Here, by these primrose woods and bluebell carpets, in this enchanted district, more than one of the youngsters, who own Nick and Nan as best of fathers and mothers, were born.
Here they have played since infancy, under the famous copper beeches, hedged round in June time with rhododendron bloom, and here their sharp ears have often heard Nick and Nan discuss and compare the varied beauties of England and Australia. And though Nick would say he loved Australia best, because there he became the lord and master of the sweetest woman in the world, still Nan will ever keep on insisting that there is no place like home, after all, and emphasize the truth of it with a kiss on her husband’s honest face and faithful lips.
And if Samuel Barkston has done all these things to others, what has he not done for me—for me, who had no claim upon him, but that of friendship loyal and sincere?
Did he not discover, in that marvellous way that generous men discover all that we want and secretly pray for, that this corner of the earth was the one that I best loved?
Did he not know that, from almost boyhood I had said that if I coveted my neighbour’s house—which was a very wrong thing to do—it was The Highlands in the village of Syderstrand that I alone coveted? And why?
Not only because it commands a glorious view of sea and pasture; not only that the blue of the sky is continued in the sea, or that the gold of the sun is repeated in the corn; not only that the air, we breathe here, is life and the atmosphere exhilaration; not only that here the wicked seem to cease from troubling and that the weary are at rest; not only that the villagers hereabouts seem the kindliest people in the world, thankful for every gentle act of thought and proof of sympathy; not only that I have lived the greatest part of my life amidst these associations—but there was another reason that influenced my friend in his greatest act of kindness.
Under the chancel wall of the little village church of Syderstrand, hidden from the road, in full sight of the sea and the poppy-covered corn, you may have observed a simple white marble cross.
There, in everlasting peace, rests the only woman who ever had any influence on my life. We met and loved within a few yards of the spot where I left her for ever, by the sea that was her delight and the fields that were the scene of our daily wanderings.
What a gift from man to man! To be presented with the care of these faithful souls; to preach to them, to pray for them, to visit them in their sickness, to advise them in their sorrows, to hear their heartfelt blessings when my feet cross their threshold; to love our fellow-creatures and to be loved again; to feel one has found a mission upon earth; to exchange the cares of a long and restless life for one of profound peace; to be able to retire to rest every night in true thankfulness of heart; and to be the appointed guardian of the grave of a woman, one has loved with surpassing love—these have been the gifts showered undeservedly on the head of the lonely clergyman who, strange to say, has all his life long been hovering about the homes and the destinies of nearly all the actors in this strange and eventful drama.
But, as I think over these last fifty years of a tolerably restless life, the strangest circumstance of all is this—that I have been made to-day a kind of Peacemaker, and a witness on the most eventful Christmas Eve of my life of what may be called “Good will towards men.”