards with his soul, I could not but do his will.
And so it befell that Mr. Webster and myself were in the crowd of many thousands that stood before the scaffold. Two troops of cavalry were drawn up in front of the drop. We might be a hundred yards away, and when George, heavily ironed, was led to the verge of the platform to make his last dying speech and confession, there was a great silence on the multitude. Even a party of the gentry, as I suppose they called themselves, that had secured the upper window of a house looking on to the scaffold, and that were drinking and jesting and exchanging coarse ribaldry with the light o’ loves in the mob, ceased their unseemly revelries and lent ear to what might be said. But George spoke little. His eye fell on me and on Mr. Webster, whom I lifted from his feet so that George might know that the little parson at Powle was faithful to the last, and hoping that even at the eleventh hour repentance might touch the stubborn and rebellious heart. And who knows but it did, for the last words on earth that George spoke were said with his eyes fixed on Mr. Webster’s face, and they were spoken belike to him alone of that great and swaying crowd: “Some of my enemies may be here. If there be, I freely forgive them,” and then, after a pause and with an emphasis which we alone perchance of all that concourse understood, “I forgive all the world and hope all the world will forgive me.”
“The Lord above be praised!” exclaimed Mr. Webster, as these words fell on his ears, and as the cap was fixed and the noose adjusted, he raised his voice in the well–known hymn, and strange tho’ it may seem, yet none the less is it true, thousands of voices took up the words: