The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck: a Romance
Copyright© 2025 by Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
Chapter 58: Conclusion
Love is too young to know what conscience is,
Yet who knows not. Conscience is born of Love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.
SHAKSPEARE.
Time, [2] we are told by all philosophers, is the sole medicine for grief. Yet there are immortal regrets which must endure while we exist. Those who have met with one, with whose every feeling and thought their thoughts and feelings were entwined, who knew of no divided past, nor could imagine a solitary futurity, to them what balm can time bring? Time, the giver of hours, months, and years, each one how barren, contemptible, and heavy to bear to the bereft!
There was no consolation for Katherine, which could make her for a moment forget that her present existence was but the lees of life, the spiritless remnants of a nectareous draught. But Katherine was gentle, good, and resigned; she lived on, dispensing pleasure, adored by all who approached her, and gladly hailing any visitation of happiness which might reach one whose affections were too fondly linked to the grave.
Years had passed since the last act of the sad tragedy which destroyed her dearest hopes. She accompanied the queen of England on a progress made by her, and they remained one night at Eastwell Place, the seat of Sir Thomas Moyle. There was a park, and stately pleasure-grounds belonging to the house, undulating uplands, shady copses, and sweet running brooks to diversify the scene. A crowd of the noble and the gay were there, and the royal party was unusually mirthful; fireworks, masks, and dances were employed; and all joyously gave themselves up to the spirit of the hour. The chords of a harp, a well-known air, first awoke in the bosom of the White Rose that languid melancholy, so near allied to pleasure, so close a neighbour to pain. By degrees memory grew busy in her brain; she could no longer endure the laughter of her companions, their sallies, nay, nor their kindness; for Elizabeth perceived her dear friend’s change of countenance, and was approaching, when Katherine, making her a sign not to remark her, stole away, and entering a straggling path, wandered on, struggling with the tears, which the beauty of the evening, and the very hilarity which just before she had shared, caused to gush warm and fast from her eyes.
She reached a little streamlet, and was passing forward, when she became aware of the presence of another in the scene. A labouring man, of middle age (but his hair was grey and flowed on his shoulders) was seated on the rustic masonry of a rude fountain, reading; he rose when he saw the lady, and doffed his hat; she, with the cordial sweetness that accompanied her slightest acts, gave him an evening benison. Her voice, her look, her cordial manner moved to its depths a heart lately hardened against her. As she passed on, the man followed hastily, “Lady!” he cried.
It struck the princess that this poor fellow had some request to prefer to his master, and that he wished to do it through her medium; she turned with a benevolent smile: “Can I do aught for you, good friend?”
His voice failed him; he stretched out his hand, which held his book, she took it: the tiny volume was no stranger to her eyes; as if a ghost had looked on her lonely watching, she trembled and grew pale, when she opened it, and saw written in fair characters, by a hand now dust, “La Rosa Blanca.” The rustic knelt before her.
“Lady, queen!” he cried, “Sole relic of the unforgotten! is it thus that we meet?”
“My cousin Edmund!”
“Hush! breathe not even to the silent woods the unknown word. Fancy not that I am Plantagenet: for all that was of worth in him you name, died when the White Rose scattered its leaves upon the unworthy earth.”
“Ah! would that we had all died in that hour,” cried Katherine: “why, when the ungrateful world lost him, did not all the good and true die also, so that they might no longer suffer!”
Plantagenet cast a reproachful glance on her, as he said, “Happy indeed are those who die. O God! when I think of the many and the beloved, who, a few years ago, were alive around me, and among whose low silent graves I now walk alone, methinks I am dead; it is but the ghost of him you knew that lingers upon earth.”
“Yes, they are all gone,” said the princess; “all who linked me to the past, and were portions of my Richard’s being. They are gone from before me. But are they truly no more, or do they live, like you, brooding over the lost, disdaining to communicate with one who lives but to remember them? Of the death of several I have heard; but often I have longed with bitterness to hear of you, and of the Spanish maiden, Monina de Faro.”
“Her gentle soul,” replied Edmund; “has flown to join him for whom she lived and died. It is now two years since I was assured of this. A friar, whom I had formerly well known, visited Lisbon; and I entreated him to inquire for De Faro and his child. The commander of the Adalid was almost forgotten; at last, an old sailor was found, who remembered that, some years before, he had sailed for the Western Indies, and was never heard of more.”
“His daughter accompanied him?”
“In the churchyard of a convent, placed high among the foldings of those lovely hills which overlook Lisbon, he was shown an humble tomb, half defaced; her dear, sacred name is carved upon it, and half the date, the 14—, which showed that she died before the century began, in which we now live.[3] She could not have survived our prince many months; probably she died before him, nor ever knew the worst pang of all, the ignominy linked with his beloved memory.”
“And you, my kinsman, how long have you wedded penury and labour in this obscure disguise?”
“Penury and labour,” said Plantagenet, “are not confined to the humble occupation I have adopted. I was made poor by the death-blow of my hopes; and my chief labour is to tame my heart to resignation to the will of God. Obscure you may indeed call my destination. Would I could shroud it in tenfold night! Dearer to me is the silence and loneliness of this spot, where I can for ever commune undisturbed with the past, than a pomp which is stained by the blood of him whom once I thought we all loved so well.
“When—oh, let me name not the frightful thing!—when he was gone for ever, the whole world was to me but one miserable tomb. I groped in darkness, misery my mate, eternal lamentation my sole delight. The first thing that brought peace to my soul, was the beauty of this visible universe. When God permitted, for some inscrutable purpose, moral evil to be showered so plentifully over us, he gave us a thousand resources out of ourselves in compensation. If I mingled with my fellow-creatures, how dearly should I miss him, who was single among men for goodness, wisdom, and heaven-born nobility of soul. My heart sickens at the evil things that usurp the shape of humanity, and dare deem themselves of the same species: I turn from all, loathing. But here there is no change, no falling off, no loss of beauty and of good: these glades, these copses, the seasons’ change and elemental ministrations, are for ever the same—the type of their Maker in glory and in good. The loveliness of earth saves me from despair: the Majesty of Heaven imparts aspiring hope. I bare my bosom to the breeze, and my wretched heart throbs less wildly. I drink in the balmy sweetness of the hour, and repose again on the goodness of my Creator.
“Yours is another existence, lady; you need the adulation of the crowd—the luxury of palaces; you purchase these, even by communing with the murderer of him who deserved a dearer recompense at your hands.”