"Dead—gone—left him—his other self—it could not be!" he whispered in his soul, for he could not believe, in his great sorrow, that it was all happening to him. Surely it was some horrible nightmare, from which he would awake to find his little world going on as before!
But day followed day, each adding fresh details to the calamity, and that of the funeral came inexorably, the closing scene of all.
As one in a dream, Greville Hampton saw the episode like a grim phantasmagoria. He heard the bell tolling, and heard Mr. Laud sob, as he met the few mourners at the churchyard gate, and led the way to the grave, repeating the fine words of the burial service.
Grasping his father's hand, little Derval, with a stunned look and dry eyes, dry with wonder and a great fear, saw the coffin going down—down—till it disappeared, and then a cry burst from him, for he knew that mamma was there—there in that cruel coffin which had left his sight for ever, and he began, child-like, to understand the dire and dreadful reality!
At last the scene closed; the horrible jarring of shovels, gravel, and earth had ceased, and Greville Hampton came back to his broken and desolate home, where he sat like a man turned to stone, twisting fatuously, yet caressingly, a tress of shining dark brown hair, all that remained to him now of Mary, save the little boy, who nestled, with scared and wistful eyes, beside his knee.
The drawn blinds had for some days told all the passers-by that there was death in the cottage at Finglecombe. Strangers hurried past with a momentary glance, and thought no more of it, in the bright sunshine and business of life; but some there were who looked sorrowfully and went by with slower step, and there were the poor who missed the ministering hand of Mary Hampton. Even now the little birds, for whom she was wont to spread out crumbs, were tapping with their beaks at the window.
The blinds were drawn up now, and an unnatural flood of sunny light seemed to fill the place. Everything Greville's haggard glance fell on seemed to have a history of its own, a tender association, connected with her who had passed away. The little womanly trifles her hands had made to brighten this, their latter, humble home, were all there still; the cheap but artistic-looking cretonne with which her pretty and industrious fingers had deftly covered the furniture, brought back to memory the song she sang while doing so; the water-colours on the wall were her work too, scenes associated with the past years and long vanished happiness; and no comfort could be gathered from Tennyson's hackneyed couplet—
"'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all."
The terrible distinctness with which the first clod of earth fell—as it seemed to him—on Mary's tender breast, was yet ringing in Greville's ears, together with the cry that escaped from Derval.
So Mary was gone, and for her the long, long night of the grave had begun!