Mrs. Blandeville, unknown to the rest of the family, sent several times to make inquiries after the unhappy Narford. The accounts she received were as various as the melancholy changes which succeeded each other. He was sometimes in a state of actual distraction,—at others in a sad and silent despondency the most determined and alarming, refusing to take his food, or to hold conversation with any one.
At length the day for the interment of Lucy arrived. The procession, sad and slow, was followed by almost every inhabitant of the town and adjoining villages. A solemn dirge was sung as they went along, and a number of young maidens joined in the chorus. Flowers were strewn into and around the grave, as emblematical of the charming flower that like themselves was untimely cut down, and doomed like them to wither and to die.
The service began;—the coffin was carefully let down into the grave, and, just as the earth was thrown upon it, and the priest pronounced that awful and humiliating sentence,—"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," a figure, with dishevelled hair, and a face pale as that of the victim just deposited in her last sad resting place, rushed past them all, and quick as lightening, before any one could suspect of think of preventing his design, threw himself with the utmost violence into the grave, and, clinging with agonizing frenzy to the coffin, cried out, "I have found her now, and no one shall ever again tear her from me, for she was mine,—mine by her own consent! Proceed, (added he, in a shrill and distracted tone, for the surprise and confusion that this scene occasioned had prevented the service going on,)—be quick, and hide me in the friendly earth!—I come to sleep with Lucy:—this is our bridal bed!—Why do you hesitate?—here I shall find rest for ever:—this is my home, and here shall be my heaven!"
The priest endeavoured to persuade him to quit the grave, and let the ceremony be concluded, telling him, time and patience would, he hoped, reconcile him to the will of heaven, and convince him that all things were ordered for the best and the wisest purposes.
"Avaunt, deceiver! (cried the enraged maniac.)—I tell you that Lucy was unfairly robbed of life,—stolen from my arms, and forced into this place, where I will watch by her and protect her from farther violence;—therefore say no more, lest my daring hand should attempt to pluck the sun from his orbit, or call upon the stars to fall upon your head, and mine for permitting a star more brilliant than themselves to fall.—Go on, I say,—bury me deep and sure!—I wish to become a worm, that I may crawl to the side of Lucy.—She will own her poor distracted Narford, even in that most loathsome and degraded form."
It is impossible to describe the scene that followed. Many attempts were made before the poor young man could be dragged from the grave of his lamented mistress.—At length, he was forcibly taken out,—guarded, and carried home by some of the weeping spectators.
It was many months before any hopes of his recovery could be cherished. His reason was still more endangered, and, from that period to the end of his unfortunate life, he was deranged at times, and by his conduct appeared as much a lunatic in his intervals of reason. He very soon squandered all that remained of his fortune, and became a wanderer upon the earth, never having a settled home, and seldom going into a bed.
He was frequently absent so long, that his friends concluded he was no more.—He would then return to those scenes which never failed to bring on a renewal of his unfortunate malady, and would lay whole nights by the side of Lucy's grave, talking to her with the fame ardour and enthusiastic affection as if she had been living.
At length Mr. Blandeville, whom he would, as frequently as he saw him in his fits of insanity, attack with the most pointed and virulent abuse, took compassion on his sufferings, and settled a sum of money upon him, to be paid quarterly, sufficiently competent to procure him the necessaries and many of the comforts of life; placing him in a family who had been long attached to him, and who continued to take the utmost care of him to the end of his wretched existence, and by every tender attention softened, as much as it was in human power, those sorrows which could only terminate in death.