Romance Novel (Untitled)

Epilogue

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         Justice, as we have come to think of it—as we would read of it in the last half dozen pages or so of a good book, or in the last stanza of classic poem—is rarely done in the waking world. Evil does not break and weep for the vileness of its deeds; God does not reach down and lift away to Paradise the troubled soul; good deeds go unnoticed while deceit is applauded; the debts go unpaid.

         There was no possibility of trial; Carrico remained The Good Captain in name and reputation. The evil of the man did not die with him, but lives on in the lack of justice—that justice of which I speak which formerly walked this world with the name Vengeance. Neither did the tragedy of his deeds die with his flesh, for his young crewman is still murdered; his crew injured and their cargo destroyed; the girl still soiled with his touch.

         But if we redefine, in this awakening era, the role of justice, perhaps we see some hope, after all: the bastard son of the damnable merchant, that seed of hatred and power, yet has his mother’s eyes, and is the world’s greatest joy to hold; in the streets, Susannah has stature, one of the many coastal women bereft of husband by the sea; his testament in death bestowed fortunes to the girl, who is known, as his wife, to be next-of-kin.

         So perhaps justice prevails, as Aristotle and Killigrew both contend. This justice wears a different guise, which we know better as redemption: for her heart is calm, her life is good, and the babe is the promise of the future. Justice and redemption: for these things, O Lord, we are thankful.

         But this old heart still sees the yet-older robe of justice hung in the dark, stained with the blood of the guilty— the justice of the Old Testament, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Let me find a way to make it fit, I beg, this cannot be the ending to the play: the debt is still unpaid.