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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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