Towards the end of November I got a letter, to tell me that if I wished to see him alive again, I must go down at once. I went that day, and I found that the doctor had been and had said that before the morning the end must come. Mardon was perfectly conscious, in no pain, and quite calm. He was just able to speak. When I went into his bedroom, he smiled, and without any preface or introduction he said: “Learn not to be overanxious about meeting troubles and solving difficulties which time will meet and solve for you.” Excepting to ask for water, I don’t think he spoke again.
All that night Mary and I watched in that topmost garret looking out over the ocean. It was a night entirely unclouded, and the moon was at the full. Towards daybreak her father moaned a little, then became quite quiet, and just as the dawn was changing to sunrise, he passed away. What a sunrise it was! For about half-an-hour before the sun actually appeared, the perfectly smooth water was one mass of gently heaving opaline lustre. Not a sound was to be heard, and over in the southeast hung the planet Venus. Death was in the chamber, but the surpassing splendour of the pageant outside arrested us, and we sat awed and silent. Not till the first burning-point of the great orb itself emerged above the horizon, not till the day awoke with its brightness and brought with it the sounds of the day and its cares, did we give way to our grief.
It was impossible for me to stay. It was not that I was obliged to get back to my work in London, but I felt that Mary would far rather be alone, and that it would not be proper for me to remain. The woman of the house in which the lodgings were was very kind, and promised to do all that was necessary. It was arranged that I should come down again to the funeral.
So I went back to London. Before I had got twenty miles on my journey the glory of a few hours had turned into autumn storm. The rain came down in torrents, and the wind rushed across the country in great blasts, stripping the trees, and driving over the sky with hurricane speed great masses of continuous cloud, which mingled earth and heaven. I thought of all the ships which were on the sea in the night, sailing under the serene stars which I had seen rise and set; I thought of Mardon lying dead, and I thought of Mary. The simultaneous passage through great emotions welds souls, and begets the strongest of all forms of love. Those who have sobbed together over a dead friend, who have held one another’s hands in that dread hour, feel a bond of sympathy, pure and sacred, which nothing can dissolve.
I went to the funeral as appointed. There was some little difficulty about it, for Mary, who knew her father so well, was unconquerably reluctant that an inconsistency should crown the career of one who, all through life, had been so completely self-accordant. She could not bear that he should be buried with a ceremony which he despised, and she was altogether free from that weakness which induces a compliance with the rites of the Church from persons who avow themselves sceptics.
At last a burying-ground was found, belonging to a little half-forsaken Unitarian chapel; and there Mardon was laid. A few friends came from London, one of whom had been a Unitarian minister, and he “conducted the service,” such as it was. It was of the simplest kind. The body was taken to the side of the grave, and before it was lowered a few words were said, calling to mind all the virtues of him whom we had lost. These the speaker presented to us with much power and sympathy. He did not merely catalogue a disconnected string of excellences, but he seemed to plant himself in the central point of Mardon’s nature, and to see from what it radiated.
He then passed on to say that about immortality, as usually understood, he knew nothing; but that Mardon would live as every force in nature lives—forever; transmuted into a thousand different forms; the original form utterly forgotten, but never perishing. The cloud breaks up and comes down upon the earth in showers which cease, but the clouds and the showers are really undying. This may be true—but, after all, I can only accept the fact of death in silence, as we accept the loss of youth and all other calamities. We are able to see that the arrangements which we should make, if we had the control of the universe, would be more absurd than those which prevail now. We are able to see that an eternity of life in one particular form, with one particular set of relationships, would be misery to many and mischievous to everybody, however sweet those relationships may be to some of us. At times we are reconciled to death as the great regenerator, and we pine for escape from the surroundings of which we have grown weary; but we can say no more, and the hour of illumination has not yet come. Whether it ever will come to a more nobly developed race we cannot tell.
Thus far goes the manuscript which I have in my possession. I know that there is more of
