As the spring of the year 1772 passed into summer John felt himself growing weaker and tried to keep this from Sarah. His tenderness for her was as great as it had been in the days of their courtship and his greatest concern now that he knew death to be near was for her future. He knew that he had held her back from even greater recklessness; he admired her; she was in his eyes brilliant, but he could not be blind to the fact that she made trouble for herself and everyone around her.
Without him to restrain her what would become of her? Her daughters could help her—if they would. But she would never accept help from them; nor did they love her sufficiently to give it.
Whenever they came to see him he would turn the conversation to their mother; he tried hard to make them see her virtues.
“You have the best mother in the world,” he told them.
Mary, the franker of the two, replied that they had the best of fathers and that was all they could expect.
Their love for him pleased him but he would have transferred that devotion to Sarah if he could have done so.
He sighed. His daughters were as strong-willed as their mother—or almost; and he knew that he was too tired and sick to attempt to bring peace between them.
He would lie in his chair listening to Sarah discussing his case with Sir Samuel Garth, a doctor whom she respected, or sneering at Dr. Mead, whose methods she described as useless; he knew that there was trouble about a rumour concerning Sarah’s support of the Pretender; she would always have her enemies. It was very troubling and, most of all, the knowledge that he could do nothing about it.
It was June and from his window in Windsor Lodge he could see the green of the forest and hear the bird song. Everything fresh and renewed, and he so old and tired! He was seventy-two. A good age for a man who had lived such a life as his; and something told him that the end was very close.
Sarah found him lying on his bed and she knew the worst.
“John, my dearest love,” she whispered.
And he looked at her unable to speak but the devotion of a lifetime was in his eyes.
“What shall I do without him?” she murmured.
Then she was all briskness. Send for Garth. Where was that fool Mead? The Duke had had another stroke.
Henrietta and Mary came and waited in an ante-room, and Sarah left the sickroom while they were there.
“We want no quarrels over his death-bed,” said Sarah.
It was too late for him now to plead with them; he was failing fast. His daughters took their last farewell of him and Sarah came to be with him to the very end, which was what he would wish.
On the 16th June in the year 1722 the great Duke of Marlborough died.
He lay in state at Marlborough House and was later buried with military honours in Westminster Abbey.
Sarah gratified at the honours done him, for none, as she repeated frequently, deserved them more, faced the world with a defiant glare, but inwardly she felt that her life was over, for what could it mean to her without him?
The news of Marlborough’s death came to Langley Marsh bringing back old memories.
The affairs of the Marlboroughs were often discussed at the table when guests were invited. Abigail would amuse the company with stories of Sarah’s antics; but as the years passed they seemed more like her imaginings of some fictitious creature than truth. But when news of Sarah’s latest adventures came, Abigail realized that she had not exaggerated.
Now the Duke was dead, and Sarah would no longer be supported by that wonderful devotion on which Abigail had built an ideal. Sarah had lost her most precious possession, and Abigail could even feel sorry for her.
She ceased to think of Harley now who, when he had been taken from his prison in the Tower and faced his judges, had been acquitted, though forbidden to come to Court or to go to the House of Lords. This meant that he was cut off from any hope of continuing his political career and passed into obscurity.
She occasionally heard stories of Bolingbroke, how he had married his French mistress, after the death of his wife and continued to live in France.
So they, who had been so close once, were widely separated to live lives of their own.
She was content with hers.
It was two years after the death of Marlborough when news reached her of Robert Harley’s death. He was at his house in Albemarle Street when he had been taken ill.
Memories came flooding back as they did when such events occurred. John, her brother, who had been a constant visitor to them since they had lived at Langley Marsh, kept talking of the past.
“It brings it all back,” he said. “It’s odd how you forget … until something like this happens.”
But John forgot more easily; he went off riding with young Samuel who was a favourite with him and was doubtless telling him stories of the old days when he had a command in the Army, and how he had lost it when the Germans came. Abigail remembered how she had fought for John against Marlborough—and lost. It was natural that when Anne was dead and Marlborough high in favour that John should lose his command.
But he was reconciled. He was not rich but he had a comfortable income and that would go to young Samuel in due course.
But as Abigail went about her duties she was thinking of the house in Albemarle Street and how she had gone there in secret to warn, to advise … and to hope.
She thought of Harley often during the months that followed, asking herself whether she would ever be completely rid of this nostalgia for the past which was like a physical pain. But when in October of that year her youngest daughter Elizabeth, who was only fifteen, was taken ill, she nursed her night and day and all past longings were obliterated in fear for the present.
Elizabeth died; and Abigail’s grief overwhelmed her; but it taught her one thing: her life, her emotions, her loyalties were there in Langley Marsh.
Sarah had not realized, until she lost him, how deeply she had loved her husband. He had been the one to show affection; she had accepted it as her right; she had stood fiercely by him, she had schemed for his sake; but only now did she know how much she needed him.
There was no one in the world who could take his place. The Earl of Coningsby tried. He was a man she and John had known for many years and six months after the funeral he wrote to Sarah offering her marriage.
Sarah read his letters through with astonishment. That anyone could think to take the place of Marl—and so soon! But she wrote to him gently, declining.
It was shortly afterwards that she received another proposal. This amused her because it came from the Duke of Somerset, whose wife had been that lady who had shared the Queen’s favour with Abigail Hill. Moreover, the Duke was a man obsessed by his nobility; he was known as the Proud Duke and some of the court wits had said that his pride in his birth amounted almost to mental derangement. Of course he was one of the premier dukes, sharing that honour with Norfolk; but it was rumoured that even his own children had to stand in his presence and one of them who thought he was asleep, daring to sit, was immediately “fined” £20,000 which was cut out of her inheritance.
Sarah, therefore, reading his dignified offer, was flattered; he must have a very high opinion of her, for one thing she had to admit she lacked was noble birth. Of course as Duchess of Marlborough she stood as high as any, and she would have everyone know it; but such a man as Somerset would certainly consider the Jennings’s and Churchills very humble folk.
Sarah took some pleasure in her reply. “If I were young and handsome as I was, instead of old and faded as I am, and you could lay the empire of the world at my feet, you should never have the heart and hand that once belonged to John, Duke of Marlborough.”