Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.”
It is no very uncommon experience to see people go through their last illness without a word of complaint, but Mr. Jex-Blake rose to a higher level than that. He had felt the end approaching for some months, and had set his house in perfect order, even to the refinement of writing farewell letters—beautiful letters they are—to be delivered to those nearest him after he had left them. There was nothing now to be done save to gather himself together for the great ordination of death. “I suppose this is about as bad as can be,” he said to the surgeon who attended him. “Nothing more can be done, I take it.”
One complaint he did make in the early days of his illness,—that he “could not collect his thoughts to pray,”—he whose “whole life,” in the words of his son, “had been a prayer and thanksgiving.” It was a great joy and comfort to have that son at hand. “I am very happy, very comfortable,” he said. “You cannot tell how happy I am.... God is so good to me.”
When the end drew near, he wanted to be lifted out of bed, but they dared not move him, except as to pillows. About 11.30 Mr. H. [the surgeon] moved him a little in bed, and he said, “Beautiful, beautiful,” and never spoke again.
One can imagine the feelings with which his ardent wayward “youngest little one” arrived in England to hear all this, and to hear it through the transfiguring medium of bereaved affection. With passionate intensity she recalls every detail of the parting which had so lingered in her mind, and which had proved to be the last:
“He had not risen. I went and lay on the bed by him and kissed him, and he told me how they had enjoyed having me,—‘never had so pleasant a summer together,’ etc.
I said I had tried hard and yet I hadn’t fully succeeded. I was sorry I had been cross sometimes. ‘No, no,’ he said, stopping me, ‘I hadn’t failed,—there was nothing to forgive.’ And then I told him I would try and do them credit in my profession, and then he took my hands in his and prayed for me. And then I kissed him again and got off the bed,—but he (very unlike him) sprang out after me and embraced me again and again,—and so we parted very lovingly,—I telling him, I think, that ‘next time’ it should be all right. And so, please God, it shall,—if there is a God and a ‘next time’!”
In the darkest hour she admitted that it might have been worse: it might have been her Mother who was taken. One could almost have foretold how she would act. Cancelling the golden prospects in America with a stroke of her pen,—cheerfully sacrificing the very considerable financial outlay,—the class fees, the “snug little nest,” and “two barrels of potatoes,”—she resolved that never again should the Atlantic divide her from the life that was most dear.
It was not easy for Dr. Sewall to let her go thus finally, and her first letters are not a little pathetic, but—born friend of heroes as she was—she helped to fasten the armour on.