Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/199

Rh One of the passages which he marked in the book which lay ever near his hand contained the reflections which Marcus Aurelius addressed to those who dreaded the approach of death:—

You have been a citizen of the great world-city. Five years or fifty, what matters it? To every man his due as law allots. Why then protest? No tyrant gives you your dismissal, no unjust judge, but nature, who gave you the admission. It is like the prætor discharging some player whom he has engaged—“But the five acts are not complete; I have played but three.” Good: life’s drama, look you, is complete in three. The completeness is in his hands who first authorised your composition, and now your dissolution. Neither was your work. Serenely take your leave; serene as he who gives you the discharge.”

After the siege of Kimberley, in 1900, Mr. Rhodes told me he thought he had fourteen years more to live; and that time seemed to him far too short to accomplish all that he had in his mind to do. Few of his friends ventured to anticipate for him so long a lease of life. The result proved that their forebodings were only too well justified. Instead of fourteen years, he lived barely two.

There is, however, something consoling in the heroism with which he risked and lost his life at the end. It is probable that if he had not returned to South Africa in the last year of his life he might have lived for several years. His medical advisers and his most intimate friends were aghast when he announced his determination to return to South Africa to give evidence in the case of Princess Radziwill.

Mr. Rhodes, although unmarried, was singularly free from any scandal about women. As might be imagined, being a millionaire, a bachelor, and a man of charming personality, he was abso- N 2