The phrases in this excerpt that help to reveal the meaning of the word "blight" are:
The meaning of the term Blight is <em>scourge, whiter, disaste</em>r.
The support of the meaning in the excerpt is "the last bitter hour": the final moments when someone is going to die.
“stern agony, and shroud, and pall": the end of a life using dramatical terms.
"breathless darkness": a kind of disaster that is coming, not to be avoided that paralyzed people.
All of the guests HAD gone to the concert in the park.
(But I think it could also be have, if you are talking about it happening in the present).
Pap is a drunk and is careless.
Why is he a drunk, because he gets "drunk as a fiddler".
Why is he careless, because that does not sound very safe to "clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion". Also he sounds kind of dumb to sell a coat for forty-rod whisky to get drunk. "traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod".
