For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

To Mrs. WALDYVE, my own sweet Wife.

You shall receive, dear wife, my parting words in these my parting lines. If I ever held your love, as indeed I think I did, it was by the poor things my sword had done. Now I go, I know not whither, to see if haply I may win it again to me beyond the seas, or at least forget a little of what I have lost.

My love I leave you, though I know it is a little thing to you, yet hoping, when I am gone, you will find some place for it, if only it be when you kneel to pray for our boy.

I would not that my last gift should be reproaches, dear Nan. Such are not for me, seeing it was by my own shortcoming that I could not keep your love. But first I send you all the thanks my heart can conceive or my pen express for your many cares and troubles taken for me, whom unworthy you strove to love.

And secondly, I would commend to you my poor child, for his father's sake, whom in his happiest times I trow you loved and would have loved still had he been worthy.

I cannot write much,—God knows how hardly I wrote even thus far. The everlasting, infinite, universal God, that is goodness itself, keep you and yours, have mercy on me, and teach me to forgive those who have wronged me; amongst whom, believe me, Nan, from my heart, I hold you not one. My wife, farewell. Bless my poor boy, pray your all-conquering prayers for him. My true God hold you both in His arms.—Your most loving, unworthy husband, HARRY WALDYVE.

From Rochester, this 30th day of April 1572.

I cannot but rejoice that I then knew no more of that letter than that by her kissing of it it was from him, and by the words of her song that it told how he was gone. My heart was already so seared and torn with shame at my work that, had I known how pathetic was his farewell, how deep and noble his sorrow, how touching his self-reproaches, and his straining in the anguish of his misery after the lost faith of his childhood, I know not how I should have borne the pain.

What to do now I could not think. To go in to her was impossible. As she sat there grieving with her baby upon her knees and the letter in her hand, she seemed to me a holy thing, more purely sanctified in her motherhood and grief to him she had lost than ever was vestal to her goddess. All faith and reverence I thought had left me, yet I could have worshipped that mother and child as devoutly as ever a poor Papist bowed before the Virgin's shrine. Still there was a holiness about them I dared not profane, even with my worship. I felt a thing too unclean even to stand on the steps of the altar where she was now enshrined, and I crept away like the guilty thief I was.

Hardly less difficult was it to go and leave her alone in the desert I had made of the fair garden, where but for me she might have dwelt so happily. To go was cowardly; it was sacrilege to stay. I had no guide to show me my way, no friend whom I could consult. Wearily, rather drifting than with any set purpose, I descended the steps, passed by the tinkling water, through the perfume-laden air, closed the wicket behind me, and so rode home, my errand undone.