Marion Fay: A Novel

by Anthony Trollope

"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 side, one came softly stealing up to him, and laid a hand upon his shoulder. He turned round quickly, and saw that it was the bereaved father. "Mr. Fay," he said, "we have both lost the only thing that either of us valued."

"What is it to thee, who are young, and hardly knew her twelve months since?"

"Months make no difference, I think."

"But old age, my lord, and childishness, and solitude—"