The blow came very suddenly at last. About the middle of September the spirit of Marion Fay flitted away from all its earthly joys and all its earthly troubles. Lord Hampstead saw her alive for the last time at that interview which was described a few pages back. Whenever he proposed to go down again to Pegwell Bay some objection was made, either by the Quaker or by Mrs. Roden on the Quaker\'s behalf. The doctor, it was alleged, had declared that such visits were injurious to his patient,—or perhaps it was that Marion had herself said that she was unable to bear the excitement. There was, no doubt, some truth in this. And Marion had seen that though she herself could enjoy the boundless love which her lover tendered to her, telling herself that though it was only for a while, it was very sweet to have it so, yet for him these meetings were full of agony. But in addition to this there was, I think, a jealousy on the part of Zachary Fay as to his daughter. When there was still a question whether the young lord should be his son-in-law, he had been willing to give way and to subordinate himself, even though his girl were the one thing left to him in all the world. While there was an idea that she should be married, there had accompanied that idea a hope, almost an expectation, that she might live. But when it was brought home to him as a fact that her marriage was out of the question because her life was waning, then unconsciously there grew up in his heart a feeling that the young lord ought not to rob him of what was left. Had Marion insisted, he would have yielded. Had Mrs. Roden told him that it was cruel to separate them, he would have groaned and given way. As it was, he simply leaned to that view of the matter which gave him the greatest preponderance with his own child. It may be that she saw it too, and would not wound him by asking for her lover\'s presence.
About the middle of September she died, having written to Hampstead the very day before her death. Her letters lately had become but a few words each, which Mrs. Roden would put into an envelope and send to their destination. He wrote daily, assuring her that he would not leave his home for a day in order that he might go to her instantly when she would send for him. To the last she never gave up the idea of seeing him again;—but at last the little light flickered out quicker than had been expected.
Mrs. Roden was at Pegwell Bay when the end came; and to her fell the duty of making it known to Lord Hampstead. She went up to town immediately, leaving the Quaker in the desolate cottage, and sent down a note from Holloway to Hendon Hall. "I must see you as soon as possible. Shall I go to you, or will you come to me?" When she wrote the words she was sure that he would understand their purport, and yet it was easier to write so than to tell the cruel truth plainly. The note was sent down by a messenger, but Lord Hampstead in person was the answer.
There was no need of any telling. When he stood before her dressed from head to foot in black, she took him by the two hands and looked into his face. "It is all over for her," he said,—"the trouble and the anguish, and the sense of long dull days to come. My Marion! How infinitely she has the best of it! How glad I ought to be that it is so."
"You must wait, Lord Hampstead," she said.
"Pray, pray, let me have no consolation. Waiting in the sense you mean there will be none. For the one relief which will finally come to me I must of course wait. Did she say any word that you would wish to tell me!"
"Many, many."
"Were they for my ears?"
"What other words should she have spoken to me? They were prayers for your health."
"My health needs not her prayers."
"Prayers for your soul\'s health."
"Such praying will be efficacious there,—or would be were anything needed to make her fit for those angels among whom she has gone. For me they can do nothing,—unless it be that in knowing how much she loved me I may strive to be as she was."
"And for your happiness."
"Psha!" he exclaimed.
"You must let me do her commission, Lord Hampstead. I was to bid you remember that God in His goodness has ordained that the dead after awhile shall be remembered only with a softened sorrow. I was to tell you that as a man you should give your thoughts to other things. It is not from myself;—it is from her."
"She did not know. She did not understand. As regards good and evil she was, to my eyes, perfect;—perfect as she was in beauty, in grace, and feminine tenderness. But the character of others she had not learned to read. But I need not trouble you as to that, Mrs. Roden. You have been good to her as though you were her mother, and I will love you for it while I live." Then he was going away; but he turned again to ask some question as to the funeral. Might he do it. Mrs. Roden shook her head. "But I shall be there?" To this she assented, but explained to him that Zachary Fay would admit of no interference with that which he considered to be his own privilege and his own duty.
Lord Hampstead had driven himself over from Hendon Hall, and had driven fast. When he left Mrs. Roden\'s house the groom was driving the dog-cart up and down Paradise Row, waiting for his master. But the master walked on out of the Row, forgetting altogether the horse and the cart and the man, not knowing whither he was going.
The blow had come, and though it had been fully expected, though he had known well that it was coming, it struck him now as hard, almost harder than if it had not been expected. It seemed to himself that he was unable to endure his sorrow now because he had been already weakened by such a load of sorrow. Because he had grieved so much, he could not now bear this further grief. As he walked on he beat his hands about, unconscious that he was in the midst of men and women who were gazing at him in the streets. There was nothing left to him,—nothing, nothing, nothing! He felt that if he could rid himself of his titles, rid himself of his wealth, rid himself of the very clothes upon his back, it would be better for him, so that he might not seem to himself to think that comfort could be found in externals. "Marion," he said, over and over again, in little whispered words, but loud enough for his own ears to hear the sound. And then he uttered phrases which were almost fantastic in their woe, but which declared what was and had been the condition of his mind towards her since she had become so inexpressibly dear to him. "My wife," he said, "my own one! Mother of my children. My woman; my countess; my princess. They should have seen. They should have acknowledged. They should have known whom it was that I had brought among them;—of what nature should be the woman whom a man should set in a high place. I had made my choice;—and then that it should come to this!" "There is no good to be done," he said again. "It all turns to ashes and to dust. The low things of the world are those which prevail." "Oh, Marion, that I could be with you! Though it were to be nowhere,—though the great story should have no pathetic ending, though the last long eternal chapter should be a blank,—still to have wandered away with you would have been something." As soon as he reached his house he walked straight into the drawing-room, and having carefully closed the door, he took the poker in his hand and held it clasped there as something precious. "It is the only thing of mine," he said, "that she has touched. Even then I swore to myself that this hearth should be her hearth; that here we would sit together, and be one flesh and one bone." Then surreptitiously he took the bit of iron away with him, and hid it among his treasures,—to the subsequent dismay of the housemaid.
There came to him a summons from the Quaker to the funeral, and on the day named, without saying a word to any one, he took the train and went down to Pegwell Bay. From the moment on which the messenger had come from Mrs. Roden he had dressed himself in black, and he now made no difference in his garments. Poor Zachary said but little to him; but that little was very bitter. "It has been so with all of them," he said. "They have all been taken. The Lord cannot strike me again now." Of the highly-born stranger\'s grief, or of the cause which brought him there, he had not a word to say; nor did Lord Hampstead speak of his own sorrow. "I sympathize and condole with you," he said to the old man. The Quaker shook his head, and after that there was silence between them till they parted. To the few others who were there Lord Hampstead did not address himself, nor did they to him. From the grave, when the clod of earth had been thrown on it, he walked slowly away, without a sign on his face of that agony which was rending his heart. There was a carriage there to take him to the railway, but he only shook his head when he was invited to enter it. He walked off and wandered about for hours, till he thought that the graveyard would be deserted. Then he returned, and when he found himself alone he stood over the newly heaped-up soil. "Marion," he said to himself over and over again, whispering as he stood there. "Marion,—Marion; my wife; my woman." As he stood by the grave s............