The Tallants of Barton Volume II

[Pg 1]

CHAPTER I.
ENTER THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF VERNER.

So swiftly did one incident of change crowd upon another at this period of the lives which we fear we are but faintly sketching, that it seemed as if Fortune had arranged all the concomitant circumstances that were culminating in these few eventful days of autumn.

Fortune, “the great commandress of the world,” had already played strange pranks with those two charming girls at Barton. Until lately their destinies had flowed on smoothly and in peace. They had grown up side by side,—one the[Pg 2] mistress, the other the companion and friend,—and until now there had been no jealousy on either hand—until now Amy Somerton had been content with her lot. She had brooded over her lowly birth, in those hours when she had loved and dreamed about her love for Mr. Hammerton, but she had only seemed to look up the higher to her love. She had seen him as miners see the sky, far above her, and with hardly a beam of hope animating the thought that some day he might take her hand and raise her up, as the king selected the beggar maid in the poem.

In those sunny days of doubt and hope and maiden admiration, she had been happy in her own quiet, dreamy fashion, contented with Lionel’s kind words and delicate attentions. He had never, perhaps, told her in so many words that he loved her, but there was that in his voice and manner, when he addressed her, which led her to believe that he took delight in her own undisguised admiration. He had signified his pleasure in her society in a thousand different ways, and[Pg 3] for the time being this was enough to satisfy the heart-craving of Amy; but content to be humble, her pride nevertheless rose up against attack, with all the fierceness of injury. On that morning when she learnt that Lionel had left the country without one word at parting, she knew as if by instinct that her love was cast off. He must have known some time before he left that he was going, and yet he had not even deigned to say so. She knew how weak she had been; she knew how little she had striven to hide her love. Lionel Hammerton knew that she had loved him with all her heart and soul. She had not cared to disguise her feelings. She would have given up all the world for him, even like Goethe’s Marguerite. There was no sacrifice she would not have made, if sacrifice had been needed, at the feet of Lionel Hammerton; yet he had treated herself and her love with contempt and indifference.

You have seen how her spirit rebelled against the slight which she imagined was the assertion[Pg 4] of rank and fortune over lowly birth. Her whole nature seemed to have undergone a change—a change in which pride took such full possession of her heart, that there was no more room left for love. She who had sat and simpered over Tennyson like a love-sick, romantic girl, dreaming of Cophetua, and Camelot, and A. H. H., now thought of nothing but schemes of revenge and ambition. If she were only in Phœbe Tallant’s place, what would she not do to assert the rights of lowly birth and beauty! She envied her friend at the moment with a hot and a bitter envy, and hated her own more lowly origin.

It was the morning after her return from London. She sat at her bedroom window at the farm, commanding a long reach of the carriage-drive to Barton Hall. The park trees were standing in golden circles of leaves; the great elms were shaking down their last autumnal tributes to mother earth; the old roots were wrapped in soft carpet-like coverings of red and brown and gold; the long carriage-drive was fringed with the same[Pg 5] remnants of the dying year, and anon a gust of wind would sweep along the road and carry the leaves high up into the air, like flocks of birds sporting in the sunshine.

But Amy saw only desolation in the scene; she saw all her best and holiest aspirations tossed about the world like the fallen leaves. Whilst she sat there musing and fretting by the window, there entered the drive a carriage drawn by four horses; as it gradually approached, she saw that there were footmen behind, and that the equipage was splendid.

“As there are no fairies and magicians in these days,” she said to herself, “that is not Cinderella’s coach, and I am not Cinderella. Why, it must be Earl Verner’s carriage: his brother is going to call at Barton Hall. I will go there too.”

And as she said so, the carriage swept along, with the leaves flying about the horses’ heads and sporting round the carriage wheels.

Amy was right. This was Earl Verner’s carriage, and his lordship was on his way to pay[Pg 6] Mr. Tallant a personal visit. Once, and only once, previously had he honoured Barton Hall with his presence. He was of a quiet, retiring nature; a luxurious and learned nobleman, who cared more for rare books and works of art and old pottery than for anything else.

He was scarcely fifty years of age,—a lithe, supple man, with brown, curly hair, and evidently a quiet, luxurious fellow, who liked to have his own way and take things easily. He had never been married, and never would marry, he said, because it would bore him. It would be impossible, he had often said, for any woman to be happy with him; she would be jealous of his pictures and pottery in less than a month. And then the going into society, and fulfilling those duties of property which people talked about, and laying yourself out for being everybody’s friend but your own:—no, he could not marry; he would leave that, he said, to his brother Lionel.

It was through this brother Lionel that the Earl Verner called at Barton Hall this second[Pg 7] time. Mr. Hammerton had, it appeared, not only invested largely himself in some of the bubble concerns of the day, but he had induced his lordship to divert considerable sums of money into the same channel; and now that his lordship’s steward had large demands upon him for calls, Earl Verner said to himself, “I will go over and see Tallant—pay him a visit of condolence, and kill two birds with one stone.”

So his lordship sent in his card, and followed it into Mr. Tallant’s library, where he found the merchant engaged at his desk.

“Ah, Mr. Tallant, how do you do?” said his lordship, advancing with opening hand.

“I hope your lordship is well?” said Mr. Tallant. “May I offer you a chair?”

Earl Verner seated himself, and rubbed his hands familiarly before the fire.

“Mine is rather a selfish visit, Tallant,” he said. “I fear you must have thought me an unneighbourly fellow; but, you see, I am fond of quiet, and I rarely pay visits. Perhaps I take[Pg 8] too little interest in the county. However, you will believe me when I say that I was grieved to hear of your domestic trouble—deeply grieved; for I knew you had set your heart upon making that young fellow a sort of intellectual Crœsus, and——”

Here his lordship hesitated, seeing that the subject was painful to Mr. Tallant.

“We will not talk about it, Mr. Tallant, but pray accept my sympathy; and if there is anything I can do for the young fellow—I have some little influence, I am told, with the Government——”

“Thank your lordship. Let us act upon your former suggestion, and not talk about it. Richard Tallant is no longer my son.”

There was something so calm and determined in the merchant’s manner, that Lord Verner did not attempt to say any more on the subject.

“‘A fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind,’ you know,” he said by-and-by. “My brother Lionel Hammerton, like everybody else, has been[Pg 9] drawn into considerable speculations, and, what is more, he has led me into the popular folly. Finance is a splendid game for those who understand it, no doubt; but it is worse than the turf to a novice. My steward informs me that I have five hundred shares in the Oriental Bank, one hundred in the Mardike Mines, and five hundred in the Bank of Finance. There are calls due upon the whole of them, and two are to be wound up in Chancery. What shall I do in the matter?”

“Pay the calls, and be prepared to pay up the whole of the Finance and Mining shares, and expect no return,” said Mr. Tallant. “The Orientals may come right, and will come right if the shareholders and directors do not succumb to the bears on the Stock Exchange.”

“Hammerton holds similar shares: the same advice will apply with regard to those?”

“Yes, your lordship; you have nothing to do but pay.”

“Thank you. I knew I should get clear and straightforward advice from you, Mr. Tallant. I[Pg 10] have already occupied your time too long, and I see you are busy. I will shake hands with Miss Tallant, and take my leave.”

Mr. Tallant made no reply, but rose, and conducting his lordship to the drawing-room, bade him good-morning.

In the drawing-room Earl Verner found Miss Tallant and Miss Somerton. The former he had seen once before, the latter he now saw for the first time. Phœbe was attired in her ordinary morning style, and looked fresh and blooming as a rose, but with just a trace of languor in her manner which did not usually characterise it. Amy had astonished her friend immensely, only ten minutes previously, by suddenly entering the room in a favourite delicate white merino, and with unusual signs of care manifested in her toilette. Her appearance was worthy of that of a duchess. She looked like a queen in her own right. Her head never looked nobler; the graceful curves about her mouth and chin seemed to be full of sunshine and happiness; her eyes[Pg 11] sparkled with unwonted brilliancy, and when Lord Verner entered he found it difficult to remove his eyes from the lady’s face.

“Pray, present me to your friend,” he said, after he had shaken hands with Miss Tallant, and without waiting to give Phœbe the voluntary opportunity of doing so.

Miss Tallant presented Amy accordingly, and his lordship was not displeased to see how sensibly his rank affected her. His rank? Might not his appearance have something to do with that faint blush and unmistakable embarrassment? The thought flashed through his lordship’s mind in an instant, and it flattered him. He grew quite affable, and insisted, in his grand way, upon sitting down and having a little chat.

“I am sorry,” he said to Miss Tallant, “to see your father so sensibly affected by late events; it really grieves me to the heart—such a fine business gentleman as he was, so full of energy and resource. I must call again and see him. I fear he is moping. You must cheer him up,[Pg 12] Miss Somerton, you must bring your high spirits to bear upon the poor gentleman; he is quite downcast.”

“I fear we had best not interfere with him just now, your lordship; there are troubles which are better nursed and thought over. I hope Mr. Tallant will soon be well again,” said Amy, sweetly.

“Trouble ought to be quickly dispersed with such companionship as Mr. Tallant has in his daughter and yourself,” said Lord Verner, bent on paying Amy a compliment in return for her gracious looks.

“I fear me we scarcely understand all Mr. Tallant’s troubles just now, and perhaps he does not understand our sympathy and desire to console him. Your lordship is pleased to be complimentary; but there is little of woman’s society at Montem Castle, I have always heard, or you would understand how easy it may be to tire of it.”

“Ah, there you hit me, Miss Somerton; now really that is cruel. Because I am deserted by[Pg 13] the ladies, because I am a mopish, cross-grained, old bachelor, you think I am a fitting target for your sarcasm. Well, well, be it so. At least I have not to bear any woman’s taunts and jests at my own hearth. Ha! ha!—there, there—I think that is one to me. Don’t you think so, Miss Tallant?” and his lordship laughed merrily at his own jocularity.

Phœbe smiled a little sadly, and with a puzzled look at Amy, who gave her no opportunity to reply, but raising her hand slightly to give point to her words, she said:—

“No, and your lordship has no woman’s sweet smiles at your fireside either, no chatty sympathising companion in pretty dresses to walk by your side, and talk to you about all manner of things in which you are interested; no cheery, pleasant womanly face at the head of your table making everything brighter about you. There—is not that one to me, as your lordship puts it?”

Amy smiled so coquettishly, and looked so[Pg 14] much all that she had described, that his lordship soon found himself in an exuberance of spirits.

“Ah, I am no match for you; it is easy to see that you have lived in the world, Miss Somerton. Your Belgravian guns are too many for our poor little pop-guns in the country, eh, Miss Tallant?” said his lordship.

“Miss Somerton has lived in the country all her life,” said Phœbe.

“You surprise me,” said the Earl.

“And should never desire, I think, to live anywhere else,” said Amy. “On the whole I think a country life by far the happiest, and the most independent.”

“Indeed, I think so too,” said his lordship. “There is a certain amount of solitude in a comparatively retired country life, which allows the greatest scope for freedom of thought, and for manners and opinions.”

“In what is called society, you sacrifice your liberty, you lose your own individuality,” said[Pg 15] Amy, taking up the theme in a manner that she knew would be highly pleasing to Lord Verner, for she had an ample knowledge of his whims and peculiarities, and she was bent upon playing her new part in the most effective manner possible.

“Hear, hear!—admirably well illustrated!” said Earl Verner. “In the country one is not bored with all the trumpery little gossip of town. The news gets fairly sifted before it reaches us, as Gibbon, I think, somewhere says. We are the lookers-on, and we can rest or give up when we cease to be interested. In society, as you say, we are mixed up in the throng, we are part of all that is going on, we must be interested in all the frivolous nonsense. O, no, nothing like the country, and especially when you can occupy the mind.”

From this topic, in which Phœbe took great interest, the Earl glided into more lively subjects, and talked of pictures and new books; and he was surprised at the smartness and learning[Pg 16] evinced in some of Miss Somerton’s replies. She seemed to know a little of everything, and to express herself with such charming deference to his lordship’s greater wisdom, that Earl Verner was quite delighted. He was not bored a bit; he had never before been in the society of women, who knew anything about books, without being bored; he hated women who were at all clever as a rule; but there was an unaffected modesty, a charming naïveté about this lady’s manner, which left its fascinating spirit upon Lord Verner long after he had left Barton Hall. Who could she be, this splendid specimen of common sense and beauty?

When he had fairly left the house, Miss Somerton made a curtsey to herself in a mirror, and said, “Très bonne, Mademoiselle, your acting is really most natural.”

Then turning round upon Phœbe, who was gazing at her friend with an expression of the most profound astonishment, she said:—

“Pray forgive me, Miss Tallant; you won’t[Pg 17] cast me off for trying to outshine you this morning? You will not show me the door because I am only a bailiff’s daughter, and not rich?”

Amy’s sarcasm astonished Phœbe more than her previously extraordinary manner had done, and she could only think that poor Amy was not quite right in her mind.

“You surely cannot be in your right senses, Amy?” said Miss Tallant.

“Oh yes I am, dear. I was a poor foolish creature once; but I am going to appear in a new character in future. I will tell you all about it, like a dutiful companion and bailiff’s daughter, if you will not denounce me.”

“I fail to understand you, Amy,” said Phœbe, a little piqued at this undeserved reference to their relative positions.

Any further explanation on Amy’s part was prevented at that time by an unexpected message from the farm. Mrs. Somerton was seriously ill, and Luke had sent for his daughter, who went hurriedly to the bedroom which was set apart[Pg 18] for her at the Hall, changed her dress, and obeyed her father’s summons.

Mrs. Somerton had been ailing for several days. The shock which she had sustained by the news of her son’s imprisonment had been but little relieved by the intelligence of his release. She had persisted in thinking that his life was ruined. The taint of dishonesty, though it had only attached to him in imagination, was upon him. He could not hope, she thought, to make a name after that. Everything, she said, went wrong with them, and she was well punished. This had been the substance of her talk half the night when she should have been asleep, and in the morning, whilst Amy was acting her new part before Lord Verner, she had fallen from her chair, and her husband had carried her to bed.

When Amy appeared at her bedside, the mother turned her head away sobbing and weeping.

“I’m very ill, Amy,” she said, by-and-by,[Pg 19] “very ill. The longest day will come to an end at last. I hope the doctor will be here soon.”

“Dear mother, you must not give way so,” Amy said, kissing her forehead. “What shall I get for you?”

“Nothing, nothing. There’s no salve for sores of the mind, my girl,” replied the sick woman. “Let me have a doctor soon,” and then she closed her eyes.

It happened that Luke’s messenger to Avonworth met the doctor at the cross roads, returning from Berne; and he came therefore soon after Amy entered the room. Her mother looked at him eagerly as the doctor felt her pulse.

“Is there any danger, doctor?” she asked earnestly; “shall I die? pray do not deceive me. I am not a young woman, and don’t expect to live longer than my time; but do tell me if it has come?”

“There is no danger, I assure you,” said the doctor. “You have been excited lately, by some trouble perhaps—that affair of your son’s, which[Pg 20] has come all right, I am glad to hear. Your greatest want is quiet and repose. You must not alarm or excite yourself: you will soon be better.”

Amy and her father followed the doctor down-stairs to obtain a verification of this statement; and as they left her, Mrs. Somerton repeated slowly to herself, “quiet and repose.”

[Pg 21]

CHAPTER II.
CONTAINS IMPORTANT REVELATIONS, AND TERMINATES FATALLY.

The next day Mrs. Somerton grew worse, and in the afternoon she insisted that she was dying. The doctor, on the contrary, insisted that she was not doing anything of the sort.

In the afternoon she expressed a strong desire to see Mr. Christopher Tallant.

“I must see him, Luke. There is something which he should know before I die—something of the greatest importance to others besides himself. Do, pray, send for him. It does not matter what yon senseless doctor says; I can feel I am dying, and I durst not die without seeing Mr. Tallant.”

So Luke communicated this strange intelligence[Pg 22] to Mr. Tallant, and that gentleman proceeded at once to the farm.

“Oh, how ill you look, sir; how much you are changed,” said the sick woman, when Mr. Tallant appeared.

Mr. Tallant paid no heed to the remark, but sat down upon the nearest chair, and asked what she had to say to him.

“I am dying, sir, I am dying,” said Mrs. Somerton.

“I hope not,” said Mr. Tallant; “you look ill and excited, but not like dying.”

“They all say that,” she replied; “but sometimes the patient knows more than the doctors. Luke and Amy, will you leave me with Mr. Tallant; I have something to say to him. You will know of it hereafter, but don’t stand by and hear me confess my own wickedness. I am going to confess in time for a great wrong to be remedied—that is something in the way of atonement.”

Mr. Somerton and his daughter exchanged looks of blank astonishment, and left the room.

[Pg 23]

“Yes, yes, that is some comfort. There’s little good exposing a wrong when it cannot be remedied,” the sick woman went on, as if communing with herself. “The very thought does me good; I shall feel easier when the load is off my mind.”

“What is this secret, Sarah?” Mr. Tallant asked, and his thoughts wandered back to the time when she acted as his housekeeper; the sound of her Christian name coming from his own mouth seemed like the revival of an old memory.

“Are they gone?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the merchant; “do not delay; I have business letters of importance to write for post.”

“You would not think I was a very ambitious woman, Mr. Tallant; it is true, nevertheless. I was vain and full of being great when I was a girl, and all my life long I seem to have been going backwards instead of onwards. Nothing has come about as I expected.”

“We have all our disappointments,” said Mr.[Pg 24] Tallant, dryly; “I hope you are not going to recount all yours.”

“How hard you are, sir; how little you seem moved by my wretched position. Have you no fears concerning this confession I am about to make?”

“None,” said the merchant; “my troubles are about over. You can’t hit me any harder than I have been hit already, whatever you may have to tell.”

“You remember your second wife,” went on the woman, half raising herself in bed; “you remember her dark eyes, and her graceful, ladylike form. You remember how she wore her dark hair, and how musical her voice was?”

The merchant did remember. The loss of this woman had been the saddest episode in his life.

“Have you never seen any one like her?” the sick woman asked, looking steadfastly at him.

“Never,” he replied; “but why all this mystery?—go straight to the point, my dear woman, at once, or I must leave you.”

[Pg 25]

“I have not much more to say. I thought your own fatherly instinct would have assisted me. Do you remember that you left me in charge of your child after Mrs. Tallant’s death? You were so stricken with grief that you never saw the child but once; and when the poor lady was buried you travelled on the Continent for more than six months. I had an infant two months old when your child was born. You left your house and child in my care. I was to do everything that was right and proper under the circumstances. Do you remember?”

The woman grew very much excited, and would not be content with Mr. Tallant’s solemn nod in the affirmative.

“Do you remember?” she repeated.

“I do,” he said.

“Do you remember, when you returned home, that you came of your own accord and asked to see the child, and how you called it Phœbe, after its mother—do you remember?”

“Yes, most assuredly,” said the merchant.

[Pg 26]

“That child was my own child. I changed them before you had been gone a month.”

Here she paused to see what effect the revelation had upon her hearer. But she could glean nothing from Mr. Tallant’s solemn, passive face.

“Amy Somerton is your daughter, and the young lady called Phœbe Tallant is mine.”

She went on—“And now I can die in peace. It was all ambition. I thought to be somebody through the means of my child; it was not all for her own sake that I did it. I thought of it night and day before I did it—night and day, and day and night, and I changed my mind many a time, until at last Luke, my husband, became accustomed to the new face, and then I could not go back from my purpose. And yet all my plans fail, everything goes wrong, and this secret has burnt into my life like a red-hot coal, until I am dying of it—dying of it.”

Then she sank back exhausted, and the merchant sat by with his eyes fixed upon her face, but without making the slightest effort to give[Pg 27] her any assistance. He was a good deal stunned by the woman’s revelation; but if all other things had been well, he could have borne it without scarcely a pang either of indignation or regret, for both girls had been well cared for. They had lived like sisters, now for a long time past, and Amy had picked up an education almost equal to Phœbe’s.

“What proof have you of this base and ungrateful fraud?” he asked, when the woman opened her eyes again.

“Look at the picture of your wife—the one which hangs in the library—and then tell me how it is that you have not found out the deception long ago. Amy grows more like the lady who is gone every day, and Phœbe has not a feature in her face to remind you of her.”

Mr. Tallant saw the justice of the remark in an instant, and it seemed like a rebuke when he remembered how dearly the wife was beloved. With the picture and the familiar face of the assumed Amy Somerton in his mind for a[Pg 28] moment, his whole nature cried out in proof of the woman’s story; and now he bethought himself of the strange interest he had always taken in the girl, and how indifferent he had been in comparison to Phœbe, lovable as she undoubtedly was, beautiful as everybody must confess her to be.

It seemed for a moment as if a new link of interest between himself and the world had been forged by this confession.

“You will wait until I am dead, sir—pray do—before you repeat my story: do, do wait; I should not like to lose Luke’s respect in my last moments.”

“I will not divulge what you have confessed, at present at least,” said the merchant; “but justice must be done.”

“Yes, yes, that is right; but I am not long for this world—there is no hurry now.”

The merchant promised to keep her secret for the present, but she could get no other promise from him.

[Pg 29]

She asked his forgiveness, and he forgave her.

When he left her she seemed to be considerably better. Exhausted by the excitement of her confession, she lay motionless when Amy and her father returned. She had been slightly feverish all day; towards night brain fever set in, and then the doctor confessed there was danger.

Meanwhile Mr. Tallant had sent for his London lawyer, who remained closeted with him all the next day. In the afternoon a clerk came down with parchment and other materials for engrossing, and Mr. Christopher Tallant made a new and final will, little thinking how soon it would come to be read aloud for the benefit of the parties interested therein.

He had taken every means for verifying the rumours which had reached him concerning his son; for many days past he had had a private detective upon his track, who had laid before him unmistakable proofs of his son’s commercial dishonesty. The detective had even hunted out the[Pg 30] card scandal at the Ashford Club, in which Mr. Richard Tallant had not altogether escaped suspicion. He laid before the father shares recently transferred by Richard Tallant in the Meter Iron Works Company, whose stock had begun to fall in the market. The managing director had sold shares at par which had been at ten premium, and there was evidently a scheme on foot to run them down to a discount, and then Mr. Richard Tallant would buy up all he could get, for there was not a better concern in all England than the Meter Works.

It was a sore home-thrust this dealing with the Meter shares; but not the worst blow of all. Certain bill transactions, in which something very nearly akin to forgery had been committed, were disclosed, and Richard Tallant appeared to be a designing sharper of the first class,—one of the leading Stock Exchange conspirators, through whose arts so many concerns had been brought to ruin, and from which disasters the conspirators had reaped great golden harvests.

[Pg 31]

The merchant was a just man, and he would have every possible proof of his son’s dishonour before he wiped him out for ever. He had ample proof, and he wiped him out accordingly.

On the second night after Mrs. Somerton’s confession the lawyer and his clerk returned to London, and the merchant, having sent to inquire after the bailiff’s wife, who continued dangerously ill, took a light supper, retired to his bedroom, and dismissed his man for the night.

He took with him the vignette of which Mrs. Somerton had spoken; he pulled an arm-chair towards the fire, and sat gazing at the picture long after everybody was a-bed.

He sat there when the last embers in the grate had faded out, and he sat there when the sun rose the next morning—sat there with the picture at his feet—sat there with the red sunlight streaming through the blind, and through apertures in the door of the adjoining room; he sat there with his head upon his breast, his hands[Pg 32] hanging down, and with his eyes wide open; but he had been dead for several hours when daylight looked in upon his corpse.

The sunshine was streaming in upon him, we say, and it was so; for on that morning the sun had risen with unusual splendour.

The east was all ablaze with crimson and golden hues, and from its gorgeous throne the sun shone forth as if with a burning glowing sense of its own grandeur. Troops of radiant beams, bearing commissions from the mighty king of day, gleamed above “the high-raised clouds,” dispersed “the morning fogs,” flung wreaths of sunny beauty upon the mantling hills, and glimmered in golden glittering sheen upon the windows of Barton Hall.

Not upon the windows only did the sunbeams fall, we say, but they penetrated the darkened rooms and fell upon the dead man; and here they played softly upon his whitened hair, and stole about the room as if they sought for somebody whom he loved that they might bring them[Pg 33] to his side. Through every cleft and crevice the morning sunbeams streamed; a thousand motes sprang up and danced in the columns of light, as if they mocked the grave; and a reflection from the merchant’s watch-seals trembled like an active eye upon the wall.

Still the merchant slept on in his long, long sleep, until at length the sun rose higher and higher, paling with his growing radiance the gaudy colours of his throne, and sending forth streams of purer and brighter light. By-and-by a door was opened in the quiet room, followed by an expression of horror and amazement, and then hurried footsteps came and went, additional doors were opened and shut, and in a few minutes the household was astir, heavily laden with the morning’s sad discovery.

[Pg 34]

CHAPTER III.
“ARCADES AMBO,” BUT FLOURISHING NEVERTHELESS.

All this time Richard Tallant had remained in London; not only remained in London, but had regularly and assiduously attended to his duties at the offices of the Meter Iron Works Company.

There had been numerous board meetings, and a half-hearted kind of effort had been made to induce the chairman’s son to retire. Mr. Christopher Tallant had given notice of his resignation; but the board could not agree upon the question of his successor. Mr. Richard Tallant attended every meeting, and had increased his holding of the company’s stock to a large and important extent.

[Pg 35]

In his father’s absence he had made himself of value to the company; the run upon their shares had been of brief duration; they had not only speedily recovered, but had gone up to a heavy premium. Richard Tallant held his own in the company with a tenacity that surprised everybody connected with it. Unabashed by the disclosures at the Oriental Bank, undaunted by newspaper attacks, since that notorious meeting when his father left the chair of the Banking Company, he had been almost ubiquitous. He had commenced actions against two newspapers for libel, and had threatened others. Some of his former friends cut him dead in the Stock Exchange and in the Park; but he defied them all, and was to be seen as usual at the Corner, on ’Change, and at Westminster.

He had written a long letter full of excuses, and promises, and regrets, and justification to his father; but the proud old merchant did not even acknowledge it. His disgrace was not so much as a nine days’ wonder in the City, and his[Pg 36] continued success was considered, by many, to be a sufficient justification of his conduct.

Amidst so many failures, with such numerous instances of sharping, and in the presence of a panic so severe, Richard Tallant’s name soon ceased to be canvassed: he paid every call that was made upon him, and he maintained his reputation for wealth. It was known that he had made enormous sums of money in recent speculations, and that he was financially independent. So many men were shaking in their commercial shoes, that few thought themselves able to afford to go out of their way to interfere with a rich man.

“What have I done?” Mr. Richard Tallant asked at one of the Meter Board Meetings, when he was attacked by an old friend of his father. “What have I done more than others have done, and are doing daily?”

“You have circulated false reports to damage the credit of good concerns, in order that you might make money by clever manipulations of shares,” said his opponent.

[Pg 37]

“That is a mere assertion,” was Mr. Richard Tallant’s reply. “Prove it,—prove it, sir; and take this as a caution if you cannot prove it; there is an offence called slander, which is actionable at law; rely upon it, I will not allow these things to be said with impunity. If I have made a few hundred thousand pounds by speculation on the Stock Exchange, by carefully watching favourable opportunities for buying and selling, it is not my fault that others have lost, and I defy you or any other man to prove that I have done anything without the pale of legitimate speculation.”

“Did you not lend your shares in the Oriental Bank, of which you were a director, to persons who were bearing the market? Did you not throw shares upon the market, and did not timid shareholders sell, in consequence, at a heavy depreciation, and did you not afterwards buy all you could get?”

“Suppose I say yes? Had I not a right to deal as I pleased with my own shares? If I did[Pg 38] depreciate the property of the concern—which I deny—was I not depreciating my own?”

“Why were you absent from that meeting?”

“I had unexpected business elsewhere.”

“Why have you not answered the attack which was made upon you?”

“I will answer it in a court of justice, sir,” said Mr. Richard Tallant, striking his fist upon the table. “Do you think I shall permit the thing to pass over? You shall see how I will put my detractors down. Do you think I will permit the name of Tallant to be sullied by pettifogging brokers in the City?—by twopenny-halfpenny newspapers? Do you think a man with a balance of two hundred thousand pounds at his bankers in these times is to be put down by reports and rumours, and So-and-so says, and bosh of that character? If you do, you do not know Richard Tallant. And with regard to the Meter Iron Works, how many are there who have a larger stake in the prosperity of the[Pg 39] concern than I have myself? Who charges me with neglect of duty?”

Mr. Christopher Tallant—poor man—might almost have been proud of the way in which his clever, unscrupulous son asserted himself. One or two of the old men at the board applauded and backed him up. There were many things in which he had been useful during his father’s absence, and it was chiefly through his influence with a certain railway company that a recent extensive order for girders had come in from India. Above all, the young fellow had been successful, and there was a manliness in his stand-up fight against all opponents that seemed to carry everything before him.

The truth is, on that day when his course of knavery was exposed, he had sent a trusty messenger to the meeting to report what took place, and when he learnt the result, he quietly shut himself up in his rooms at the West End, and debated with himself upon his line of conduct. “Shall I make a bolt of it?” or “Shall I fight it[Pg 40] out?” These were the two momentous questions which he put and argued out in a dozen different ways.

He knew that his father would never forgive him, and, despite all his ill conduct, this gave him, a pang or two of regret and sorrow. It was not until midnight was long past, that he settled his plans: the ashes of many cigars lay upon the table, and numerous sheets of paper, covered with figures, were torn up and scattered about the hearth, before the final resolve was made.

“I’ll fight it out; I’ll go through with it,” he said at last. “The world bows down before success, no matter how it is obtained: money opens all doors, whoever knocks. I’ll go in for money—reputation be hanged. Who has got a reputation worth a button in these times? We are in the midst of a panic that will sweep away hundreds of reputations. What is the reputation of an honest bankrupt worth? Where is the flyblown reputation that money, and success, and bounce, and swagger will not cover?”

[Pg 41]

So Mr. Richard Tallant began to “fight it out” next day. He served two persons with notices of action for slander, and commenced actions for libel against two newspapers; he obtained insertion of a paragraph to this effect in a monetary journal; he attended to his duties at the Meter Works with an assiduity that astonished everybody; he wrote that letter to his father, and he fought that battle at the Meter Board which we have briefly indicated; he plunged deeper and deeper into speculations, and he was successful in almost every monetary operation in which he was engaged.

Meanwhile things were not quite so pleasant with Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs. His overthrow had been completed by poor Dibble’s confession. “Whom the gods devote to destruction, they first deprive of understanding.” Mr. Gibbs ought to have had sufficient experience of life to have known that his passion for revenge was mastering his cunning; he ought to have known enough of character to have seen that Dibble would break[Pg 42] down in the part which he had assigned to him; but Fortune had permitted Gibbs to have his day, as she lets every other dog have his; and she selected her time and instruments accordingly for bringing his day to an end.

With justice upon his heels, he had been compelled figuratively to blot himself out; he could not only not sign his name to anything, but he could not put in a personal appearance anywhere as Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs; he had ventured to do a little business in his semi-clerical capacity, but failure was the result. The transfer of the shares which he had induced Dibble to take had never been completed, and when Gibbs benevolently took them back again they were improving; but two days after Dibble ran away, they went down to a heavy discount. Other things in which he was interested went wrong, the purse that the police held he could not hope to obtain, and he soon found himself reduced to his last fifty pounds.

He invested this sum characteristically.

[Pg 43]

Assuming his semi-clerical disguise, he took lodgings in a quiet respectable street off the Strand, purchased a Newspaper Press Directory, and wrote out the following attractive advertisements:—

“Loans.—Sums of money, varying from 2l. to 2000l., may be had for short or long periods, on personal security, on application to the undersigned. Secrecy observed in all transactions. Interest at the rate of 5 per cent. Apply (enclosing stamp for reply) to James Marfleeting, Esq., Accountant, 3, Great Charlton-street, Strand, London.”

“To Widows and Ladies in Needy Circumstances.—The advertiser has patented a new invention, which opens up employment for ladies in their own homes, whereby they can make from 1l. to 2l. a week with ease. Send 5s. in stamps for materials and instructions to the inventor and proprietor, Henry Cavendish, Esq., No. 6, Burkit-street, City, London.”

[Pg 44]

Having penned these enticing announcements, Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs called upon an engraver and ordered a couple of very business-like headings to be printed upon unimpeachable letter paper.

These he obtained in the course of the next day, and meanwhile he studied the Press Directory. This valuable work contained an elaborate index to the newspapers of the United Kingdom, giving their titles in full, the names and addresses of the publishers, with a brief description of the towns in which they were published, and the dates of their first publication. It also contained the publishers’ own descriptions of their newspapers, from which it would seem that each paper was the best medium for giving publicity to announcements of all descriptions; that several journals in the same town claimed to have the largest circulation; that they were all leading papers, first-class family papers, influential papers; some were the oldest Liberal papers, some the oldest Conservative papers, many the only Penny papers in the district.

[Pg 45]

Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs made a careful list of these numerous journals, selecting largely from among the newest penny papers, carefully jotting down all the dailies, and judiciously balancing the old weeklies, in the manufacturing districts, against those claiming to be more especially county papers.

A printer in Shoreditch struck off for him a number of copies of his advertisements, and when all was prepared he commenced to write his orders for their publication. With these orders he enclosed packets of postage stamps, varying in value from sixpence to five and six shillings. Nearly one hundred and fifty went away without any stamps at all, the writer requesting a bill for the amount to be sent off when the advertisement had appeared, with a quotation for thirteen, twenty-six, and fifty-two insertions. These were chiefly posted to the penny district papers and to those most recently established.

These missives duly passed through the post-office, and were opened by newspaper publishers,[Pg 46] clerks, proprietors, and editors, the next day, in all parts of England. Some of them were opened in bright, well-furnished counting-houses; many in dingy little back rooms; others were carried up to private houses, where proprietors and editors read their letters before business hours in the morning.

If you could have witnessed the varied treatment which these letters of Mr. Gibbs, alias Marfleeting, alias Cavendish, received, you would have been highly entertained. Some gentlemen who opened the letters smiled contemptuously, said, “Indeed,” and returned stamps and order; others who were not favoured with stamps tossed the letters into waste-paper baskets; some said, “Bah!” and tore the things up. In many cases, however, the stamps were passed to credit, and the advertisement ordered for insertion in the ordinary course of business; and amongst the new and cheap district papers, half printed in London and otherwise, the order unaccompanied by stamps was duly obeyed, and a price gravely[Pg 47] quoted for thirteen, twenty-six, and fifty-two insertions, with discount carefully mentioned for pre-payment.

In a few days, therefore, Mr. Gibbs’ advertising baits were duly displayed in numerous journals. Several leading papers had at various times cautioned their readers against this class of announcement; still advertisements of the kind occasionally obtained insertion in the ordinary course of business. Thus the two I have mentioned had places in many newspapers, and in less than a week Mr. Gibbs found quite a heap of letters waiting for him at the little coffee-house, No. 6, Burkit-street, City, addressed to Henry Cavendish, Esq. To the first batch of these he replied, stating that applications were so numerous the materials could not be manufactured fast enough, but that they should be sent off in a few days. He had so many communications at Great Charlton-street, that he was compelled to have a printed form of reply, and in this he enclosed another form, which the applicant was requested[Pg 48] to fill up and forward by return, with five shillings for inquiry fees and five shillings for preliminary fees, which would be returned in case the loan were not granted. “An agent will call upon you personally in the course of three or four days with the cash, Mr. Marfleeting having several agents travelling through the provinces, as he finds this mode of doing business safer, more expeditious and private, than negotiations by letter.”

Hundreds of clients responded to Mr. Marfleeting’s reply, and scores of ladies continued to address private notes to Henry Cavendish, Esq.

What pinching and starving, and need, and keeping up appearances, all these letters represented! What stories they indicated! What fears of bankruptcy, what hopes deferred, what cheerless hearths, what battles for life, what misery! Small tradesmen with bills of exchange coming due; shopkeepers pressed for rent; clerks who had overrun the constable; mechanics with extravagant wives; men of small means who had[Pg 49] speculated, and had to meet unexpected calls upon shares which were to have made their fortune, and would prove their ruin—drowning men in the financial sea—these were they who caught at the monetary straws of Marfleeting. Widows with small allowances hardly enough to keep body and soul together, widows who lived on lodgers, widows keeping up appearances, spinsters with precarious incomes, daily governesses, eldest daughters in large families, mothers with invalid and drunken husbands—these were foremost in the crowd who sent their money to Henry Cavendish, Esq., and saw in the future competency and comfort by means of his glorious invention; and some of these poor people went down upon their knees at night and prayed that God would prosper their labours and so extend the use of this new invention, that it should be a blessing to them and to others who might be in necessity and tribulation.

[Pg 50]

CHAPTER IV.
IN WHICH RICHARD TALLANT VISITS BARTON HALL AGAIN, AND ARTHUR PHILLIPS COMPLETES A GREAT WORK.

The news of Mr. Christopher Tallant’s death brought down his son by the earliest train. He hired a fly at the Avonworth Hotel, and reached Barton in the afternoon of a cold November day.

He felt that his conduct had hurried on the sad event which brought him once again in the vale of Avonworth. The telegram which Phœbe had considered it her duty to send to him, had for a moment struck him down like a blow. But of late he had so thoroughly schooled himself to his fate, had so trampled upon conscience and feeling, that he soon recovered his former coolness.

[Pg 51]

The thought occurred to him whether any change had been made in the will which he knew had been signed in his favour. Was this fine estate his own? Were those fields and woods his? Had that property in Yorkshire, those splendid farms on the wolds, reverted to the only son of Christopher Tallant? How much had the old man left?

It occurred to him that his father might have changed his will, indeed he had every reason to believe that such had been his intention. But he would not let this more than probable contingency have a settled place in his thoughts; for the desire of possession came upon him as the country conveyance dragged slowly along through the fine well-timbered park which had been fields within his own memory—fields overgrown with hedges and elm trees, and gorse and brushwood.

The blinds were down in all parts of the house, and Chester, the late Mr. Tallant’s man, opened the hall door slowly, and took Mr. Richard’s coat and hat without a smile or a word.

[Pg 52]

“Where is my sister?” said Richard, with an air of authority and command.

“I will inquire, sir,” said the old man.

“Tell her to come to me in the library; and look here, bring me some dry sherry.”

“Yes, sir,” said Chester.

Richard Tallant had qualms of conscience as he entered the familiar hall; a sense of fear came over him; he remembered all of a sudden the thousand acts of parental kindness and liberality that had been lavished upon him. Conscience would not let him forget all this, and honour reminded him how low he had fallen; so he spoke loud and gave commands, and assumed a tone of authority.

Phœbe soon came, pale and careworn, and with the tears in her eyes, she submitted to be kissed, and she kissed Richard in return, but she said not a word.

“Have you nothing to say?” Richard asked, after a few moments; “no explanation to give?”

“Don’t ask me for explanations—Chester will[Pg 53] tell you about it,” she replied, softly and tenderly.

“Oh, very well, as you please, as you please,” he said, assisting himself to the sherry.

“Will you come up-stairs and see him?” Phœbe asked, putting her hand upon his arm, and wondering for a moment at his changed appearance.

He could not meet the glance of those big inquiring eyes.

“See whom?” he asked loudly and filling another glass.

“See our father,” said Phœbe in a whisper.

The son paused, with the sherry partly raised to his lips, and replaced the full glass upon the table.

“Come,” said Phœbe; “come, I will go with you.”

“No,” he said at length with a great effort, and withdrawing his arm from her gentle touch, “No; by-and-by.”

He dare not look upon that cold white face;[Pg 54] for whilst Phœbe was talking, conscience gripped him savagely and made him a coward. He could look at nothing but the floor, and there the very boards seemed to twit him with his infamy and ingratitude.

His only relief was to rush to the bell and ring for Chester, and when he came, Phœbe glided out of the room to her chamber.

It had been a particularly sad and anxious time for Phœbe, and she appeared to stand alone in her sorrow. Arthur Phillips, from whom she had been wont occasionally to ask advice upon minor things, and in whose talk about art she had been so often engrossed, had not been near the house for months; the change which had recently come over Amy, Richard Tallant’s estrangement from her father, that father’s sorrow and death, all seemed to come upon her, blow after blow, and to leave her without one sympathising soul to whom she could look for a ray of hope and comfort.

What had become of Arthur Phillips? She[Pg 55] had wondered a hundred times. His absence had been like something gone out of her life—like some domestic affliction. Her palette and canvas had lost all interest for her now. They had reminded her too much of her deep and secret sympathy in all that concerned him. She did not confess to herself that she loved him, and, truth to tell, she hardly knew that she did love him; but his absence was a hardship. His quiet homage was something that satisfied her; his warm enthusiasm about the beautiful and the true; his stories of painters who had won their way to fame and fortune by dint of their inborn genius and industry; his judgment about books; his criticisms on poetry; his compliments when she had been more than ordinarily successful in some touch of colour: all this had been part of her existence, and with Arthur’s absence had come all the manifold troubles which had afflicted her young life, clouded her hopes, and covered her with a sorrow too deep for words.

And what had Arthur Phillips been doing[Pg 56] all this time? Painting that grand picture which he said he would paint when last we heard him speak some months ago.

The commercial panic had sorely afflicted a special local manufacture in which a large number of men and women had been employed at Severntown. As Arthur was returning home, on the day following that evening when we saw him at work in the fields, he met a number of operatives thrown out of work, who with no chance of the factory being re-opened, had set out “on tramp.” Arthur questioned them, and found that on the next morning nearly a hundred families were going to leave by train for Liverpool on their way to Australia. Subscriptions had been entered into to promote a scheme of emigration started by the operatives themselves, and this first exodus would take place the next morning.

Few of us but will remember, at some period of life, standing in a railway station, and watching the departure of a train containing[Pg 57] some one the taking leave of whom excited all those human sensibilities which find vent in

“The silent pressure of the hand

Which friends too well can understand.”

We have seen to the luggage, found out the best seat for our friend, advised him to keep clear of the draft, begged of him to write at an early day, and done a variety of other trivial things by way of keeping the little time occupied, and smothering as much as possible the sorrows of parting. And then, when the squeezing of the hand was over, and the engine had shrieked the signal of departure, and the train had moved off, and grown less and less until it was out of sight, we have stood gazing at the long lines of rails over which it had disappeared, with thoughts and regrets too deep for words. Let us not deny such touches of nature. The most querulous, petulant, hard-hearted of mortals have experienced these emotions, and with something of the fear that the future might sever those ties of friendship, the danger of the breaking of[Pg 58] which Bulwer Lytton describes so forcibly when he says: “The true sadness is not in the pain of parting—it is in the when and the how you are to meet again with the face about to vanish from your view; from the passionate farewell to the woman who has your heart in her keeping, to the cordial good-bye exchanged with pleasant companions at a watering-place, a country-house, or the close of a festive day’s blithe and careless excursion—a chord, stronger or weaker, is snapped asunder in every parting, and Time’s busy fingers are not practised in re-splicing broken ties. Meet again you may: will it be in the same way? with the same sympathies? with the same sentiments? Will the souls, hurrying on in diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream? Rarely, rarely.”

Here was Arthur’s inspiration; he read the simple thoughts and the attendant quotation in a newspaper. The parting with Lionel Hammerton had prepared him for it, and all[Pg 59] of a sudden he said to himself, “This shall be my great picture, and I will call it ‘Seeking New Homes.’”

He was at the railway station with the dawn of the next day, busily engaged sketching various points.

By-and-by, as the emigrants began to arrive, he made hurried sketches of faces and costumes, and in the course of an hour or two he stood there, fully realising all the inspiration which had come upon him in the highway: his broad elastic sympathies had been excited to the full, and he stood watching the train that had gone, almost with tears in his eyes—stood amidst numerous little affecting groups of men and women, and shared their sorrows.

The train which had gone was gaily decorated with ribbons, and had quite a holiday appearance; the passengers had been singing some well-known ballad; and the friends left behind had cheered them. People must do something to keep down that choking sensation[Pg 60] which the strongest have felt at parting, and songs and cheering were capital resources for “driving dull care away,” on the occasion of a hundred poor families seeking the means of existence in a distant land.

Great battles have no more moving incidents than those social catastrophes which fall now and then upon manufacturing districts, bringing all the ills of poverty and starvation, and forced idleness upon poor, uneducated, improvident people. At these times instances enough of self-sacrifice and love crop up amongst them to make up for all the stories of selfishness and brutality that come out in their prosperity.

Arthur Phillips did not fail to take in the whole of that scene at the railway station: he did not forget those men and women with the blanched cheeks and tearful eyes. To them the parting could not be otherwise than painfully significant. It was a separation more fruitful of grief and apprehension than the common parting of friends. It was a forced[Pg 61] exile, which those left behind might soon be compelled to follow—a flying from one ill to another, between which those left behind stood wavering, with little ones around them looking up for comfort and finding none.

The artist bent himself to his work from that very day. At night he completed his various sketches and studied his subject, and in the day he painted from early morn to evening—painted for very life—painted for love, and money, and fame, and sympathy. It was striking out in a new line, but he had no fear of the result. In less than a month the picture began to assume form and character; never had artist worked with more rapidity and with more earnestness of purpose. The work had never flagged—it had gone on day by day without interruption or change of plan. The subject was so thoroughly mapped out in the artist’s mind, that time alone stood between him and its completion. The figures were few but full of character, and the last touch was given[Pg 62] to the whole on that morning when Mr. Tallant died.

The story was wonderfully told: the picture was a poem on canvas—full of human nature, brimming over with sympathy. As a work of art—for conception, drawing, perspective colour, it was truly a grand picture; and Arthur felt his success as he sat before it that morning, when the sun was shining upon the dead man at Barton Hall.

On the next day, before the picture could hardly be said to be dry, Arthur had it packed, and he posted with it to London, where he had arranged for it to be hung at a winter exhibition. Josephs the dealer, who had previously purchased everything Mr. Phillips chose to let him have, had heard some whisper about it, and had visited Arthur the week before; but the artist could not be prevailed upon to show the picture to anybody but his old housekeeper who had nursed him when he was a boy, and she had sat before it and cried and sobbed over it almost heart-broken:[Pg 63] then Arthur felt that he had painted a great picture, and he knew it when he unveiled it again in that long room in Suffolk-street, Pall Mall, before a small critical company.

In a few hours “Seeking New Homes” was talked of in artistic and literary society all over London, and when everybody was asking everybody else if they had seen the new picture, Arthur Phillips drove down to Paddington and took a ticket for Avonworth.

[Pg 64]

CHAPTER V.
THE TWO TEMPLES.

The success of Christabel, “the mysterious lady,” in some new business at the Severntown races, together with the high appreciation which the working classes exhibited of the tricks of “Momus” and his master, induced the showman to make a considerable stay at Severntown.

Mr. Henry Bilks, “the only living skeleton extant,” had also made overtures to Mr. Martin to join him in a permanent winter exhibition, and, so strangely does one thing influence another, that the advertisement of Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs played its part in the scheme.

The Temple of Magic had already been removed to the Blue Post’s Yard, where “the riders” and[Pg 65] other companies of public entertainers usually took their stand; the public had already been addressed in grandiloquent terms, in very grey ink, on very thin paper; and Mr. Dibble had solemnly done duty “on the outside” for many nights, when Mr. Bilks drove to the side-door, (“private entrance, ladies and gentlemen, at the side, price three pence!”), and without further ado went behind the magic curtain, and offered to join the wizard for the winter season, if the wizard would take a shop in some public street, advertise the exhibition, and conduct it upon something like high-class principles.

The “living skeleton” had left with the showman copies of various testimonials, and a copy of the Slumkey Guardian. It was in this latter journal that Martin had spelled out the Loan Office advertisement, whereupon he dictated to Dibble the terms of a letter which should be sent to James Marfleeting, Esq.

It was a strangely quaint and ungrammatical letter this, penned by Thomas Dibble. It set forth,[Pg 66] in big straggling letters, that the writer was the proprietor of an exhibition of considerable fame in the provinces; that he was anxious to add thereto additional attractions, and make it a permanent thing for the winter at the important city of Severntown, where it had recently attained to a pitch of great celebrity.

The writer required a loan of one hundred pounds for six months, re-payable by instalments, and he was prepared to give his bond for the amount, together with security upon his properties.

“Indeed,” said Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, who was just preparing to remove his quarters from the street off the Strand. “Indeed! Thomas Dibble, by all that is wonderful! I never forget handwriting, and I shall never forget Master Dibble’s above everybody else’s. Surely he has not turned showman? No; he is the exhibitor’s fag, his man-of-all-work, and he has written this letter from dictation. I will reply by-and-by. Meanwhile, I must see what there is to be made out of this[Pg 67] with Mrs. Dibble. I fancy the old girl would give something to know where her faithless Tommy is.”

Thus soliloquised Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, whilst he packed up sundry letters and papers, and prepared to change his residence.

Some of his correspondents were beginning to be tiresome; they had commenced to require explanations of the continued delay; and the women who had written to the Coffee House in the City, were appealing in heart-breaking terms for the promised materials, or the return of their money.

“It is getting hot,” the ex-swell went on. “I can’t stand these pathetic epistles; they hurt my feelings. Poor creatures! They would surely be satisfied if they knew that they were contributing to maintain the faded splendours—ah! of a buck out of luck. That’s rhyme—’gad, bless my soul! who would have thought that I should burst out into rhyme? I am very sorry, ladies, that I cannot afford to forward the materials in question, nor the trifling sums which you have—haw—entrusted[Pg 68] to my care. And, messieurs, les pauvres gentilhommes, and you, ye wretched traders, who get into debt beyond your means of payment, I will make further inquiries into your cases. Meanwhile I am much obliged to you for the fees which you have forwarded so promptly.”

The next day a detective officer inquired at No. 3, Great Charlton Street, Strand, for James Marfleeting, Esq.; but that gentleman had left the house without giving the landlady warning, or paying for the last week’s rent.

Shortly afterwards, in the garb of a “Mossoo” of the Leech cut, and with a heavy black moustache, Mr. Gibbs called at Mrs. Dibble’s. He found that lady in a very melancholy state of mind, and considerably thinner than when we last saw her.

With a strong French accent he asked Mrs. Dibble if her husband had run away, and if his name was Thomas.

“Yeth, thir,” was Mrs. Dibble’s reply. “It ith with feelings of thorrow and shame—though why[Pg 69] I should have such feelings, ith not my fault or deserth—it ith, however, with these feelings that I thay yeth to you, and having had a boarding-school education ath a girl, and been brought up in the highest spear of society, it ith a degradation which I feel to the core.”

“Ah, madame, dat is bad, dat is very bad; for it is goot to have education,—and why shall your husband leave you?”

Mr. Gibbs shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands as he spoke, and Mrs. Dibble sighed and shook her little stumpy curls sympathetically.

“It ith a long story, which I am not inclined to go into unnecessarily,” said Mrs. Dibble, “and there are griefs which are not improved by being talked about. Ath a busineth woman, and one who wath the daughter of a builder that erected hundreds of houses and public inthitutions, the specifications of which I have written out many a time,—ath a busineth woman, I would athk what your busineth ith with me? and then we can go on.”

[Pg 70]

Mrs. Dibble sat down, smoothed her apron, and looked Monsieur full in the face.

“If I shall pring you to vere your husband shall be, is he of—ah! vat sall I say?—is he of dat value to you for vich you sall pay mine fees, vich is out of mine pocket?”

Mrs. Dibble did not reply, but proceeded to fasten her dress behind, which required a considerable effort.

“You vill be surprised at vat I ask, but dat vill disappear ven I tell you I am attached to a Private Inquiry Office, vich is on de French plan, and dat I am in de detective line à la Française, and I can restore to your arm de husband of your heart.”

“You can?” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble. “Prove that to me, and I will pay your fees.”

“Is dat his writing?” he asked, showing her part of the showman’s letter.

“It ith!” Mrs. Dibble exclaimed. “I should know it in ten thousand.”

“Vell—fifteen pounds is my fees for his[Pg 71] direction, vere you sall find him,” said Gibbs.

Mrs. Dibble demurred to this for some time, and argued the point in a dozen ways; but Mr. Gibbs was not to be moved. Finally Mrs. Dibble gave him three five-pound notes, and in return received his address at “The Temple of Magic, Blue Posts Inn yard, Severntown.”

It was rather a courageous thing on the part of Mr. Gibbs to visit Mrs. Dibble; but he no doubt felt perfectly secure in his disguise.

He visited her at a time when he calculated that her lodgers would be away at their several places of business; for Paul Somerton might have been more penetrating than Mrs. Dibble.

Paul still lodged with Mrs. Dibble, and was rapidly making his way to a respectable position through the kind introductions of his patron, Mr. Williamson.

His unsophisticated manners, his honesty, his thoroughly English characteristics, his manliness, and his intelligent face had quite won Mr.[Pg 72] Williamson’s heart, and he frequently invited Paul to sup with him at his chambers in the Temple.

A quiet cozy little room, up several narrow flights of stairs—a snug little room, though slightly fusty—with two sides occupied by law books bound in calf. There were sundry maps and old engravings hung here and there; a bust of a Chancery judge, a ditto of Shakspeare; a coal-box, a couple of easy chairs, a table littered with papers, and a mantel-piece covered with visiting and invitation cards.

When the sombre curtains were drawn, and that mysterious old woman, who turned up from some dark corner outside the door, was permitted to retire for the night, and Mr. Williamson produced the sugar and lemons and whisky—when the kettle was singing on the fire—then indeed was that little room snug, and cosy, and everything else that is comfortable.

“It is pleasant to talk to a simple-hearted young fellow like you,” said Mr. Williamson[Pg 73] upon one of those evenings prior to the sudden death of Mr. Tallant.

Paul smiled and sipped the whisky.

“And so you think, notwithstanding all your troubles, that it is a good thing to have been born?”

“I do,” said Paul, modestly.

“You think an all-wise Providence conferred a great boon upon you when He called you into existence, and all that sort of thing?”

“Of course,” said Paul.

“You would not, could you now select, be blotted out for ever, and have all your chances or hopes of a future annihilated?”

“Oh, no!” said Paul.

“Happy youth,” said Mr. Williamson, smoking and blowing the smoke up amongst his books bound in calf.

“Well, not particularly happy that I know of,” said Paul; “but still, with all respect to you, I thank God I am happier than some people.”

[Pg 74]

“And you don’t think the Bible is Hebrew mythology? In fact, you are a virtuous, good boy. You think it’s a good thing, too, to have been born an Englishman, and that we are better and braver than other people, and all that stuff?”

“All this I steadfastly believe,” said Paul, remembering a passage in the Prayer-book.

“Very well; I shall not try to influence your orthodox views, and I will endeavour to promote your temporal prosperity. You like the Pyrotechnic office, and you think you will get on?”

“Yes, thank you, I do,” said Paul.

“I suppose, like most fellows connected with newspapers in any way, you would rather be on the literary staff? You would like to be giving forth your own opinions, and see them printed in long columns of leaded type?” said the barrister, who was evidently highly amused with Paul, whom he seemed to regard as an agreeable study.

[Pg 75]

“I sometimes think I should be glad if I could write,” said Paul.

“There’s nothing in it, my boy—nothing at all. At first there is a kind of satisfaction about the thing; but it all arises from conceit: it is all vanity and vexation of spirit, as the Preacher says. It is all very well if you can obtain one or two comfortable engagements, with permission to write pretty well what you please; and when you can combine literature, as I do, with another distinguished profession.”

Mr. Williamson smiled at this bit of quiet waggery of his own, seeing that he had never yet had more than a single client.

“If one has not many clients, however,” he went on, as if answering his own protest against that small boast about combining two professions, “the law is a distinguished profession after all: makes one a gentleman by Act of Parliament, you know, Paul.”

And then the barrister smiled again; he was evidently entertaining himself as well as Paul.

[Pg 76]

“There is an offshoot of the legal profession, a sort of Jackall-byeway, along which a large quantity of grist comes to the legal mill—I mean the police. The higher branches of that craft present many features of interest—the detective feature in particular,” the barrister went on. “I have been studying it a little lately, in the interest of your friend Gibbs; the police seem to have given the fellow up altogether.”

As they were talking, two literary friends dropped in, and the conversation was changed to a gossip about books, and plays, and pictures—“Seeking New Homes” was a leading topic. One of the strangers said the town was mad about it, and after all it was just simply a sensational thing—a dramatic bit that would engrave well and be popular in country districts. His companion did not agree with this criticism, but spoke of the picture as a work of really high art—a poem on canvas, wonderfully well painted.

And so the time wore on, and by degrees[Pg 77] the barrister’s room was filled with smoke, and Paul at length bade his friend and patron good-night, shook hands with the visitors, and departed.

“You are a queer fellow, Williamson,” said one of the new comers as Paul left the room and commenced blundering his way down-stairs.

“Oh, this is Williamson’s protégé, is it?” said the other.

“Yes, that is the young fellow,” said the barrister; “he is quite a study of English innocence and honesty, and I am going to be useful to him. His sister is a splendid creature; but, somehow or other, he tells me now that it is discovered she is not his sister, but the daughter of a very wealthy gentleman. There is something exceedingly interesting in the whole family: his only brother went to sea at fifteen, and has never since been heard of.”

“Williamson’s going to write a sensation romance,” said one friend to the other, in a loud ironical aside; “and here are his materials.”

[Pg 78]

“I am certainly studying the young fellow,” said Williamson, quietly. “A bit of genuine honesty of thought and feeling and expression, though it be not coupled with the highest order of education, is very refreshing to contemplate in these times, and especially when one is connected with professional critics.”

Williamson smiled quietly at the gentleman who had spoken adversely of “Seeking New Homes,” and the critic laughed good-humouredly in return, tapped his hand upon the table, and said:—

“Ah, well! wait until your sensation novel appears, Williamson, and I’ll take it out of you, my friend.”

And then they all laughed; for who that knew Williamson’s lazy habit would ever expect him to write a story of eight or nine hundred pages? And if he did, who amongst his personal friends, that were critics, would have said an unkind word of him or his work?

He was a big-hearted, generous pet amongst[Pg 79] all the men, this same journalistic barrister, and known amongst them all as “The Philanthropist.” It was a happy thing for Paul that the barrister was on a mission of benevolence at the Police Court on that memorable morning when he stood at the dock, and equally unlucky for Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs.

[Pg 80]

CHAPTER VI.
MRS. DIBBLE AND PAUL SOMERTON JOURNEY TO SEVERNTOWN.

It did not need much persuasion to induce Paul to accompany Mrs. Dibble on her projected journey to Severntown. He easily obtained permission to leave the Pyrotechnic for a couple of days, and on a miserable December morning they arrived at the famous city of Severntown—famous in the present day for many things: for its noble cathedral, as we have already intimated; for its grand old river, its clean broad streets and its narrow dirty ones, through which a king was chased by Cromwellian troops.

A city to be proud of this same Severntown—to be proud of for its historical associations, its eminent men and women, ancient and modern; a[Pg 81] city surrounded by a beautiful country, studded with the seats of noblemen, whose four-in-hands are still oftentimes seen rattling over the white road-ways; a city that was wont, in ancient days, to have unusually fierce election contests, and which is now settling down into moderate opinions, and throwing its latent political fire into commercial enterprise. It manufactures all kinds of things which have a strange sound when mentioned together, such as steam-engines and porcelain, pickles and horse-hair, carriages and sauce, fire-grates and shirt-studs, gin and boots, and other machines, condiments, ornaments, spirits, and wearing apparel. It has quarrels about sewers, the price of gas, and the state of the streets, like all other provincial towns, and a long dirty road to the railway station.

There was a row of six cabs and an antique sort of bus at the railway station, and several ragged youngsters who offered to carry the travellers’ carpet-bags.

Close by the station Paul detected a comfortable-looking[Pg 82] inn, into which inn he and Mrs. Dibble directed their steps—not that Mrs. Dibble approved of inns, for she did not, as she told Paul over and over again, although in the course of business her father had been called upon to build several establishments of the kind, and the specifications had gone through her hands; but no doubt they were necessary sometimes, and she thought they were justified in taking up their abode at one, and having something hot and some tea at this inn in particular, and on the shortest possible notice; so Paul ordered the refreshment whilst Mrs. Dibble, struggling under a load of shawls and comforters and rugs, was shown to her room.

If Mrs. Dibble had had the smallest compunction about entering the railway tavern, she had no hesitation about the chops and the tea and the muffins and watercress, which she was liberal enough to commend, giving very practical illustrations of her approval of the fare, and all the time talking of her poor appetite, and telling Paul how[Pg 83] seriously Mr. Dibble’s conduct had injured her health. She became so confidential upon this point, and at length felt herself so much at home that she permitted the hooks-and-eyes nearest her chin to disengage themselves, and insisted upon Paul joining her in just sixpenny-worth of spirits-and-water before they ventured out in the cold to discover the yard by the Blue Posts Inn.

The spirits-and-water made them both very warm and comfortable, and Paul at length offered his arm to his companion, and away they started towards the point indicated.

It was a damp, drizzling night, and there were treacherous holes here and there in the path which Mrs. Dibble assured Paul were in the highest degree uncomfortable. She was sure her stockings would be that splashed that they would not be fit to be seen.

Severntown did not look at all inviting in the hazy light of the December gas; but Paul knew the place, and redeemed its character to some extent by telling Mrs. Dibble that they were in[Pg 84] the back slums, which she said she could readily understand.

Through dirty streets, with one or two bridges over black, murky water; past lazy carts and rumbling cabs splashing through the mud; by narrow footways, which were sometimes no footways at all; it was certainly no pleasant route to the Blue Posts. At length, however, they came to a fine, open, well-lit street, and after walking a short distance in this brighter locality, they turned sharply round into a narrow passage, and then emerged into an open, muddy square.

Here was situated Digby Martin’s Temple of Magic, and Mrs. Dibble and Paul stopped to study the scene before them.

About two hundred persons of all ages were crowded in front of a show of the old-fashioned traditional stamp. A small platform, which was ascended by broad wooden steps, was surmounted with a very florid painting of a character that evidently proved highly attractive to the audience. A lady in a low dress, with a wonderful necklace[Pg 85] round her neck, and very dazzling bracelets upon her arms, was represented in the attitude of pointing at a box, from which two pigeons were flying, in the direction of an auditory consisting of a king and numerous officers in the army. Several rabbits were quietly peeping out of a saucepan placed upon a fire, a shower of cards and fruit and watches was falling from an inverted hat, and in the background were sundry mystic signs beneath a blazing sun.

The companion picture was, if possible, of a higher order of merit, though of a simpler character. It represented the young lady in the low dress crouching beneath a capacious basket, and it also represented the same basket being raised by a man with black moustachios, who significantly pointed to the vacant space beneath; underneath was written in big letters, “The Famous Basket Trick.”

Hung at various points in frames of various character, was represented a tremendous dog going through an exciting and varied performance.[Pg 86] Here he stood upon his head, there he fired off a pistol; in another place he was engaged in a sort of pugilistic encounter with a professional bruiser, and around the frames which contained these pictorial attractions was printed, “The celebrated dog ‘Momus’ in a round of favourite and world-renowned characters.”

The proprietor of the caravan had had a great argument with the artist who executed these latter works upon the propriety of calling Momus a “dogess,” which the showman thought would be sure to “draw;” but the artist had gravely assured him that such a title would not come within the rules of strict art, however grammatical it might be, and this settled the question at once.

Upon the platform a young lady, in pink muslin and spangles and fleshings, with a crown upon her head, and many rows of curious beads around her neck, was marching solemnly to and fro, to an old ballad melody which a fellow in a bowler hat was twisting out of an organ, and to which he was keeping time on a very hard drum.

[Pg 87]

Strutting backwards and forwards also, sometimes before the young lady in muslin and sometimes behind her, was a gaunt, greyish-looking dog, dressed up in military costume, and occasionally stopping to go through little bits of military exercise.

Three flaming and spluttering naphtha lamps cast a flickering uncertain light upon the singular scene, making the surrounding darkness all the darker.

By-and-by the man at the organ laid down his drum-stick, and, taking up a long whip, came to the top of the ladder, and after cracking the whip in a grave, solemn sort of fashion, he struck the spangled lady in the picture, and said in a loud voice,—

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, be in time, be in time! there be no time to lose! we be just a-goin’ to commence! The mysterious Lady of the North and the hemmernent Wizard—the greatest wonder in Europe! The wonderful basket trick, or the mysterious secret, is pronounced by all who ’ave seen it to be the greatest feat——”

[Pg 88]

There is no knowing how much more the speaker would have said concerning the marvels of this famous exhibition had he not been interrupted by three terrible screams, one following the other in rapid and startling succession, and uttered by a stout woman in the crowd, who was looking up at Dibble and fighting the air above her head with two very short arms in a most alarming manner.

“Oh, here’s a lark—the old woman’s drunk,” said a boy, throwing his hat up into the drizzly, mizzly air.

“Pat her on the back,” said an excited woman with a baby in her arms.

“Let me alone—let me alone!” at length Mrs. Dibble exclaimed, beating her way through the crowd, and mounting the Temple steps amidst roars of laughter and shouts of applause.

The gentleman with the whip became suddenly very much agitated, and when he saw the woman approaching the platform, he fairly turned round and bolted into the Temple.

[Pg 89]

Seeing this, a crowd rushed up after the old lady; but “Christabel,” the showman’s daughter, seized the whip which Dibble had dropped, called “Father” lustily, and began to defend the pass.

Digby Martin appeared in his shirt-sleeves, and in an instant struck a splendid fighting attitude in face of the intruders, which caused a number of them to change their minds, and produced from others sundry coppers which entitled them to admission.

When they were inside, Paul amongst the number, they saw a gorgeous array of tinselled cups and vases arranged on a black velvet dais, with a shimmering wheel revolving in the background, Mr. Dibble leaning over the stout woman and calling frantically for somebody to bring him some water, whilst the renowned Momus was jumping round the pair and barking in a most unmilitary fashion.

Before there was time for Dibble’s calls for water to receive any attention, Mrs. Dibble looked up and requested Thomas, “dear Thomas,” to[Pg 90] conduct her to a private room, at which there were renewed shouts of laughter.

Paul Somerton was fain to keep in the background, for he was getting rather ashamed of the unexpected turn which affairs were taking. Dibble said a few hurried words to the showman, and then, taking Mrs. Dibble by the arm, disappeared at the side-door.

The audience made a rush to follow, but Digby Martin, the magician, placed himself before the doorway and informed them that he could assure them there was no more fun to be had out of the lady and gentleman who had just retired, and that he would show them something ten times funnier than what they had just seen; whereupon Paul quietly took his leave, and made the best of his way to the Railway Tavern, where he found Mrs. Dibble had just arrived with her husband.

Mrs. Dibble was in tears, and Dibble was talking to her rather loudly and in an authoritative tone; but half an hour afterwards they were all[Pg 91] sitting quietly down to refreshment, and Mrs. Dibble’s journey having ended in finding her husband, Paul now proposed to leave them in order to catch the mail for Avonworth.

Mrs. Dibble thanked him for his kindness, and said she had no further need, she thought, to trespass upon him; so he bade them adieu, and went off laughing to the railway station.

[Pg 92]

CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH MR. SHUFFLETON GIBBS PRESENTS HIMSELF IN ANOTHER CHARACTER.

Amongst the audience who had witnessed the amusing encounter between Mr. Dibble and his wife, was Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, who looked on with a grave air of quiet enjoyment.

You would hardly have known him from our former description. He was attired in respectable professional style, with just an assumption of swellishness. His face was cleanly shaven, and he wore a low-crowned hat, and a black wig. From a light, fair man, he had made himself up dark. To a stranger he wore the marks of foreign travel; his cheeks were “bronzed with the Eastern sun.”

The disguise was complete, and it certainly[Pg 93] made the fellow infinitely better looking than he was in his customary habit, and far more attractive to the “feminine” mind than in either of his former disguises.

He had come down to Severntown partly out of curiosity, partly on speculation, with a personal desire to ferret out poor Dibble’s “little game,” and also to run through Avonworth valley, and take a peep at the neighbourhood of Barton Hall. His recent advertising scheme had supplied him with a little ready cash, and he had augmented this at écarté in a recently-established gambling-house, where he was unknown.

In funds, and anxious to make up a sufficient sum to enable him to set up as a gentleman on the Continent, he had waited upon Mr. Richard Tallant under an assumed name, and that gentleman had denied all knowledge of him to his face. He would have no more dealings with his police-hunted friend, and they had parted in anger, Richard Tallant threatening to hand his former companion over to the police as an[Pg 94] impostor, and Mr. Gibbs making a vow as he left the high steps of the fine West End house, to be revenged on “this mushroom upstart.”

Defiance and assumption seemed to be the leading features of Richard Tallant’s policy. He defied everybody, he assumed an air of injured dignity upon the slightest reference to his past career, talked of envy, hatred, and malice, almost wept at his father’s name, and gave splendid illustrations of his wealth in noble public subscriptions. Scarcely a list of public donors to any charity that appeared in the Times without Richard Tallant held a place there. He had even astonished the citizens of Severntown lately by suddenly appearing as a subscriber to various local institutions. His father had rarely done as much as this, though Severntown was the capital of the county in which he resided; and people soon began to say that young Tallant was not such a bad fellow after all.

The actions which he had threatened progressed very slowly. Writs had been issued in[Pg 95] several cases; but nothing further seemed to have been done. This, however, speedily closed the mouths of other people who might be inclined to say malicious things about the disgraced director of the Eastern Bank. It is astonishing how people shrink before the threat of an action for libel and slander, and it oftentimes happens that those persons who are most ready to talk of vindicating their characters, and who threaten actions for that purpose, are often all that their traducers have said of them. A public man with a tolerably settled conscience, and assured of his own probity, does not trouble himself much about the cavillers who attack him, unless they attempt to undermine his credit: then if he cannot afford to have his credit undermined, he will blaze out at his libeller, and endeavour to put himself right with the world. If he has money enough to stand the undermining principle, he treats it with contempt.

It was so with Richard Tallant: he was not an honest man, and not so rich as he professed[Pg 96] to be; and this made it all the more necessary that he should set up for an injured man and a wealthy one. He convinced many people that he was the latter, and they speedily gave him credit for being the former.

And thus it was that he had refused to sully even his memory with a knowledge of Shuffleton Gibbs, who at once in his own way held his head above the plebeian upstart, and thought of his own “gentle blood.”

“I will show the trumpery humbug, whether a Gibbs—the last of his race—shall be scorned for naught by a mushroom iron-dealer. Shuffleton Gibbs snubbed and threatened with the police!—Gibbs, the greatest swell of all Oxford undergraduates, the pride of the river and the forum, the man who drove the best cattle, and gave the most sumptuous dinners! It is certainly going hard with me now, but it shall go harder with Richard Tallant,” and Gibbs smiled sardonically, as he quietly wended his way homewards, and revolved in his mind the notion of visiting Severntown.

[Pg 97]

Not only was the ex-swell amongst the audience at the beginning of that evening’s entertainment, in which Mr. and Mrs. Dibble figured so prominently, but he remained afterwards, and took a lively interest in “the mysterious lady” whom he applauded loudly.

She was a lively pleasant looking girl, this showman’s daughter, active of limb and nimble of tongue. There was something in her appearance far beyond the ordinary show girl. Then she was young and full of life and buoyancy. She evidently enjoyed the part she played. The wonder and amazement of the younger portion of her audience, and the undisguised admiration with which some of the elder ones contemplated her round little figure, her painted cheeks, and her well-formed arms, gave her a real pleasure. She was slightly coarse in her manners, as the reader has already seen: added to this she was vain, so the applause of the miscellaneous low-bred audiences before whom she performed was agreeable to her; and on the evening in[Pg 98] question she was particularly delighted at the marked way in which the nearest approach to a gentleman she had even seen in the Temple, expressed his approval of her tricks and of her personal appearance.

When Christabel brought out those two packs of cards, and shuffled them, and handed them round, and tossed them about, Gibbs’s weak eyes began to sparkle with unwonted fire.

It was quite delightful to see how clever Christabel was with those bits of pasteboard. The audience might cut them as they pleased, and think of what card they liked, she could always present them with the counterfeit of their thoughts. Shuffle them as they might, in two or three cuts she would bring all the suits together: blindfold her, and she could pick out any card that was mentioned. She did twenty clever things with the cards; not the ordinary showman’s tricks—not simply the innocent jokes which mark the sport in drawing-rooms[Pg 99] at Christmas time; but genuine clever unaccountable tricks which elicited from Mr. Jefferson Crawley, otherwise Shuffleton Gibbs, frequent exclamations of “bravo, bravo.”

It was not the mere tricks that enraptured Mr. Crawley either; but the dexterous way in which Christabel manipulated the cards and moved any number of them to that part of the pack where it was necessary to her success they should be. Dealing with ordinary players, and with experienced players too, she could evidently turn up almost any card she pleased.

This was the leading thought that cropped up in the mind of Mr. Crawley. He envied the girl her dexterity, her lithe quick fingers, and then he thought what a fortune she might be to any one who could give her an education worthy of her powers.

When the performance was at an end, he waited until the magician emerged from behind the curtain, whereupon he complimented him[Pg 100] upon his powers, and desired to be introduced to his wonderful daughter.

The showman with the aliases, looked inquiringly into the face of the gentleman with the same possessions. Gibbs thought he understood the expression.

“I have an interest in a certain exhibition of some importance, sir,” said Gibbs, drawing himself up to his full height and forcing as much assumption of virtuous circumspection into his bleary eyes as possible, “and I have also a very slight acquaintance with a gentleman to whom you directed one Dibble to write requesting a loan.”

“Your humble servant,” said the showman. “Christabel, when you have dressed—this is our last performance to-night, sir,—when you have dressed, here’s a gent wishes to see you.”

Momus hereupon came out to see the “gent,” making her best bow to Gibbs, who took no notice of the “dawg,” but went on talking to the magician.

[Pg 101]

“Is it only fifty pounds you require for the proposed extension of this exhibition, haw?” said Gibbs.

“No more and no less,” said the showman, giving Momus a friendly kick in the ribs for persisting in forcing her attentions upon a “gent” who seemed studiously to disregard them.

“Well, I think the matter may be arranged. My friend is a close-fisted fellow. I have—haw—only a very slight acquaintance with him; but being in the neighbourhood, I undertook to call on his account; and, between ourselves, I have stayed here—haw—a little on my own. Is there any likelihood of your clever daughter accepting an engagement in a large concern—a permanent affair in town? You see—haw—I am straightforward with you.”

“Well, it aint a question that, as can be answered in a moment. What would be the figure—and could you do anything for me?” said the showman.

At this juncture a boy entered at the side-door[Pg 102] with a note in his hand, which note he presented to Mr. Martin.

“Here, Chris—come, come, what a time you are!” said the showman, disappearing behind the curtain, that the wonderful lady might spell out the contents of the letter. She had been taught to read and write in her early days, and she had not much difficulty in making out that her father’s presence was requested immediately, by Mr. Thomas Dibble, at the Railway Tavern.

“Well, then, I must go,” said the showman. “You’ll be careful with this ’ere swell outside, mind, and make no promises—d’ye hear?”

“Yes, father,” said the girl, who was not just at that time on the best of terms with her parent, and colleague in the mystic art, seeing that he had knocked her down on the previous night, and kicked the supper-things over, because she had contradicted him and expressed a determination not to join in the scheme for introducing the Skeleton into their exhibition.

When she came forth Mr. Martin introduced[Pg 103] her to the “gent,” and with a precautionary motion of his finger, he left the pair, in answer to Dibble.

“I am delighted of this—haw—opportunity,” said Gibbs, showing his teeth as of old, and trying to look fascinating, “of congratulating you on your ability.”

“Thank you,” said the showman’s daughter, bluntly; “if you aint making fun.”

She looked quite bright and sparkling; she had made a much more careful evening toilette than usual.

“Making fun!” said Gibbs, taking her hand. “I should be more inclined to make love,” he said; “for you certainly are the prettiest girl I have seen this many a day.”

This was quite up to Christabel’s taste—the most delicious bit of flattery she had ever heard.

“I declare positively you have quite made a fool of me—haw—to-night,” he went on, showing his teeth again. “You are not offended at my saying so?”

[Pg 104]

“Not I,” said Christabel. “What is there to be offended at?”

There was a charcoal stove in the show, and Gibbs drew the young lady of the mystic cups to a seat beside it, and thereupon told her that he had fallen madly in love with her; that he was a gentleman, though a poor one; that if she felt she could love him in return, he would marry her. But she must keep what he had said to her a secret from her father.

Then he dexterously drew from her an account of her life; the story of Dibble’s joining the exhibition; and, above all, an account of the quarrel with her father; and finally, after a lengthened conversation, he escorted her to the little lodging close by, Momus being left to mind the show, after Christabel had duly locked up the side-door, extinguished the light, and let down the platform.

Gibbs was scrupulously attentive and gallant to the girl, and when he left her she promised to give him an answer next day upon the[Pg 105] momentous question of elopement and marriage.

It was a rapid courtship this, but cleverly done; and Gibbs, you see, had had a large experience in this way. Christabel was so much impressed that she went up the dirty creaking stairs, and paraded before about twelve inches of looking-glass, by the light of a tallow candle.

Her father, when he returned home that night, was unusually bumptious in his manner towards Christabel, his daughter, and more than usually tipsy. Dibble had obtained a partial promise from Mrs. Dibble that the showman should not want for fifty pounds, and before that, as we have seen, a “gent” had given him similar hopes. Everything was going well with him, and he was independent of everybody; his daughter, too, felt particularly independent that night, and the result was a wordy warfare about the Skeleton.

Christabel hated the sight of the Skeleton, and what was more, she would leave the exhibition if he entered it.

[Pg 106]

The showman swore that the Skeleton should come into the exhibition, and what was more, by ——, she should marry the Skeleton if she did not mind what she was saying.

This was the greatest bit of tyranny in words which the showman felt he could threaten, and he seemed to gloat over the idea. Yes, she should marry the death’s head and bones, he said, and he chuckled and laughed and thumped the table, and became quite jocular at the bare notion of such a union.

Christabel, however, flamed up in return, and by degrees the showman became terribly angry, and threatened to turn her out of doors.

The end was that Christabel went up-stairs, locked herself in her bedroom, and began to look out her things for packing off the next day. Meanwhile the showman lay down by the fire, went to sleep, and dreamt he was proprietor of a pair of giants, two skeletons, five boa constrictors, and a wax-work museum: that he wore a tiger-skin coat, and walked about smoking a cigar,[Pg 107] whilst a brass band beneath a gorgeous display of pictures performed the Conquering Hero, with real gas shining on their music books, and that all he had to do was to wear the tiger-skin coat, smoke thick cigars, and swear at everybody who did not please him.

[Pg 108]

CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT ARTHUR PHILLIPS SAW THROUGH THE MIST.

A white, wet, grovelling mist; with a long, black procession creeping through it; and the solemn tolling of a village bell; nodding plumes and draped horses; a small group of well-dressed farmers, the tenants of the late Mr. Tallant.

There was something weird and miserable about the whole thing, as Arthur Phillips viewed it at a distance; something that chilled him and bowed him down.

He followed the mourners into the church; the solemn village church, with its high-backed pews, brass monuments, and marble effigies; the solemn little church, with the ivy nodding round the porch, and the damp making big blotches on the pavement.

[Pg 109]

The mourners shuffled into their seats, and the villagers came peering in with vacant looks.

“In the midst of life we are in death.” The words were repeated back again from the walls, and the kneeling effigies in stone seemed to take up the text and say it over again with the echoes.

The great black coffin stood in the chancel, and Arthur could not help picturing the dead face of the merchant.

How changed everything was. How sad, how hopeless! And yet Arthur’s own deep love, for a moment, lit up his thoughts with a hope that had scarcely had a place in his heart before; but he banished the thought in a moment as selfish.

Richard Tallant was there amongst the mourners, loudest in his Amens, and apparently most moved, as he should be, at the pathetic solemnity of the church service.

Arthur quietly walked over the fields to the Somertons, whilst the coffin was being laid in the grave.

A faint streak or two of sunlight struggled[Pg 110] through the mist here and there, but with little or no influence on the soddened, damp atmosphere, which penetrated everything.

Arthur found Mrs. Somerton alone in a high-backed chair by the fire. He knew that he was no favourite with the bailiff’s wife; but he bade her “Good-morning” with a quiet courtesy peculiarly his own, and she was evidently not displeased at the visit.

“You have been ill, I fear,” said Arthur, noticing the unusual wrappers about the arm-chair, and Mrs. Somerton’s rather pale face.

“Yes, sir, very ill,” she said, in a subdued voice.

“I am sorry to hear it; but hope I may congratulate you upon having got over the worst of it.”

“I don’t know that there is much to congratulate about,” she said, looking at him with a sad expression in her big eyes; “but I have got over the worst of it, they say, thank you.”

“I was very much shocked to hear of Mr.[Pg 111] Tallant’s death. I only heard of it yesterday,” said Arthur.

“What has become of you lately?—you have not been in this neighbourhood for a long time,” said Mrs. Somerton, evidently only attending to her own thoughts.

“I have been engaged on an important work, which has occupied me almost night and day for several months past,” Arthur said.

“Will you not sit down, sir?” Mrs. Somerton asked. “I am sorry I can’t get about to offer you a seat.”

Arthur sat down beside the neat bright fireplace, and looked into the burning coals with a variety of curious feelings: he longed to ask all kinds of questions, but feared to do so.

“Many strange things may occur in a few months,” said Mrs. Somerton; “the purpose of a life-time is easily upset.”

Arthur said nothing, but looked curiously up at the speaker.

“We all think we are very clever, and we[Pg 112] go on planning and planning; but things are not to be as we like: there is a Power above us.”

“True,” said Arthur, “we must all bend to the decrees of Providence.”

“Ah! if we only knew that, at the beginning, Mr. Phillips,” said Mrs. Somerton earnestly, “if we could be content to learn that from other people’s experience: ‘better learn from your neighbour’s scathe than from your own;’ but we learn from our own, Mr. Phillips, we learn from our own.”

Arthur had upon a former occasion been struck with the snatches of moral and proverbial philosophy which characterised Mrs. Somerton’s conversations; but he had thought her a clever cynical countrywoman before, and had disliked her: now he rapidly felt himself beginning to take a deep interest in her.

“Folks that do wrong have generally plenty of excuses; but I have none worth the name of excuse, though they say a bad excuse is better[Pg 113] than none. You are surprised at my talk: you will not be so before the night is over.”

“Surely nothing has happened that does not appear to me. Poor Mr. Tallant is dead, and you have been ill; is there anything else?” Arthur asked as calmly as he could.

“I won’t torture you,—I know your secret, sir. Miss Phœbe is well, though, poor soul, she is sadly cut up; but misery is no respecter of persons. Ambition and pride are the ruin of most people. You would hardly think I had been an ambitious, scheming woman, with plans far above the station I hold?” she went on excitedly.

“I have often thought that you would worthily fill a much higher position,” said Arthur.

“Ah, well, it is a long story, and I will not weary you with it; everybody thinks their own stories interesting to everybody else; but, there, mine need not be told. I have been an ambitious, scheming woman ever since I was a woman, and I have always been foiled. Half my life has been[Pg 114] spent in studying how I should play the ace without knowing whether I held it or not, and in the other half I have been learning the truth of the proverb that wine poured out is not wine swallowed. Lincolnshire women have a way of talking in proverbs, Mr. Phillips: one can say a good deal like that without seeming to.”

Arthur was altogether at a loss to understand Mrs. Somerton; but he boded ill from all this apparent mystery, and yet a voice seemed to whisper hope all through it.

“You are in love with Miss Phœbe,” said Mrs. Somerton at length, and with singular abruptness; “I know it. I have not watched and watched with a mother’s eye for nothing, and I think the young lady loves you in return—if there is such a thing as love—and I begin to think there may be, or something better than love, something better than love.”

The woman repeated these latter words with unaffected tenderness as she remembered how kindly, how generously, how tenderly, her[Pg 115] husband, Luke Somerton, had nursed her in her illness; how when he knew all, he had not upbraided her; how he had pitied her and bade her be of good heart, for that a wrong atoned for was a wrong undone; how in the early watches of the night she had seen him by her bedside wakeful and gentle, but yet manly, as she remembered him when he was young in the grand old Lincolnshire wolds.

“Something better than love,” she continued—“friendship, benevolence, charity, sympathy—I know not what you call it; but perhaps it may be love, after all,” she went on; “and I don’t think there is any wrong ambition about you, Mr. Phillips, if you will forgive me for saying so. A man who can sit in the sun painting pictures and all that sort of thing, and be content with it, can’t very well be much wrong, except that he is only a painter after all. Don’t be angry, sir; we never thought much of painters in Lincolnshire; we used to look at them the same as we did poets and such like; but I have heard that some of[Pg 116] them make money, and can keep up a good house. However, I will say no more about that; but somehow, sir, I think you will find things going favourably, so far as Phœbe is concerned. We shall see; if such should be the case, Mr. Phillips, no matter what you hear of me, you will not forget that I was the first to give you hope—that will be something to think of, perhaps some little consolation to me.”

Arthur was too much agitated to ask any questions. He thanked Mrs. Somerton as well as he could for what she had said, and he began to look out into the future with hope.

We never know how unexpectedly Hope may pay us a gorgeous visit; how often she comes when we least expect her. With death barring his way, and funeral plumes crossing his path, Arthur Phillips could hardly have expected Hope to come by his side and whisper so confidently of happiness almost beyond his most sanguine thoughts. Once or twice in the darkness, once or twice between the acts of the day’s solemn drama,[Pg 117] a faint whisper had lighted up his soul as we have seen; but here he stood at last almost in the full blaze of hope, and the light had come from the darkest of all places, in his own estimation.

And so Arthur sat and pondered, and Mrs. Somerton quietly regarding him, dosed off into a quiet slumber, induced by the fatigue of thought and conversation which Arthur’s visit had occasioned.

Far away amongst the Lincolnshire meadows, where the long, lazy river flowed by the corn-fields and lingered amongst the reeds and rushes; far away in the green and golden fields, and over the brown and loamy furrows; hemmed in by short hedges, and dotted here and there with ricks of hay and straw and stray clumps of trees; far away amongst Lincolnshire homesteads, and mills with their swinging sails, and square-towered churches, and broad lanes, and long teams of horses dragging well-stocked waggons; far away in the past the mind of the bailiff’s wife was[Pg 118] wandering, and the dream was a happy one, for it dealt with childhood only.

Arthur stole out whilst she slept. The mists had crept about the valley and were hovering over the hill-tops.

He started off to visit some of the familiar scenes where he had sat in the long summer days, wondering and hoping and painting in hazy romantic dreams which were not all happiness.

His thoughts were strangely mixed and intricate now: a host of anxious feelings had been awakened which he could not control, and which he could hardly understand.

“Gone—are you gone?” said Mrs. Somerton, awaking from her brief sleep.

“No, I am here,” said her husband, removing a crape hatband from his hat and laying it upon the table.

“Ah, it’s you, Luke; I have had Mr. Phillips, the painter, here.”

[Pg 119]

“Yes,” said Luke—“yes; and what has he to say for himself?” asked the bailiff.

“Not much; I think I have done all the talking, Luke. And so you have buried the poor gentleman?” she went on, mournfully.

“Yes, poor fellow; not many better men ever were buried than he,” said Luke.

“And now—now they are going to read the will, I suppose?”

“They were all going into the dining-room as I came past. The lawyer asked me to come in; but I thought you’d be lonely, Sarah, and so I came home.”

Mrs. Somerton could not help thinking that Luke had better have stayed and heard the will read; but she was too considerate now, to say so.

“You are very kind, Luke; but how shall we know all about it?”

“Oh, I forgot that; I’ll go back,” said Luke.

“Do; I should like to hear it all from your own lips, Luke.”

[Pg 120]

And the bailiff returned just in time to hear the various clauses read.

When he was gone, Arthur Phillips came back again to the bailiff’s house, determined to learn why he had so suddenly filled himself with hopes that excited him beyond description. He would not be content with vague hints and proverbial sayings, and he would not conceal his own feelings with regard to Miss Tallant. Mrs. Somerton could evidently help him in some way or another; she knew more than she chose to tell; she knew what he ought to know, and he would endeavour to learn what she did know.

Mrs. Somerton did not need much persuasion to reveal her secret. She knew that in a few hours Arthur would know it, and it was a satisfactory sort of penance to tell him herself, and to confess all her plotting and meannesses; to disclose to him her feelings with regard to herself; to show how jealous she was of her daughter; and to point some of her moral aphorisms with[Pg 121] illustrations from this last phase of the failure of her schemes.

It was indeed a new light this to Arthur. He had dreamed of all sorts of contingencies which might bring Phœbe nearer to him, and his only hope was in the production of some great work that should open up a golden vista which the merchant might comprehend; for Arthur had always regarded Mr. Tallant as the wealthy commoner who gauged men and things by money, and this had disheartened him even more than the thoughts of his own shortcomings and the beauty of her whom he had been rash enough to go on loving without daring even to hint at his passion.

And now fate had decreed that this difficulty should disappear. Did he blame Phœbe’s mother? No. He sat before her stupified with amazement.

His first thought, now that the great barrier of all was cleared away, was of his own unworthiness; but he had courage enough to tell Mrs. Somerton that she had excited hopes which had[Pg 122] never before dared to mount so high. He had heard her story with the greatest surprise, and, but that his own heart hoped and desired its truth, it was almost too extraordinary for belief.

Supposing he dared to hope that Phœbe loved him, had he her mother’s consent to ask her the question?

Mrs. Somerton replied in the affirmative. There were many ways in which amends might be made towards wiping out great wrongs, and it seemed as if God had spared her life that she might have time to repair nearly all the injury she had done.

[Pg 123]

CHAPTER IX.
IN WHICH AN IMPORTANT WILL IS READ.

The last will and testament of Mr. Christopher Tallant set forth in proper legal phraseology, at great length, that the person known as Phœbe Tallant, and who was understood to be his daughter, was the daughter of Sarah Somerton, wife of Luke Somerton, farm bailiff; and that the person known as Amy Somerton, and who had passed hitherto as the daughter of the said Luke Somerton, was his, the testator’s, daughter.

This had been satisfactorily proved to him by the said Sarah Somerton, who had changed the said persons when they were infants; and the likeness of the late beloved testator’s wife bore testimony to the truth thereof.

[Pg 124]

But though the testator was fully satisfied of this, and though he acknowledged the person known as the said Amy Somerton to be his lawful child, his will had been drawn in such a way that its validity and legal weight should not simply rest upon this; but certain checks and explanations and provisions were made, the result being that the person hitherto known as Amy Somerton should be his heiress, and henceforth take the name of Tallant.

To this lady he left the whole of his real and personal estates, furniture, plate, linen, and moneys of all descriptions, banked or funded.

This was set forth in a deed of great length, dealing as it did with an estate which could so well afford long clauses on many sheets of parchment.

Property of the value of five hundred a year was left to Phœbe Somerton; a legacy of 2000l. to her father, and numerous small legacies to servants and others.

The name of Richard Tallant was not mentioned[Pg 125] in any way, and that gentleman resolved to dispute the validity of the will.

He told the lawyer that he would file a bill in Chancery the very next day. The lawyer smiled and said he had no objection.

This was the report which Luke Somerton gave to his wife.

“And so justice is done,” said Mrs. Somerton. “Thank God!”

The lawyer had discreetly prepared the two girls for what was to come, so that the extraordinary revelation and the great change might not come upon them so suddenly as to be dangerous.

The whole truth, when it was disclosed to them, changed all those feelings of estrangement which had lately been engendered by Amy’s desperate conduct.

In a moment Phœbe, with all the nobleness of her nature, felt Amy’s wrongs; and Amy’s heart overflowed with gratitude to Phœbe, and with love and sympathy.

[Pg 126]

“Sister, dear, dear sister!” Amy exclaimed, folding Phœbe in her arms, and sobbing aloud.

Phœbe hid her face in Amy’s neck, with a hundred strange emotions agitating her.

And then they sat together hand in hand, each occupied with her own thoughts; each too much under the influence of the change which had come to pass, to have any very clear thoughts about it.

Phœbe had all along mourned for Mr. Tallant with all the sorrow of a daughter; she had often felt, as my readers know, that all her love was not reciprocated, but she knew how much her mother had been loved, and how deeply her loss had affected him, and she loved him as a daughter and would continue to do so.

She could not for the moment bring herself to look upon Mrs. Somerton as her mother: she had always admired Luke, and had spent many an hour talking to him amongst the poultry and the sheep, and in the corn-fields. It was no degradation to be the daughter of such a man as Luke Somerton, and none, perhaps, for that matter, to[Pg 127] be the daughter of his wife; but it was a great change—too great for Phœbe to comprehend it thus far. Her first thought had been for Amy, and Amy’s first thought had been for Phœbe.

But in a few short hours Phœbe’s highly-wrought sensibilities began to reflect back upon her the true meaning of the change in her position. She was only a visitor here. She had enjoyed many privileges in this house, and many advantages; she was thankful for them, but they had not been hers by right, and now they were hers no longer in any sense.

She would go home. Something like a shudder came over her as she said this to herself in her own room, and she rebuked herself for it, and knelt down and prayed, thanking God for all his mercies, and earnestly soliciting His guidance and protection.

What a sweet, fair face it was, turned upwards in supplication; the deep blue beseeching eyes, the half-opened lips, the pale cheeks, the round, arched neck, the long wavy hair thrown back:[Pg 128] what more beautiful picture than such a woman kneeling in prayer?

How different was Amy’s occupation. Pacing to and fro in her room, and looking at herself now and then in the long mirrors which adorned the wardrobes, she was torn by contending feelings, too varied for peace, too strong for aught else, at that moment, but walking.

She was overcome by her advancement. Lately we have seen how high her ambition had soared; we have seen how she had changed, how she had marked out a new line of action, how she had set her heart on something almost beyond the romantic dreams of mere ambition.

Her love for Lionel Hammerton—her deep, mad love had been trampled on, and she had risen a new being, with all the pride of her dead mother beating in every vein, with a sense of insult and wrong far beyond what she had a right to feel, far beyond the measure of Hammerton’s offence.

The appearance of Earl Verner at Barton Hall that day had given a new tone to her life. He[Pg 129] had appeared at the very moment when decision seemed wavering; he had come upon her like an interpretation of her own thoughts, as if Fate said, “Here is your opportunity;” and then it was that she determined to play for high stakes, even at the risk of ridicule and failure.

And now that she stood on the hill top, and had only, she knew, to raise her finger and beckon, she was bewildered. Lord Verner had called at Barton Hall twice since that memorable meeting, and had on the second occasion evinced marked admiration of Amy, such as could not be mistaken, notwithstanding that he knew her position, for he had signified as much.

If even her lowly birth and her poverty had not scared Earl Verner away, she knew well enough that her wealth would only enhance her beauty and attractions.

What delicious revenge to marry Lionel’s brother, and to make the chance of a coronet for him all the more remote!

And yet, how she had loved this man! How[Pg 130] fervently, how fondly? Did he know how much? She asked herself the question, and then blushed at the remembrance of a hundred little acts in which she had disclosed it to him.

Had he encouraged her love? She asked herself that question, too; and then she recalled softly whispered compliments, and delicately hinted regrets that society should not welcome beauty into its ranks without requiring that it should be backed with ancestry. And above all, she remembered a time when he told her a simple narrative, how the brother of a noble earl had loved a beautiful maiden, a farmer’s daughter, and how when he had made a name beyond that which mere rank could give, he came back and married her; and how, upon that occasion, he had kissed her and pressed her hand, and left her bathed in tears of joy and fear.

And yet, without a word he had left her; without even telling her that he loved her; not even giving her the consolation of hope. She had been too confiding, weak, silly, and he had treated her[Pg 131] accordingly: he should see how Amy Tallant would requite him.

She was walking to and fro, with her earnest eyes looking out into the new, strange future, when a servant brought her the card of Mr. Arthur Phillips.

“Tell him I will see him. Show him into the library.”

Arthur began to apologise for calling at such a time, but Amy silenced him at once by telling him she had desired to see him; and, full of her own purposes and feelings, she said:—

“Have you heard from Lionel Hammerton?”

“I have,” said Arthur.

“Pray excuse me if I appear inquisitive or rude. I have ample reasons for going a little beyond what may seem courteous under the circumstances. Does he mention me in his letter?”

“He does not,” said Arthur, quietly.

“Have you heard from him more than once?”

“Only once,” said Arthur.

[Pg 132]

“Does he mention Barton Hall? Pray, be plain with me: on your honour, as a gentleman?”

“Yes, he does,” said Arthur.

“How? does he send any message?”

“He desires to be remembered to Miss Tallant.”

“Meaning Phœbe, of course?”

“Yes,” said Arthur.

“And he does not refer to me in any way?”

“No,” said Arthur.

“Did you see him before he left England?”

“I did.”

“Did he take leave of you? did he bid you good-bye?”

“He did,” said Arthur.

“Pray pardon me, Mr. Phillips; I assure you these questions are of great moment—they concern the happiness of more than one person.”

Miss Tallant was greatly excited.

“Did he mention me to you upon that occasion?”

“Really, Miss Somerton—Miss Tallant—I beg your pardon,” said Arthur; “but you must not[Pg 133] expect me to go into our private conversations.”

“I do, sir; I command—I entreat,” she added, in supplicating accents, “did he charge you with any message to me?”

“He did not,” said Arthur.

“Did he speak of me, sir—did he speak of me—in what way did he speak of me?”

“Really,” said Arthur, in an expostulating manner.

“Suppose you were my brother, sir, and suppose I loved that man, your friend; did he speak of me in such a way as you would wish for the man to speak whom your sister loved? You see I am plain with you—be you honest with me; Yes or no.”

“I must decline to answer,” said Arthur.

“And you profess to be in love; nay, you need not start. Do you think I do not know your secret? Do you think I do not know how many sleepless nights you have spent; how you have been tossed between hope and fear; how you[Pg 134] have cursed your lot, and consoled yourself with poetic dreams, and the voice of her you love? I tell you my happiness and all my hopes are at stake. I know well enough—my own instincts tell me that he did but trifle with my love, and your silence only confirms it. Now that wealth falls in to fill up the scale and weigh down the balance, I should despise myself if I accepted compromise; for I very nearly hate him as it is; but I seek for full satisfaction. I will ask you but one more question. Did he speak of me before he left England as you would speak to a friend who had your confidence concerning Phœbe?”

“No, he did not,” said Arthur, earnestly.

“Thank you,” said Amy, “thank you, Mr. Phillips, sincerely; and now may I beg that you never repeat what has passed in this conversation?”

“You may rely upon me,” said Arthur.

Amy put out her hand, and said good-bye, and left the artist wondering at her extraordinary conduct.

[Pg 135]

CHAPTER X.
ARTHUR PHILLIPS HAS A HAPPY GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE.

Arthur stood irresolutely wondering what he should do next. He had intended to ask Amy quietly to inform her friend of his presence here; but she had given him little or no opportunity to do that, as you have seen.

He looked round the library where the merchant had been accustomed to sit at his desk. There was no change in the room. The light elegant book-shelves were there. The grandly bound books were there as usual. Pens and ink and blotting pads all in their places; and the leather chair stood near the desk by the window; but the merchant lay quietly in his grave.

Presently Arthur rang the bell, and summoned up courage enough to send his card up to[Pg 136] Phœbe Somerton, who presented herself almost immediately.

She was a good deal changed; but her black clothes seemed only to add a sort of refining touch to her beauty.

“I am so pleased to see you, Mr. Phillips,” she said frankly, putting out her hand, “if one really ought to be pleased at anything, considering that we have buried my father—I mean Mr. Tallant—to-day.”

Phœbe spoke with some restraint and hesitation, and Arthur was visibly nervous and excited.

“I am sure you will pardon me,” said Arthur, “if with the view of suppressing any embarrassment I tell you that I have been made acquainted with all that has taken place. I came down here from London yesterday, ignorant even of Mr. Tallant’s death; but I could not return without venturing to say to you, personally, how deeply, how respectfully, I sympathise with you in your troubles.”

[Pg 137]

There was a tone of deferential homage and sincere interest in Arthur’s manner which did not fail to make an impression upon Phœbe.

“I am sure I thank you sincerely, Mr. Phillips, and appreciate, as I hope I ought, your great kindness: I have frequently wondered why you had deserted Barton,” said Phœbe.

“I shall hope to have an opportunity to explain to you one of these days,” said Arthur.

“Nothing I hope ever occurred here to induce your absence?” said Phœbe.

“O no; on the contrary,” said Arthur, looking at the speaker with undisguised emotion, “engagements of a pressing character have kept me confined to my studio.”

Then the conversation dropped into matters of fact concerning the late Mr. Tallant’s troubles, his illness and death; and eventually Phœbe Somerton and Arthur shook hands, and Arthur asked permission to call and see his fair pupil on an early day, which permission was readily granted.

[Pg 138]

And so Arthur went back to Severntown, to his quiet house beneath the shadow of the old cathedral, full of new hopes, a new man, and with the future opening up to him bright and sunny.

He found several congratulatory letters at home about his work, “Seeking New Homes,” and two offers of purchase, the highest being fifteen hundred pounds.

This was cheerful; for though Arthur was by no means mercenary, he felt that this was a practical tribute to the excellence of his work; and, moreover, he had, as we have already learnt, been a heavy loser through the recent bank failures.

He sat in the firelight with his happy dreams, listening to the roar of the river without, and letting it bear away his thoughts on its bosom. The cathedral chimes fell dreamily upon his ear, and he thought of a merry village peal which might some day be rung in token of the consummation of his wildest hopes.

[Pg 139]

Thoughts of the cold damp church, with the coffin in it, would crop up now and then, but they had no abiding-place in his mind that night; happier thoughts crowded in and dispersed them.

His long lonely life, with quiet grassy spots in it here and there, and nooks of peace, dedicated to art, was before him. He travelled over it again in the firelight. He saw himself a studious boy without playmates, without companions; he saw himself verging into manhood with a strangely awakened love of art and nature, and with only a poor broken-down painter taking any interest in the mysterious signs which his genius would make in spite of himself. He saw his humble home and his toiling parent; a mother without one gleam of sympathy in common with his aspirations, and who only bore querulously with his odd ways, and a father whose besetting sin was the bottle, which was his ruin.

He thought of his early struggles, of his early privations, of the burning passionate love of his[Pg 140] art. It was a rugged, broken road at the starting, and his first success had brought with it a bitter pang; it would have gladdened his heart to have given his father and mother this evidence of the practical correctness of his judgment, to have shown them how honourable art is, and how it elevates the humble worker into the highest rank, and places him on a level with princes.

A lonely, lowly road, but by-and-by covered with mosses and soft grass, and sober flowers and shady ferns; and then umbrageous trees threw their arms over it, and gleams of sunshine came through the branches. Presently another figure appeared in this more cheerful path, but it only seemed to mock the student with its beauty, and to lure him on into hopes that would only strew his way again with broken rocks, and thorns, and rough places.

All at once, however, the sun shone out full upon him, and the figure held out its hand, and smiled with truthful human eyes. And[Pg 141] something said within him that he would have a companion at last to share his journey, and that the happy, happy goal was near.

That same night Phœbe sat before the parlour-fire at the Hall Farm, with Mrs. Somerton on one side and Luke on the other.

Her right hand lay quietly in her father’s, and she was talking cheerfully to them both.

They had evidently had a long and affecting interview. The storm was past; the rush of the tempest was over; and it had left Mrs. Somerton gazing through tears at her daughter.

No words of rebuke, no complaint, had been uttered by Phœbe; she had said nothing but what was kind and dutiful, nothing that could wound, except that her kindness stung her mother more than hard words would have done.

The remorseful woman had burst out into sobs and heart-breaking lamentations at the first tender acts of filial forgiveness, and Luke had hardly known how to master his own feelings when, in reply to some remark of his conveying[Pg 142] the thought that she would be ashamed of such a father, she had flung herself into his arms and called him Father.

There was something hysterical at first in the whole proceeding; but by-and-by the calm came, and then they all three sat and talked. Phœbe was hardly herself, though she had made up her mind so fully how she ought to act and how she would act.

A sense of duty had impelled her to come home to her father and mother, and there was a vague, strange sense of happiness and safety in sitting between them. The Hall without her sometime father seemed full of desolation and shadows. Unaccustomed sounds had struck upon her ear, she thought she heard the merchant’s voice and his footstep on the stairs.

A sense of fear and loneliness had been upon her; and she had come home to her father and her mother, and now there was a sweet lulling feeling of peace at her heart which she had not felt for a long time past.

[Pg 143]

Had the visit of Arthur Phillips done anything to enhance that sensation of quiet and repose? He had been in her thoughts more than once, as she sat there with her hand in her father’s.

It was no use Luke or his wife expostulating with Phœbe; home she had come, and at home she would stay. And when at length the wondering domestic at the Hall Farm came to show her to the room which had been always set apart for Amy’s use, Phœbe knelt and received her mother’s blessing, bade Luke good-night, and called him “Father” again.

Luke and his wife had rarely sat up so late as upon this eventful night, and so much good will sometimes come out of evil, and sins confessed are so nearly atoned for—that Luke and his wife loved each other now for the first time. There was a deep wondering pity in Luke’s heart for his wife now that he saw the secret of her life, and looked at the drooping head and the eyes filled with tears. Mrs. Somerton had not expected such a generous forgiveness, and so much[Pg 144] sympathy and gentleness, at Luke’s hands. In the last few weeks she had suffered a world of remorse for her past shrewish conduct, and now her gratitude knew no bounds; gratitude and sympathy and pity, and memories of the past, mingled together in these two hearts, and on the steady downward path of life they came to love each other with a quiet calm love that is nearest akin to a long-proved generous friendship.

[Pg 145]

CHAPTER XI.
DURING THE WINTER.

The winter slipped swiftly away, without making many important changes in the positions of the people in our story.

Important events were in course of consummation, but no special incident cropped up to mark the gradual development of the various circumstances calling for anything more than simple narration.

Earl Verner had taken several opportunities to renew his acquaintance with Amy, and we must do his lordship the justice to say that her sudden and unexpected advancement in fortune had little or no influence upon his course of wooing, for he was hit at that first interview, hit irredeemably.[Pg 146] There was something in Amy besides her good looks which had fairly fascinated the earl. The idea of a thoroughly companionable and intellectual woman had never presented itself to him before. Hitherto women had represented to him trouble, bother, putting yourself out of the way, and everything that was not being easy and lazy and lolling about, and grubbing amongst old books, and fadding with ancient china, and being constantly delighted with pictures. Woman engrossed all this in herself. She wanted to be old china and books and pictures and antiquities and everything all in one; and this notion did not suit Earl Verner; but in Amy he felt that there would not be this autocracy. She was evidently as much interested in these things as he was himself, and, considering how much his condescension in marrying her would elevate her in the social scale, he would have an influence over her that he could not hope to have over a woman in his own walk of life.

The more he saw of Amy Tallant the more[Pg 147] enraptured he became, and well he might, for Amy spared no pains to make herself charming and agreeable in his eyes; indeed, Amy had vowed to herself that she would marry him. She would show Lionel Hammerton what a mistake he had made when he sported with the deep feelings of a girl like her.

And so in due course his lordship proposed for Amy’s hand, and was accepted.

Meanwhile, Phœbe Somerton had insisted upon staying at the Hall Farm. Her obstinacy upon this point had appeared at first to give Amy a good deal of pain; but Phœbe explained that she had marked out a line of conduct for herself as the line of duty under the circumstances, and, whatever she might do in the future, at present she would certainly live with her father and mother. Amy soon saw that there was no pique in this, that it meant no ill feeling towards herself, and the two girls understood each other well.[Pg 148] Amy was too much engrossed in her own scheme to let anything else trouble her.

She had written to Paul Somerton a warm, affectionate letter, in which she had charged herself with his advancement in life; she had asked him to select his career, and insisted upon bearing all the cost of his studies and promotion. Paul had consulted his friend Mr. Williamson, and had discussed the question with him in a hundred different ways. He had for some time almost resolved upon declining this proffered aid, but he knew that this would be hurtful in the extreme to Amy’s feelings, and Mr. Williamson argued the case so well, from a sisterly point of view, in favour of its acceptance that Paul becomingly thanked his sometime sister, and left the point open for further consideration.

Finally, Amy requested him to come to the Hall, and there she introduced him to Earl Verner, and told his lordship the brief story of the lad’s life; and the end was, with the consent of Mrs. Somerton and Luke, that a commission in the army was[Pg 149] purchased for Paul, and he commenced his military career as an ensign in the gallant Ninety-fifth, with fair prospects of rapid promotion.

Mr. Williamson received a magnificent memento of his kindness to Paul in the shape of a watch exquisitely set with jewels, and a courteous intimation that if Miss Tallant could at any time render Mr. Williamson any service she would esteem it a delightful privilege to show her high appreciation of his conduct.

The barrister treasured her sweet-scented little note quite as much as he did the valuable jewelled watch, and he sighed and rubbed his hands over the smouldering fire at his rooms when he heard of her forthcoming marriage.

“She is such a splendid woman,” he would say. “I had almost persuaded myself that I was in love with her that first and only time when I saw her in town; and now that she is going to be married, by Jove, I begin to think I really am in love with her.”

But the truth is, Mr. Williamson had been hit[Pg 150] in early life. There was a mysterious, vague sort of story, which a few of his old friends sometimes told each other, concerning a romantic love affair,—a wedding, a separation and death, under very sad circumstances. Whatever the story was, nobody ever alluded to it in presence of Williamson; but they knew who knew him that there was no likelihood of his falling in love again, or any nonsense of that sort, as others would put it. And the barrister had only sighed at the mention of Amy’s marriage because a thought of his own love-dream and its terrible termination occurred to him at the moment.

Phœbe Somerton and Arthur Phillips were constantly together at the Hall Farm, and before the winter ended Arthur had summoned sufficient courage to discharge his heart’s load of love by a full and ample confession; and Phœbe had looked into his great dark eyes, and responded to his vows with all the frankness and innocent truth of Miranda herself.

[Pg 151]

Thus Arthur was in the sunny path of his existence at last, and he seemed to become a new being under the influence of his happiness.

Luke Somerton and his wife were calm spectators of all these changes, and meanwhile they had their own little schemes for the future. There was a certain farm in the Lincolnshire fens which Mrs. Somerton had known as a girl, and which, from inquiries that Luke had made, was likely to be “To Let.” There were no more fertile pastures than those which surrounded it in all the fen country, not a pleasanter house and garden, no better shooting than was to be had close by, and with the advantage of being near an important town, and not far from a railway station.

Luke and his wife had calculated the prospects of settling down in their own native county, and the bailiff was full of plans and schemes, which were an everlasting source of pleasant, hopeful talk.

All this time Richard Tallant was up to his neck in the great game of financial speculation,[Pg 152] and rumour had over and over again predicted his downfall. The Eastern Bank, notwithstanding his father’s noble contribution towards its shaken capital, had failed. The Indian branches had suffered serious losses, and the retirement of Mr. Tallant from the directory had led to other resignations, and Stock Exchange rumours had eventually shaken the confidence of depositors and others, and the Bank went to the wall. The Meter Iron Works continued to flourish, but with diminished dividends and gradually falling stock.

Mr. Tallant had been mixed up with some of the greatest failures of the day, and people said that by-and-by, when he really came to understand his own position, he would find himself insolvent; but people said this about dozens of others whose possessions had not even been shaken in the panic, and who could show a bonâ fide income of many thousands a year from real property.

What did Richard Tallant care for all this?[Pg 153] Nothing, so far as the world could judge; but it made him irritable and ill-tempered in his own house. His valet could have told you a good deal about this, and so could the servants; but to the outside world, whatever else he might be, he was a straightforward, independent, good-tempered fellow. There were those who said this was all “put on,” and that he was a designing sneak; but his high-stepping horses and his splendid dinners soon silenced these doubtful ones, whom the great man entertained for that purpose only, cursing them in his heart whilst he smiled upon them and called them friends.

Mr. and Mrs. Dibble had returned together to London, to their little lodging-house at Pimlico, but by no means to live a happy life; for Dibble had been persuaded to lend the showman fifty pounds the morning after that introduction at Severntown, and the money had been lost irretrievably; for within a fortnight afterwards Digby Martin had presented himself at their house a ruined, ragged, dissipated fellow.

[Pg 154]

His daughter had eloped with some vagabond, and left him; business had waned from that moment until it dwindled away almost to nothing. The skeleton had declined to enter into the proposed contract, and his “traps” had been sold to pay the rent of the ground at the “Blue Posts.” He had walked all the way to London, friendless and a beggar, his only means of subsistence being in the money earned by Momus. The dawg, he said, had behaved like a Christian to him, and he was sure his friend Dibble would do no less, considering how Dibble had been treated in the palmy days of the Temple.

This was all very well, and Mrs. Dibble would perhaps not have complained had the showman taken his departure after the first visit, and not presented himself for renewed charity; but he came again and again, and Mrs. Dibble and her husband had serious disagreements about it. The lodgers were scandalised at the visits of this low person and his dawg, and one of them had given up his rooms at a day’s notice because he had[Pg 155] seen this friend of Dibble’s going through a performance with his dog, and begging coppers, in a back street.

Dibble had appealed to the showman to leave the neighbourhood, and had bribed him too. But Digby Martin, alias Digger, alias Smith, knew a trick worth two of that. He only spent the bribe in drink, and came back to Still Street and abused Mrs. Dibble for being proud and stuck up.

To think that she should come to this, with her boarding-school education and her semi-architectural contracting father; it was a blow which Mrs. Dibble could not possibly have dreamed of, and she upbraided herself for her weakness in following Dibble and releasing him from his degraded position.

“He never asked you, marm,” said the showman, with a drunken leer. “It wash not our wish you should come and sheek ush out—you old catamaran!”

“Catamaran!” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble, dashing[Pg 156] the tears from her eyes. “Catamaran!—Dibble, if you don’t punch that breuth head I will—so there!”

“Then I must do it, I suppose,” said Dibble. “Now, look’e ’ere, friend,” said Dibble; “I baint goin’ to stand any more o’ this; so clear out.”

“Dy’e hear that, Momush?” said the showman; “we’re to clear out,” and thereupon the drunken magician prepared for the coming engagement.

There was the shank-end of a leg of mutton on the table. Dibble, nodding to his wife to make her comprehend his plan, took up the bone and held it to the “dawg’s” nose. Momus immediately stood upon her hind-legs and followed Dibble to the back kitchen, where she was speedily locked in with her supper.

The showman, hardly comprehending this scheme for removing the protector, by whose side he was so valiant, darted towards the door before Dibble had time to turn round; but not before Mrs. Dibble had time to insert her arm between the drunkard and Dibble, the result of which was[Pg 157] that the magician rolled over, and Dibble was saved the pain and trouble of knocking his old friend down himself.

It was an easy matter to put the showman into the street after this, and when a policeman came up Momus was let out, to walk on her hind-legs, by the side of the man in blue.

A facetious reporter at the police court the next day made a funny paragraph out of the showman’s appearance, the magistrate having requested the “dawg” to be brought into court. Momus made a bow to the bench, and stood upon her hind-legs; which put the magistrate in such a good humour, that he let off the showman with a caution.

The incident was anything but a funny one to the Dibbles, for they lost their lodgers, and Mrs. Dibble lost her respectability and her control of the street; so she gave vent to her feelings by upbraiding Thomas, and the end was that they were exceedingly miserable, and Mrs. Dibble[Pg 158] talked of a “judicious separation,” which was a thing that her “wortht dreamth had never brought to her mind; and oh! if her poor father could only rithe and thee her!” Poor Dibble, he could think of nothing but getting into the Thames, or thrusting his head into the water-butt. He thought better of this by-and-by, however; but not until he had looked at the Thames by gas-light and dipped his head a little way into the water-butt. If the water had not been so cold, we believe Dibble would have put his head deeper into it; but, oh, it was so very cold!

Meanwhile Mr. Jefferson Crawley, alias Shuffleton Gibbs, and the showman’s daughter, were spending their honeymoon, and the ex-swell was educating the young lady, and introducing her into a new world.

[Pg 159]

CHAPTER XII.
DISCOURSES CHIEFLY OF UNREQUITED LOVE.

“I want you to come and spend a week with me, Phœbe,” said the Miss Tallant to the young lady who had abdicated.

They had met near Barton Hall, each on a morning’s ramble in the park, the spring sunshine was so tempting.

“You must really grant this as a favour to me. I want your advice about a hundred things.”

“Mother is not well,” said Phœbe, hesitatingly; “and father is so busy just now in negotiations for a new farm in Lincolnshire.”

At first blush it almost seemed as if there were a little affectation in this careful mention of her new position, and the display of duty, on Phœbe’s[Pg 160] part; but it was not so. Phœbe had argued out her duty, had reasoned with herself upon the course which she ought to pursue; she had prayed earnestly, and religiously striven to see aright, and the end was that she determined to act her part as became a dutiful child. It was not for her to judge her mother’s conduct, nor to repine at her change of fortune. If she had lost wealth and station, she had found a mother and father, and she had obtained thereby perfect freedom in the expression of her love for Arthur Phillips.

On the whole, then, Phœbe’s real happiness had rather been enhanced by the discovery that she was not the wealthy Christopher Tallant’s daughter. A certain feeling of regret would make itself manifest to her now and then when she remembered the luxuries of the Hall, the charming books, the pictures, the familiar boudoir, with its dainty furniture; but this feeling was soon followed by a remembrance of the vague sense of loneliness which often afflicted her there, and the consciousness of being neglected by her[Pg 161] father. Though there had been scarcely a wish that she could not gratify, so far as money was concerned, her life had not been altogether a happy one; it was calm and peaceful, but there had seemed to be no motive in it.

Now all this was changed. Duty had stepped in between herself and the world. “Honour thy father and thy mother” was a commandment which had a new meaning for her. A certain amount of self-sacrifice seemed to be involved, and she made it cheerfully. And all the time she loved the landscape painter.

Phœbe’s was not the love which Amy had felt for Lionel Hammerton; it was not that mad, passionate, doubting, hopeless, longing love, which often animates the heart that is fixed upon one of high rank and station; it was not the love of the lowly maiden for the prince, whom she feels that she lowers by her very passion; it was not the almost fanatical looking upwards of idol-worship; but the love which feels itself worthy of the thing it loves—the love of equals, the passion which has[Pg 162] no worldly fears of rank intervening, the love that dreams not for a moment of condescension on either hand, the love that levels by its intense nobleness and generosity the king with his subject, the noble-born with the peasant, the rich with the poor.

Amy had loved humbly and meekly, but still with a burning passion; she had looked up to Lionel Hammerton as one afar off, and she could have suffered for him in any fashion, and been his slave; he might have commanded her in almost all things. And when he raised her up and whispered in her ear the love he bore her, she had gone home and cried tears of joy and gratitude; but being raised, as it were, to his side, she could not bear indifference, and all her latent pride had come to her aid when the most generous constructions she could put upon Lionel’s conduct only led her to feel that she had been designedly slighted. Her woman’s instinct had begun to interpret his attentions into mere flirtation sometime before he had so suddenly left the country.[Pg 163] After that day when he had whispered his admiration so earnestly, and sealed his words with a kiss, he had never called at the Hall or the farm. She had learnt that he had been at home several times prior to his departure, and that he had been at Avonworth, too; but he had made no sign to her. This was not love, she knew. The lover, whose mistress has hung upon his tender words, and told him by a thousand endearing glances how fervently his love is returned, loses no opportunity of enjoying the sweets of courtship. Lionel Hammerton had been near Barton, and Amy had sighed for his presence—had longed to look upon him—had counted the hours and days since she saw him last; yet he came not. And then he left the country, deeming her unworthy of a parting word. Had he sent her some letter which had miscarried? No. Had he left any message for her with his friend, Arthur Phillips? No. On the contrary, he had spoken of her, not as Arthur would like to have had his sister spoken of, before he left on that long journey, which was, no doubt,[Pg 164] intended to make a gulf between them that should separate them for ever.

Lionel had flirted with her, and left her with indifference, perhaps with contempt, and the native pride of her mother asserted itself, and revenge had filled up the place which love had occupied.

“Ah, I know you will come, my darling,” said Amy. “I want to talk with you about my marriage.”

“I will come, Amy, with pleasure,” Phœbe replied.

She must have been more than woman if she could have resisted that latter appeal.

“Will you come now?” said Amy, taking Phœbe’s arm.

“Yes,” said Phœbe. “We will first call at the farm, and let mother know,” said Phœbe. “I know she will be pleased for me to go with you, and I can go and see them every day.”

“Oh, yes, child; but how very dutiful you are, to be sure: more so than I was, I fear,” said Amy, just a little impatiently.

[Pg 165]

The spring sunshine streamed upon them as they walked, like a benediction from heaven. The trees were tipped with brown and green; some shone like frosted silver, and others looked like mere outlines against the sky, as if nature had just sketched them, and left them in outline. The lake shone with a clear bright radiance, and reflected itself full of the adjacent hill, and you could look down into it and see a picture of surpassing beauty, now and then veiled for a moment by passing clouds that made great flitting shadows over the green turf, too, and seemed to chase each other, like the birds that were building their nests.

Phœbe felt all the delightful sensations of the time; she stepped aside when her foot threatened the daisy just peeping forth amongst the tender grass; she felt the warm breath of the genius of the time upon her cheek, the bleating of the lambs awakened gentle sympathetic emotions within her, and she shared in the general hope of creation at the return of the gracious season.

[Pg 166]

Poor Amy had fixed up an entirely worldly standard for her hopes and fears; a standard that was but little influenced by any feelings such as those which animated her companion. The life-giving spirit of the season only animated Amy with fresh vigour in the prosecution of her plans, and with a more lively animation in carrying out the magnificent scheme of revenge and self-justification.

“What will become me most as a bride?” Amy asked, when they were alone at Barton Hall.

It was a tremendous question, but it was answered at last, by the aid of a multifarious collection of patterns of materials, and the written opinion of a French modiste who was coming down from town to wait upon Earl Verner’s intended wife.

Then questions about bridesmaids were discussed, and the pedigrees of several of the earl’s lady relatives, who were to take part in the ceremony, were hunted up in the Peerage.

“Of course you will be one of them, my dear,”[Pg 167] said Amy, “and the prettiest of all, I dare be bound.”

Phœbe hesitated, and looked inquiringly at her friend.

“I shall think you do not love me at all, if you decline; his lordship shall ask you himself if you will not say yes to my request.”

“But you are soaring so far above me,” said Phœbe, in her quiet gentle way. “I shall feel out of place amongst such great people.”

“Nonsense! beauty shall rank with the highest of them that day,” said Amy, proudly. “Nay, do not blush; you know I would not flatter you.”

“You are so changed,” said Phœbe, thoughtfully. “I seem to remember you as one belonging to the past, Amy; and it has often made me feel very sad.”

“Think differently about it,” said Amy, assuming a light, gay tone. “I know I am changed, but changed for the better. I have dropped out of my bundle of feelings a parcel[Pg 168] called sensibility, or sensitiveness, or something of that kind, Phœbe, and I am glad of it. I find myself in a world where it is inconvenient to have fine feelings, and I have resolved to take the world as I find it.”

“Suppose,” said Phœbe—“but you will forgive me for being candid with you?”

“Yes, yes,” said Amy, lightly; “say whatever you please, dear; you have the right to do so.”

“Supposing, then, that Mr. Hammerton should return.”

Amy was discomposed for a moment at the suggestion; but she recovered her self-possession very speedily.

“Well, suppose he should?” said Amy, whilst she thought of her reply. “How would that affect me?”

“Yes,” said Phœbe, with an earnest look in her deep blue eyes.

“You are thinking of what I told you in the summer-house, in that past time of which you have spoken.”

[Pg 169]

“Yes,” said Phœbe.

“I knew you were. Well, Phœbe, that belongs to the past; Lionel Hammerton belongs to the past—to my past; he has no place in my future.”

Amy said this solemnly, and with a fierce kind of firmness in her manner, which told Phœbe how much revengeful feeling there was in the change that had come over the new mistress of Barton Hall.

“But, Amy——”

Amy interrupted her.

“There is no ‘but’ in the case, love; he shall have indifference for indifference, scorn for scorn, and I will trample upon all his worldly hopes as the Countess of Verner, as he trampled upon mine as the Honourable Lionel Hammerton.”

Amy rose from her seat when she said this, and planted her pretty feet upon the ground with calm determination.

“You loved beneath your station, as some would hold, my dear,” said Amy. “I loved above mine:[Pg 170] it is the way of the world: the highest may stoop to the lowest, or trifle with the love that is offered. Fate or Providence, as you would say, has wrought a wonderful change in our lots, has reversed our positions, and just at the proper moment. By placing you a little lower, as far as worldly considerations are concerned, Fate has brought you nearer to him you love, and brought hopes of future happiness. My exaltation has given me the power for self-assertion, for blotting out a silly passion, granting me, almost at the moment when I prayed for it, the dearest wish of my heart. That carriage with the coronet in the panel, whirling along through the autumn leaves, was the omen—the sign which Fate flung before me. I accepted it, and I shall not turn back; no, I shall not turn back.”

Phœbe blushed at the mention of her own love, and pitied Amy, knowing how she too had loved in those past days; but she could give Amy no soothing tidings of Lionel; she could not deny that his conduct had been unmanly, and somewhat[Pg 171] dishonourable. Yet Arthur Phillips had not told her of those last words of Lionel’s, nor had he shown her a letter since received from him, in which Mr. Hammerton said “that stupid bit of flirtation in Avonworth Valley” he hoped was forgotten by the bailiff’s pretty daughter, “who had played her part so well and very nearly with success.” Phœbe could not help feeling that some misunderstanding, some mistake or other, had come between the loves of these two, and she would fain have pointed this out to Amy.

“Who knows but some dreadful misunderstanding may have——”

“Don’t speak of it, Phœbe, love,—I have thought of that and everything, and have resolved. Beside, my love, it is not fitting we should discuss the question. I am betrothed; in a few short weeks I shall be a wife.”

“It is because you have those few weeks in which you might still change your determination that I venture to ask you, supposing[Pg 172] Lionel Hammerton were to return and renew his former attentions, and offer you marriage,” said Phœbe.

“I should not believe in his sincerity,—I would rather be beyond his reach. I could fain hope that he might feel a passion for me, that he might all of a sudden love me; that he might feel some of the pangs I have felt. No, Phœbe, if he were at my feet this moment I might smile and let him sue; but I should not love him,—I should not prefer him to his elder brother with the title;—oh, no! all that romantic sentiment is over!—I should prefer to be a countess in possession rather than in reversion. And now we have said enough about this. I wanted to talk to you and ask you all sorts of questions, and you have literally turned the tables upon me by putting me through a most romantic catechism. I have answered you to the best of my ability and with perfect sincerity; so now, pray, be content, and let us talk of laces, and ribbons, and orange blossoms, and glacé, and poult de soie; of bridesmaids,[Pg 173] and Hanover Square, and matrimonial responsibilities.”

And Amy rattled away and laughed at Phœbe’s sober face, and kissed her fair forehead, as joyously as if she were about to marry her first love; but when she was alone in her bedroom, she flung herself down and sobbed aloud.

Why had heaven given her all those warm passions, that deep capacity to love, and set the idol before her, and let all her love go for naught? This was the burden of the burning thoughts which Phœbe’s conversation had aroused.

“Alas! the love of woman! it is known

To be a lovely and a dangerous thing.”

It is questionable whether Byron really knew in his soul much about the true and pure love of woman, though he has described its dangerous and passionate phases so well. It is a lovely and a dangerous thing, undescribable and unfathomable. “All that has been written in song, or told in story, of love and its effects, falls far short of its[Pg 174] reality. Its evils and its blessings, its impotence and its power, its sin and its holiness, its weakness and its strength, will continue the theme of nature and of art, until the great pulse of the universe is stilled.”

O, how she had loved this man! And he knew it! Here was the bitter sting that wounded the poor, stricken woman; that stirred all her woman’s pride, and made her almost hate herself that she had confessed so much—made her hate him, or fancy she hated him, the more for having wiled her secret from her.

Love, jealousy, pride, and woman’s modesty, all seemed to pronounce in her mind against the man whom she had loved so wildly; and Pride inflicted the fiercest pangs of all in the woman’s wounded sense of unrequited Love.

[Pg 175]

CHAPTER XIII.
THE FIRST OBSTRUCTION IN A CERTAIN SCHEME OF AMBITION AND REVENGE.

During Phœbe’s visit to her old home, Lord Verner called twice. His lordship was particularly gracious, and evidently deeply enamoured of Amy.

When he came Amy was careful to put on her best smiles. It seemed to Phœbe as if she delighted in watching the effect of her little sallies of pleasantry and wit upon the love-sick earl. She humoured and petted him in her conversation, and at the same time triumphed over him. She seemed to give way to all his whims, and yet had her own way.

His lordship had at first been all anxiety that the marriage should be particularly quiet, and[Pg 176] Amy had appeared to enter into his plans in this respect; but now he was for all sorts of extravagant demonstration, and Amy led him on so far, that it would be impossible to give up any important points in the general display.

And she looked so fresh, and bright, and happy in his love, and Lord Verner appeared to be so proud of her, that Phœbe almost began to believe that happiness would come of the union.

No one could say that Amy would not fill her high station so far as appearance, and carriage, and manners were concerned. She looked every inch a countess already. And she knew it; for she took all manner of pains to set off her graceful, well defined figure. Dainty robes of well studied colour to throw up her clear, but dark complexion; scarlet bands in her black hair, with a simple diamond star that did not sparkle more brightly than her own bright eyes. Pretty ruffles on her wrists, and about her neck, and dainty shoes upon her feet, that now and then peeped forth from beneath her embroidered petticoat;[Pg 177] she had a powerful fascination for Earl Verner. She seemed to be unconscious of her charms, and this made her doubly attractive.

What would his lordship have said if he could have overheard that conversation between his betrothed and her friend with the sweet Miranda face? He would not have been more surprised, we suspect, than Mr. Lionel Hammerton, who was in India all this time, blissfully ignorant of all that was going on at Barton,—blissfully ignorant of the recent changes. If any one had told him that his thorough-going old bachelor brother was engaged to be married, he would have treated it as a good joke. And supposing the gossip had supplemented that statement with a true history of the case, he would have given him considerable credit for imagination, and pooh-poohed the whole thing.

Amy Somerton discovered to be Christopher Tallant’s daughter, and Miss Tallant no other than the bailiff’s daughter!—changed in infancy by the bailiff’s wife! Old Tallant dead, and made Amy his heiress, cut off his son, not even with a[Pg 178] shilling. And Earl Verner going to marry the young lady that Lionel had flirted with, and whose likeness was hung outside those mosquito curtains! Of course he would not have believed a word of it. He would more readily have accepted the incidents in the novel he had been reading than these. Besides, who could be expected to believe that those two girls had been changed in their cradles? It was such an old story, that; all very well in a poem or a romance, but it could never occur in the Vale of Avonworth.

Perhaps, chers amis, you, too, may think in this wise. The idea is not a new one, we must confess; but if it is a fact, you will accept it as worthy of record, not for its own sake, but on account of the consequences arising out of Mrs. Somerton’s mistaken ambition. Remember, friends, there is no new thing under the sun. We have this upon the authority of the wisest of all men, and the preacher is verified in ten thousand ways. As far back as the thirteenth century one Friar Bacon, probably writing upon facts and[Pg 179] traditions handed down from times long antecedent to his own day, anticipated in his works the railway, the steamship, the hydraulic engine, and the balloon. The Chinese were printers before the ancient Romans discovered Britain, and the Romans made gunpowder when there were naked savages living in the neighbourhood of Barton Hall. The Chinese had discovered gas long before we knew anything about it. Chloroform, photography, the telegraph, and a hundred other “new” inventions, were old things used and forgotten before we heard of them. Have not all the finest thoughts that can enter the brain of scholar or poet been thought before? and does not some classical writer anathematise the great men who had said all the good things before him? All that long race of thinkers and writers, and poets and orators, and tale-tellers and humourists, and playwrights,—what room have they left for a mere story-teller to interest and say something new?

“There is nothing new under the sun.” But[Pg 180] there ought to be something new in a novel, nevertheless, most readers seem to think. Critical readers claim something new at the novelist’s hands, and rate him and he dare to walk in beaten tracks. Next to something new comes something true. This shall protect our neck from the sharp edge of the sword that hangs by that Damoclean thread which is so easily severed. We are telling a tale with Truth for its basis, and how can the mere historian help it if there is nothing new in one of the main incidents of his narrative? Human hopes and fears, and sorrows and troubles, and joys and pleasures, are a constant repetition of the same occurrences, and love of money forms the axis upon which this world of trouble revolves.

When you tell your favourite little stories after dinner—incidents in your own life—you don’t think there is nothing new under the sun then—eh? “New or not, they are true,” you say. Very well, sir, and so is this history; and if there is one part of it more truthful than another, it is that quiet but important bit of exchange performed in[Pg 181] those early days of those charming young women, who used to live like sisters at Barton Hall. Ask old Dibble if this is not a true story; ask Arthur Phillips and his wife; ask the Right Hon. the Countess of Verner; go down to Avonworth, and visit Barton Hall.

Lionel Hammerton would not have believed it, nevertheless, and he will return from India utterly ignorant of all the changes that have taken place up to this period of our story; for those two letters written by a certain painter, and the one sealed with a coronet, are destined to pass their owner on the high seas, both travelling in different directions.

If Lord Verner would have been very much surprised could he have heard that conversation between the two ladies at Barton Hall, what would he have thought of the following dialogue, which was spoken a few days afterwards.

“I must confess I am a little surprised,” said Miss Tallant, “that you should not have given me notice of your visit.”

[Pg 182]

“It did not occur to me that such a measure was needful from a brother to his sister,” said Mr. Richard Tallant, coolly throwing himself into an easy chair.

“Brother and sister, truly,” said Miss Tallant, with dignity, “but hitherto somewhat divided in feeling and opinion, and latterly by a law-suit.”

“Yes, these things will occur; but you possess rather more than your share, my sister, of our father’s goods. Would it have been otherwise than fair to have given the son and heir half the property?”

“Would it not have been brotherly to give the sister an opportunity at least to consider what course she should take before loading her with threats, and commencing an action against her in Chancery?” said Miss Tallant. “The wishes of the dead are entitled to respect, and especially with regard to property left behind for others; but the recipient of a fortune such as that which I have inherited could have afforded to be generous, and would have endeavoured, no doubt,[Pg 183] to give effect to the impulses of her own heart, even in the interest of one who did not deserve compassion.”

“Indeed!” said Richard; “you are quite eloquent, I declare. You fill your high station magnificently. May I ring for luncheon?”

“Perhaps it would be a little more courteous in the first place to explain your business, and in the next to leave the ordering of luncheon to the mistress of the house.”

“As you please,” said Mr. Tallant—“as you please. I want you to instruct Twyzell and Kits, your lawyers, to pay four thousand pounds to my credit to-morrow.”

“Indeed!” said Miss Tallant.

“Yes, I will be frank with you. Certain important securities which I hold have suddenly fallen in value, and a banking friend of mine who holds them is anxious that the sum which they did represent should be made up in cash; I am very desirous of obliging my friend, and I knew you would oblige me.”

[Pg 184]

“Indeed,” repeated Miss Tallant, “I fear I must refer you to the gentlemen whom you have mentioned; your legal process has quite removed the affair beyond the pale of my consideration, whatever my feelings with regard to it might be.”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Richard Tallant, altogether uninfluenced by the quiet, sarcastic smile which played round Miss Tallant’s mouth, and ignoring altogether the evident annoyance which his effrontery excited, and which Amy struggled unsuccessfully to hide.

“Is this your reply? Will you not lend the money to your brother?”

“It may not be mine to lend; you have threatened to upset your father’s will, and your lawyer professes to be certain that you can succeed in doing so. I must refer you to Mr. Twyzell; and now I will order luncheon for you,” said Amy, advancing towards the bell.

“Stay one moment,” said Richard, stroking his beard, in which already there were many grey hairs; “it is useless to refer me to Twyzell; you[Pg 185] must write a note requesting him to let me have the money to-morrow. He may lend it me without prejudice, as the lawyers say, so that it will in nowise influence any legal proceedings that are pending. You must do this, or I shall be compelled to say something very unpleasant. I cannot possibly do without the money, and it is most convenient that you should be the lender.”

“What does this mean?” said Amy. “You know that I have no other course but to refer you to the lawyers, and it is idle to say more about it.”

“Very well; it is hard to force a gentleman and your brother, in difficulties, to appear ungentlemanly and unbrotherly; but if he has no other resource, he must use means which he would otherwise reject with contempt. You are to be married to the Right Hon. the Earl Verner, of Montem Castle; it is a great match.”

“Well,” said Miss Tallant, impatiently.

“Do you remember a confession you once made—it is a long time ago now—to the young[Pg 186] lady who was Miss Tallant then and your patroness.”

The questioner looked up to his sister to note the effect of his interrogation; but there was no change in Amy’s face, though she began to suspect why her visitor had exercised so much assumption of power and authority in this unexpected interview.

“You were sitting together in the summer-house yonder on a spring morning not unlike the present, and you entered into some very interesting details with regard to myself, and also concerning your love, or fancy, or liking, or whatever it is called, for Earl Verner’s brother.”

Amy did not lose her self-control even at this point of the conversation; but she remembered the time to which he alluded, and remembered it vividly, for she had always believed that Richard Tallant had overheard all she and Phœbe said on that particular occasion.

“When you pressed your ear against the keyhole?” she said, with a scornful look.

[Pg 187]

“No, that was not necessary,” said Mr. Tallant; “the door was open a little way, and two voices forced themselves upon my attention—that is the courteous way of putting it.”

“Well, you have something more to say? Better say all you desire.”

“It occurred to me that you might spare me the pain of proceeding further, and that you would write to Twyzell and Kits at once.”

“Since the subject is becoming interesting at last, I have no desire to put an end to it now,” said Amy, who had some little time previously sat down, with the table between herself and her visitor.

“Earl Verner would hardly like to hear that you were passionately in love with his brother, and that his brother had jilted the woman he is about to marry; besides, he is a generous fellow—he might give the lady up to her first love, and particularly as he is invalided sometimes and fond of a quiet life. I have business with his lordship[Pg 188] and thought of riding over this afternoon, if you could lend me a horse.”

It was a desperate struggle for Amy to sit still and endure this; the colour came and went in her cheeks, and her heart beat at a fever rate, and then seemed to stop altogether; but still she sat in her chair, and gave but slight indication of the sharpness of the poisoned shafts which made such a sensible impression upon her. The humiliation of bargaining for the maintenance of a secret from her husband—a secret that might possibly break off an alliance which she had done so much to encompass. But he would not believe it? And if he did, she could tell him that all that silly passion was at an end. These thoughts passed through her mind much more rapidly than the printer’s type has conveyed them to the reader; but she made no sign.

“Shall I ride over to Montem, or return to town? If I go to town you will hear no more from me, at all events until the marriage is over, unless you would like me to give you away.”

[Pg 189]

This was another sting; it reminded Amy of her helpless and forlorn position, and as she glanced at the fine manly form of her brother, a pang of honest regret that they were so fearfully sundered, shot through her heart, and almost brought the tears into her eyes.

“I think we understand each other,” said Mr. Tallant, as though this suspense made him uncomfortable.

“Yes,” said Miss Tallant. “I am sorry to feel that I understand you, Richard Tallant.”

It required no considerable effort for Amy to maintain her calmness, though she had lately set up in her own way for a very clever actress; but she did not break down. She rang the bell, ordered luncheon for Mr. Richard Tallant, and desiring that gentleman to give her half an hour to consider his request, withdrew and sought her own room.

“Ha!” exclaimed Mr. Richard Tallant when she had gone, “a devilish good fight she made of it: there’s no mistake about her parentage;[Pg 190] if anything had been wanting to prove our relationship, this interview would clinch it.”

Mr. Tallant thereupon walked up to the mantel-piece, contemplated himself, stroked his beard, and apostrophised his counterfeit.

“You must be an infernal blackguard, Richard Tallant, Esq., to work such an infernal scheme as this against a woman! Upon my soul I believe you are a bad fellow, a deuced bad fellow. How is it, my friend, you are such a rascal? You had a fine opportunity once. I believe that thief Gibbs ruined you, eh? Perhaps; perhaps not. But you have been put to some tightish shifts, have you not, my friend, none tighter than this? When a fellow can see his way out of certain ruin by a bit of meanness, or whatever you like to call it, the temptation is very great—is it not? Ha, well, it’s a wicked world, a wicked world. You ought to have been the proprietor of this place, my friend: well, never mind; you must manage to do with a part of it, eh? Yes, with a part of it: half a loaf, you know.”

[Pg 191]

“Half a loaf did you say?” asked the quick-eared servant who had just entered with a tray. “Yes, sir—white or brown?”

“Both,” said Mr. Tallant.

“Yes, sir; what wine will you take, sir?”

“Sherry,” said Mr. Tallant.

“Yes, sir.”

And the son of the dead merchant commenced his luncheon. Before he had finished, the same servant brought him a note from Miss Tallant, which enclosed a letter to Twyzell and Kits.

“That’s all right,” he said to himself; “give my love to Miss Tallant, say I am greatly obliged to her, and that she need not give herself any further trouble in the matter.”

“Yes, sir.”

Poor Amy! She had not counted upon this new feature of difficulty in her scheme of ambition and revenge. But she was resolved that nothing should frustrate the accomplishment of the whole scheme which she had planned[Pg 192] out. She was betrothed to Lord Verner, and she would marry him at any sacrifice, ay, even to standing at the altar with Mr. Richard Tallant in the paternal and brotherly position he had mentioned. It was rather singular that Richard Tallant as he returned to town that day should have thought so much about this same contingency.

“Why should I not be one of the wedding guests?” he said, as he smoked and waited for the next train at Orford Junction. “Why should I not give her away?”

[Pg 193]

CHAPTER XIV.
OF HAPPY DAYS IN SPRING.

And these were the happy days of the courtship of Phœbe and Arthur. They came with the spring blossoms, opening up a bright new future to both.

Yes, happy days, perfectly happy. Philosophy says there is no perfect happiness. Mr. Williamson would smile with quiet amazement at your simplicity if you held that anybody had been perfectly happy, even for an hour. But then, you know, he had been hit in his early days, and the remembrance of his own transient approach to a sense of happiness may have embittered his later existence.

Arthur Phillips, a year ago, would have entered into an abstract argument with you upon the subject. He would have told you, with Guizot, that[Pg 194] the study of art perhaps contained the highest elements of happiness; that, in the abstract, it was altogether unconnected with the struggles and contests of ordinary life. Although he would have told you that Guizot’s charming views about the study of art did not always apply to the practice of it, he would have defended his opinion of the unselfishness of a pure taste for the beautiful in art, and demonstrated to you that it brought into play and had the power of exciting the deepest emotions, gratifying both the nobler and softer parts of our nature,—the imagination and the judgment, love of emotion and power of reflection, the enthusiasm and the critical faculty, the senses and the reason;—but the painter would have sighed as he quoted this enthusiastic commendation of art, and thought how far short all this was from perfect happiness.

To ramble about that old cathedral, to think of that dear, sweet face, was happiness; yet it left so much to long for and regret, that sometimes the pain was greater than the happiness.

But as he sits beside that fair girl in the[Pg 195] farmer’s parlour, what does he think of happiness now? The philosopher says perfect happiness was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of man, but that He has given us the power of an exceeding near approach to it. And we do not hesitate to say, that He does give to some mortals a foretaste of that perfect happiness which is to be the undying prize of the future day.

A wise lady, and a duchess, too, has said that our happiness in this world depends on the affection we are enabled to inspire. Let Phœbe and Arthur be judged by this standard, and they are to be envied indeed. To sit hand in hand, to walk and talk with freedom of their love, of the little incidents of past days, to recall their moments of doubt, and look back to times of utter hopelessness, to trace their little acts of sympathy from the first days of their love, to recall that grand festival beneath the cathedral roof, to think of the days when each loved the other in secret and in fear and dread and in solitude! Was not this perfect happiness?

[Pg 196]

Friend Greybeard, does not the old love break out afresh as you contemplate two lovers like these? Don’t you remember the old dream? If there is a picture in thy brain such as that of which sings the poet whose scrap of rhyme, with an American name at the bottom, has just attracted my attention in the corner of the county newspaper, do not shut it out.

“Upon the budded apple-trees

The robins sing by twos and threes,

And ever at the faintest breeze

Down drops a blossom;

And ever would that lover be

The wind that robs the burgeoned tree,

And lifts the soft tress daintily

On Beauty’s bosom.

“Ah, greybeard, what a happy thing

It was, when life was in its spring,

To peep through love’s betrothal ring

At fields Elysian;

To move and breathe in magic air,

To think that all that seems is fair—

Ah, ripe young mouth and golden hair,

Thou pretty vision!”

[Pg 197]

Let the old dream nestle in thine heart; there is nothing else therein so beautiful. Don’t you remember what noble, unselfish things you would have done in those days? What were capital and interest, and shares at par or premium or discount to thee, except so far as money might concern her happiness? You have not seen that curl of hair, wrapped in faded paper, and put away in the dark corner of that old desk, for years. Take it out, old friend; there is nothing unmanly in thy tears, for it is manly to have loved, and it is better even “to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” It is something to have the memory of those happy times. You were happy, whatever you may say to the contrary, you know you were—ten times happier when she smiled and returned the pressure of your hand than you are now at the prosperous state of markets and the thrift of your firm. You may deny it; but the old times come back in the firelight, old friend, do they not, when the heart confesses its own bitterness? Don’t deny it, and don’t look ashamed[Pg 198] at your own shadow in the glass, when you unfold that poor little curl.

The happiness of Arthur and Phœbe was something to look upon and be happy at. If Asmodeus had taken you to that model farm-house, that you might have been a calm spectator of the love that had folded his wings and settled down there beside that hearth, you would have been happier for the sight. For it was a catching happiness, that of Phœbe and Arthur; an epidemic of joy and bliss and peace. You could not possibly have come within a yard of its influence without feeling a certain delight. If you happened to be a young fellow, a slight touch of envy might, perhaps, have struggled into your heart and embittered the sight; for Phœbe might have struck you as the realisation of all your dreams of beauty, so soft, and gentle, and pulpy, and rosy, and innocent, and loving.

We only meet with those beauties in books, you say, and in pictures. But this is a common calumny upon English women. Such beauties as Phœbe[Pg 199] Somerton are rare, no doubt; but there are tender, kitten-like, innocent, candid, pretty girls like her in many an English county. Ay, and girls as good and true and generous. If our friend Mr. Williamson were criticising this book for the Pyrotechnic, he would probably say at this point that so far as the heroines are concerned, the male novelist usually describes his characters as the perfection of beauty and goodness, impossibly lovely, impossibly true and generous; whilst the lady novelist combines beauty with devilry, and makes her charming women fiends beyond the imagination of men; and as Mr. W. has a smart epigrammatic way of writing, he would possibly say that whilst most men draw women as they ought to be, most women depict them as they ought not to be, and the public are waiting to see them painted as they are.

We need not take the trouble to convince the Pyrotechnic that Phœbe Somerton is drawn to the life, if the Pyrotechnic thinks otherwise; but let us tell you, friendly reader, who has accompanied[Pg 200] us, paper-knife in hand, that Phœbe Somerton was all we have described her in beauty and in gentleness and truth. And no wonder that she had been attracted by Arthur Phillips, with his big, black, melancholy eyes, and his fine intellectual face. One good nature speedily detects its counterpart in another, and it was a testimonial of high and noble character to be loved by a woman like Phœbe. Love perpetrates strange, mad freaks, but it would have been next to impossible for a pure nature like Phœbe’s to have allied itself with another that was unworthy.

Luke Somerton and his wife grew quite genial in the presence of the radiating love-beams that seemed to shine about the lovers; and the bailiff thought about his young days in the great Lincolnshire fens and wolds. He and his elder brother had quarrelled when they were boys, about Sarah Howard, his present wife. Luke had loved her passionately, and had been persistent in his attentions towards her; but Sarah played her cards to win the elder brother, who[Pg 201] would come in for the great bulk of the property. She was worldly, as you have seen, and had fixed upon doing great things if she married the elder Somerton. But it was only Luke who really loved her; his brother flirted with her, and eventually married a rich widow, whereupon Sarah Howard was fain to be content with Luke, who had quarrelled with his brother, not because his brother loved Sarah, but because he did not. For Luke, like a great, fond Lincolnshire lad as he was, on learning that Miss Howard liked his elder brother better than himself, had actually given her up, and called upon his brother to marry her. And now Luke looked back to these days, and remembered the time when Sarah had professed to return his love, and when they walked to the church through the meadows, and over the bridge that spanned the sparkling beck; and he heard the half-a-dozen bells ringing afterwards,—heard them now after all those years: and he was happier in these memories because he knew that these two lovers really loved each other, both[Pg 202] of them as truly as he had loved Sarah Howard.

Mrs. Somerton would now and then become quite cheerful, and tell Arthur in fun how she had disliked him once, because she could see he was after Amy; and this would start conversations and confessions that gave the greatest pleasure to all concerned.

Arthur would bring Phœbe bundles of newspapers and magazines in which his pictures were criticised. And Phœbe would blush with delight over the praises there bestowed upon her lover, and look dreadfully astonished when any critic threw in some adverse suggestion or observation. The Pyrotechnic said Arthur Phillips was at the head of his profession; no previous artist had combined landscape and figure painting with the success which had crowned his efforts: he was Salvator Rosa and Wilkie in one. Happily the higher class journals and the art magazines were more judicious in their commendations than this, but they all agreed that Mr. Phillips had a genius[Pg 203] for painting, and knew how to put that genius into his pictures; so the artist was not only on the high-road to lasting fame, but to monetary competence. He therefore talked to Phœbe of their future with confidence, and Mrs. Somerton was not a little pleased to learn that after all her daughter would be the wife of a thriving man.

There was something prophetic, Arthur thought, in his title of that picture which had given the finishing touch to his professional reputation; and Phœbe pressed his arm as he said so whilst they were walking up to the summer-house on those dear Berne Hills. Something quite prophetic! That gleam of inspiration which had fallen upon him in connection with those poor emigrants could only have been a stroke of Destiny: the tide was at the flood, and Fate pointed in the right direction. “Seeking New Homes!” It was the key-note to all the recent events in their history. They were all on the eve of seeking new homes: Mr. Somerton, Mrs. Somerton, Paul Somerton, Miss Tallant, and Phœbe, and himself.[Pg 204] New homes! What a pleasant, happy ring there was in the words! Arthur drew all sorts of imaginary word-pictures of their home in the future; and it was a paradise indeed, with such a studio, where Phœbe should have an easel, too,—such a home, the home of Love and Art!

If Arthur grew enthusiastically poetic in the contemplation of this future, who could feel surprised? Walking abroad with Phœbe Somerton hanging on his arm, betrothed to him, almost mated like the birds that were building their nests all round about them. Was it not a poetic time? Is there any period of the year more eloquent to lovers, more fairy-like, more hopeful than Spring?

And Spring in that Berne Hill country! Alike in every other season you saw all the special beauties of the time in the neighbourhood of Barton Hall. Standing near the summer-house (where Richard Tallant played the eaves-dropper to that naïve conversation, of which he reminded his sister so recently), Arthur and Phœbe may well[Pg 205] feel that their lines have been cast in pleasant places; that Heaven is dealing tenderly with them; that the future will be a blessed time like this. The sky above them is full of blue and white,—great silver mountains piled upon each other in an azure sea. A lark is mounting upwards, with a cheery song that is answered by a thousand wood-notes in the grove beneath. Far away on every side stretch the green fields dotted with homesteads and villages, past which winds the river sparkling in the sun. Old church towers and steeples peep over the tree-tops in quiet glades, and white wreaths of smoke in the distance mark the course of railway trains hurrying on their way to London. A misty cloud, half-penetrated by the sun, hangs over the Linktown Hills, and envelopes the sharp outlines that come out here and there in undulating curves, picturesque indications of their graceful lines of beauty. How eloquently Arthur dwelt upon the glories of this great picture of Nature’s own painting!

The trees were clothed with delicate verdant[Pg 206] tints, through which the graceful shapes of the budding branches were seen, and the white birch did indeed stand out like the fair lady of the woods, nodding her pretty head and shaking her tresses to the music of the birds. Phœbe hushed Arthur’s voice at the piping of a nightingale in a copse hard by, and the artist recalled old Izaak Walton’s exclamation, “Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth!”

Whether it was the associations of the place with former times or the words “bad men” that set Phœbe thinking of the time when the wickedness of Richard Tallant was first strongly put before her, listeth not; but she began to talk of Amy and of Lionel Hammerton.

“Do you think Mr. Hammerton was really fond of Amy?” she asked.

“I do, indeed,” said Arthur.

“Were they engaged to be married?”

“Oh no, I think not; there was nothing so serious between them as that.”

[Pg 207]

“So serious!” repeated Phœbe, archly.

“So sweet,” said Arthur, promptly and tenderly—“serious is the conventional phrase.”

“Why did he neglect her? Did he speak of her unkindly when he left England?”

“He said something about Paul—her brother in those days, you know, when you were Miss Tallant—something about prying into his affairs.”

“Indeed!”

“Paul had followed him to the club, and warned him against some persons who were conspiring to win his money at cards.”

“Oh yes, I remember something of it; but I was not aware that the surveillance had gone so far. Mr. Hammerton was being deceived, I think, Amy said. There was a plot against him, she thought; but, poor girl, she was so deeply in love with him.”

“He felt annoyed that she had interfered in his private doings,” said Arthur; “he thought it was officious, I suppose.”

[Pg 208]

“Was that all?” asked Phœbe. “Then he did not love her.”

Arthur had too much regard for his old friend even now to hint that Lionel thought Amy was influenced by mere worldly motives.

“And you think he really loves Amy now?” said Phœbe, half-aloud, half to herself.

“Not as I love you,” said Arthur; “but our love, dearest, is a love apart from any other love; it seems to me that nobody in the whole world is blessed like I am with a love so generous, so noble. What have I done that I should deserve so much happiness?”

“Dear Arthur!” was all Phœbe could say, and then for a time they forgot all the world but themselves and the trees and flowers and grasses and the distant hills and the spring sky above them, with the hopeful lark in the sunshine, and the nightingale singing in the shade.

What a delightful path it was, that old familiar way by which they returned to the farm! Wood-sorrel, buttercups, sweet woodroof, primroses, and[Pg 209] violets bespangled and scented the way; green grasses and ferns shot out like emerald spikes and crooks from amongst dead leaves that autumn winds had left in out-of-the-way corners. The lake in the shadow of the hills shone here and there through the trees like glints of silver, and the sunbeams sparkled white and shimmery on the windows of Barton Hall. At length the lovers stopped beside a rustic stile near the foot of the hills—one of those old-fashioned, moss-grown, lichen-coloured stiles, which give such additional charms to straggling hedge-rows, with great clumps of flowering hawthorn here and there at the top, and patches of red and brown and amber in the old roots at the bottom. Beneath a bending branch of budding May-flowers Arthur pointed out the spot where he had sat for hours to paint and think of her in the summer-time, and she saw that the place commanded a full view of the room where she mostly sat.

Oh, what a happy time it was! The spring[Pg 210] wind went about the woods in gentle murmurs, as if it were saying so in every nook and corner. “How are you, old friend?” it seemed to say every now and then, as it rustled the young leaves of an oak or an elm—“glad to see you looking so well—pleasant day;” and the trees seemed to nod and look happy, and congratulate each other that the south wind had come again, and the ash trees shook their jangling locks with delight. Everything seemed to say the winter is over, and we are glad of it and sure of it. The frogs croaked by the margin of the lake, and the crows replied as they winged their way over them up into the elms that glassed themselves in the deep. Bees hummed musically in the air, and darted into the midst of great yellow buttercups as if in very wantonness of joy. What a happy time it was! Everything seemed to say so—birds and trees and hills and fields. There was a general jubilation of Nature, such as the Psalmist might have had in his mind when he sang, “Let the floods clap their hands, and let[Pg 211] the hills be joyful together before the Lord.”

Happy days! Why do we dwell upon them? It is not easy to close any page which has spring sunshine in it. We have all of us so many dear, treasured associations with it, bringing us back to the spring-time of life when the world looked so hopeful and charming—when there were flowers of love and friendship in our paths, and we knew nothing of the thorns that lurked beneath them.

[Pg 212]

CHAPTER XV.
FINANCE AND “FINESSE.”

The spring did not bring happy days with it in the city of London. The south wind had no influence on that financial storm which had not yet subsided. It brought no comfort to unhappy speculators and tottering houses of trade. The city sparrows shambled from under the eaves, and rolled themselves in the dust of the great city, and street boys whistled merrily along the hard pavements; but great merchants held down their heads, directors of companies hurried to and fro with great secrets in their hearts that troubled them sorely; countrymen stared vacantly up at offices and banks that were closed and marked “To Let.” The genius of finance, and not spring, had full possession of the City, and he was[Pg 213] tormenting it with panic fiends and imps of all kinds.

People had said six months previously that the worst was over; but the genius of finance looked on with a sardonic grin, and after breathing awhile quietly he set to work again, shaking the city with all his might, and letting flights of rumours out of his black bag that frightened people almost out of their wits. Then the telegraph wires carried the rumours far away into the country once more, and newspaper editors began to write furiously about the currency; deputations waited on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to talk about the Bank Charter Act; and the court of the Bank of England sat in secret, and raised the rate of discount. The more that big demon of finance shook the City, the higher went up the Bank barometer, and the higher it rose the lower fell the hopes of traders, and discounters, and shaky companies.

The period of panic through which the monetary world is passing whilst we are writing this[Pg 214] history, has nearly all the characteristics of the one which occurred in the days of Thomas Dibble and Richard Tallant, and the other persons who make up this poor drama of life. Every ten years these storms occur, they say; and yet the wise people who say so, never seem prepared for the rainy day.

Mr. Richard Tallant had hitherto succeeded in profiting by the storm. He was one of those financial wreckers who plundered the broken ships, and made money out of claims for salvage after the crews were murdered. But he had believed, like some others, that the worst was past during that breathing time, and in an evil hour for him he had, on good information, bought largely of shares in the Bungalay Bank, and had taken a seat at the board of directors. The thing collapsed immediately on the revival of the financial storm, and Mr. Tallant’s losses were so considerable, that the four thousand pounds which he had screwed out of Twyzell and Kits were absolutely necessary to meet and float fresh[Pg 215] bills of exchange which had been useful bladders to him in the monetary sea for some time past. Several “good things” had come to the ground without warning, including a discount house in which Mr. Tallant was interested.

The times were peculiarly ticklish for many a stronger man than Richard Tallant; but that gentleman found himself in a position which needed all his administrative ability. He not only held a large number of shares in the Bungalay Bank, but he had used the establishment largely in connection with the Discount Company for bill purposes. He had worked his position at the Meter Iron Works to considerable advantage, drawing upon foreign iron houses, and other companies (some of them quite imaginary), and holding their acceptances to a large amount. The collapse of the Bungalay Bank and the Discount Company made things particularly unpleasant. It would not do for him to sell to any extent the shares he held in the Meter Works; for his holding there gave him a strong position at the[Pg 216] board. He had before now made money out of winding up a bank; but there had been no opportunity for this in the Bungalay, and Mr. Tallant had a shrewd suspicion that he had been “done” in this business, seeing that the promoter of the bank was the gentleman who had brought it to the ground by a petition to wind it up.

Keeping up appearances was a thing of great importance to Mr. Tallant—next indeed to meeting his engagements. He therefore took an opportunity to let it be known in the proper quarter that his sister was going to be married to Earl Verner, which fact speedily came forth in the Morning Post, and was copied by a host of other journals. “The Right Hon. the Earl Verner will shortly lead to the hymeneal altar, Miss Tallant, daughter and heiress of the late Christopher Tallant, Esq., of Barton Hall, and sister to Richard Tallant, Esq., of the City of London, Managing Director of the famous Meter Iron Works Company.”

Lord Verner did not much like this announcement.[Pg 217] The thing might have been blazoned forth in all the papers so far as the mere fact was concerned; but he objected to the introduction of Richard Tallant into the announcement. He was her brother, no doubt, but he was a scoundrel he believed in addition, and his father had disowned him.

His lordship showed Amy the Post, and she only laughed at it, and said how very absurd to mention her brother.

“Though by the way, my lord, he is wonderfully improved, I believe. He is making quite a reputation in that dreadful London.”

“Is he, my love?” said Lord Verner, looking down at Miss Tallant, as she put the last touches to a water-colour drawing.

“Yes, I have seen his name in the papers several times lately mentioned almost as respectfully as his late father’s.”

What a splendid creature she is, Lord Verner thought, as he stood by her side, forgetting altogether about her brother. “Is not that[Pg 218] sky slightly too blue?” he said, leaning over her.

“Perhaps it is my love—my lord, I mean,” said Amy, at which his lordship was in raptures; so much so, that he put his arm round the painter’s waist, and kissed her.

“There!” said Amy, laughing. “I will call you love no more—what a mistake I made to be sure; now, pray go away, you will spoil my work. Sit down, and let us talk.”

Lord Verner complied at, once, and sat down close beside her.

“I ought not to be wasting time upon this,” said Amy; “but I really could not resist finishing it this morning. Let me see, what were we talking about. Oh, my brother. Well, as I observed, he is really making quite a position as a financier—quite. What a pity it is, he did not begin to reform before Mr. Tallant died.”

“That is a matter of opinion, my dear—ha, ha, ha!” said Lord Verner, laughing and chuckling[Pg 219] quite merrily; “he would have had all the money then, perhaps—ha, ha!”

Amy turned round and looked his lordship full in the face, and saw at once that this was said in jest.

“Don’t you see, my love, you would have had no great fortune to give your husband—eh? don’t you see! How it might have influenced events—eh? Ha, ha!”

Lord Verner went red in the face at the bare idea of anything influencing his choice of Amy for a wife.

“And then you would not have proposed for me?” said Amy, smiling.

“No, no—capital idea, is it not?—splendid idea—ha, ha!”

“Then you only care about my money?” said Amy, with affected seriousness.

“That is all, dear, that is all. I am poor myself, very poor; I wanted money—ha, ha!—capital joke!”

“I think it is more than a joke, my lord,” said Amy, quite seriously.

[Pg 220]

“No, now, you do not,” said his lordship, rising and taking her hand quite gravely; “I am sure you do not.”

Now it was Amy’s turn to laugh, and she did so right merrily, shaking her finger archly at her lord and saying, “There, that is one to me, as you say. Of course I was joking; but now, really, let us talk seriously.”

“Well, then, my dearest girl,” said his lordship, “if you had been no more than that bailiff’s daughter, if you had been that beggar maid you talk of in the poem, I would have asked you to marry me all the same, and felt blessed with your consent. You know I would,” said his lordship, with passionate earnestness.

“My dear lord,” said Amy, with more warmth than she had ever spoken before.

“What care I for money,” said his lordship, “except for the luxuries it can purchase?—and nothing it could purchase would make me so happy as I am with you.”

Amy held down her head and blushed, not for[Pg 221] the love she bore him, but because in that earnest moment she saw a likeness to his brother, and she was grateful for his affection, and remembered how she had sought to inspire the same feeling in another.

“We were talking of my brother,” she said presently, laying down her brushes. “What a pity it is that we are not friendly; it seems so lonely to think that I have no male relative who should stand by my side at our marriage.”

Poor Amy! There was something in that half-threat of Richard Tallant’s about giving her away which had set her thinking and preparing for such a contingency as a demand from her brother to be a wedding guest; and she knew that if he vowed to be there at the ceremony, there was no Ancient Mariner to take him by the button, and keep him away. She almost hated herself for saying a word in favour of one whose conduct ought to have placed him outside all decent society.

“Don’t think of that, my dear girl,” said his lordship. “Lord Tufton will ‘give you away,’ as[Pg 222] the service hath it, and I will be by your side.”

“You are so kind and considerate,” said Amy. “You do not like me to thank you, and I will not; but supposing I had a brother worthy of being present, how nice it would have been: it will seem so very strange to have no one belonging to me at such a time. If Lieutenant Somerton had really been my brother.”

“Yes, he is rather a fine fellow, the young officer, and I propose we invite him to be present.”

Miss Tallant was pleased at this kindly recognition of her sometime brother Paul, and from that time she desisted further in her preliminary suggestions with regard to her real brother.

Meanwhile the arrangements for the wedding went on, and hardly a day went by which did not bring some handsome present from Lord Verner. His lordship had been over to Paris specially to make a purchase of some famous court diamonds, which he had learnt were in the market. There[Pg 223] was nothing too good nor too costly for this charming woman at Barton Hall.

It was almost like buying the young lady to load her so with presents and compliments, and already all the people at Montem Castle were profoundly jealous of her. The housekeeper, the valet, the cook, the chaplain, even the vicar at Brazencrook, close by, were jealous of the coming queen. The Castle had been undergoing all sorts of alterations during the last few months. Painters and decorators, and upholsterers, and cabinet-makers, had swarmed in every part of it, and his lordship had looked into every nook and corner of the place himself. The gardeners had been compelled to seek assistance, and strange men from London, calling themselves florists, had been down, and planted all manner of strange-looking plants and shrubs. The whole place had been in a state of commotion, and his lordship had never been known to be so active, nor so well. When the vicar ventured, on the strength of old familiarity, to rally his lordship upon his improved health and[Pg 224] spirits, the Earl laughed and chuckled, and said he had no time to be ill; he did not intend to be ill any more; he had wasted enough valuable time upon that hobby.

Then the vicar would go home to chat with Mrs. Vicar about the changes which were taking place, and wonder what Mr. Hammerton thought about the affair. Of course he knew nothing of it at present; there had scarcely been time for letters to reach him since the match had really been settled and made known.

Everybody in the neighbourhood of Montem Castle and at Brazencrook had looked upon the Hon. Lionel Hammerton as certain of the earldom. Not only was his brother considerably his senior—old enough to be his father—but he had generally been an invalid, and looked much older than he really was. But his lordship was far stronger than they imagined. He had loved retirement and study, and frequently secured it by a pretence of not being well. He had a horror of “boredom”; he could not endure toadyism; he[Pg 225] loved his books and his pictures, his old china, his statuary; and he preferred this to the best society in the district, though he and the vicar and occasional visitors dined luxuriously together, and sat genially over their wine until late in the night.

It was generally agreed that his lordship was odd, and nobody doubted that some day he would be found dead in his bed, and that Lionel Hammerton would succeed and make up for the former Earl’s retirement by a liberal reign and a generous performance of the duties of his high station. But his lordship had opened their eyes of late, and turned the gossip into entirely new and unexpected channels.

Earl Verner’s intended wife had not misinterpreted Richard Tallant’s vague threat. The idea had only occurred to him suddenly as an available bit of sarcasm to hurl at his sister; but he had thought of it in the railway, lighted his cigar with it at the junction, and it had cropped up in his thoughts several times since. To be publicly[Pg 226] reconciled to his sister, and be seen hand and glove with Lord Verner; to be recorded as giving away his sister to an Earl, would be of great advantage to him, just at that time when it was important he should keep up appearances. So he resolved to write to his sister upon the subject, and Amy was not at all surprised when she received the letter.

Nevertheless, Amy’s first impulse was to explain the whole thing to Lord Verner, and entreat his advice and forgiveness; but her second thoughts were calmer and more worldly, and she wrote a brief acknowledgment of Mr. Tallant’s letter, drove to Avonworth, and posted it herself, that the servants might not know there was any correspondence between her brother and herself. She promised to give the subject her best consideration, and on the next opportunity that offered she again introduced the question to Earl Verner. That she might do so more easily, and with a better chance of success, Mr. Richard Tallant had forwarded a copy of the Severntown[Pg 227] Times, in which the following paragraph was marked:

“The Representation of Severntown.—We are authorised to state that at the next election for Severntown, Mr. Richard Tallant, who is well known in the county, will offer himself as a candidate in the Liberal interest. Mr. Tallant is a gentleman of great financial and administrative ability; he is best known as the managing director of that great and flourishing corporation, the Meter Iron Works Company. Added to his high position in the commercial world, our readers have had many proofs of his benevolence. He is a subscriber to all our local institutions, and we happen to know that his private charities are equally liberal. With regard to his politics we believe him to be a Liberal in the best sense of the term; but upon that point the electors will form their own judgment at the proper time. It is pretty well understood that we shall have a general election during the next six months.”

“I had thought of my brother Lionel for[Pg 228] Severntown,” said Lord Verner, when Amy showed his lordship the paragraph; “but I have given that up, of course,—he was too extravagant.”

Miss Tallant made no remark about Lionel; but endeavoured to impress his lordship with the growing importance of her brother, and what a position he might have held had he made his peace with his father before he died; then by degrees she presented herself in the light of an ungrateful sister, and talked about the duty of forgiveness.

Need we say that in the end she gained her point, which was not exactly permission to invite her brother to be present at the ceremony, but that Earl Verner should himself suggest that perhaps it would be best that Mr. Richard Tallant should be asked to act the paternal part on the interesting occasion. He had called upon her, Amy explained, and this newspaper was directed to her by himself. He had made overtures of peace; was it not her place as the inheritor of so much property, which ought to have[Pg 229] been his, to respond, and thus give him an additional inducement to blot out the past, and make reparation to society and to his father’s memory? Of course it was. Lord Verner was too liberal a man not to see this at once, and not to love his intended wife all the more for her generous and noble advocacy of her brother.

[Pg 230]

CHAPTER XVI.
IN WHICH A CERTAIN LIEUTENANT GETS INTO DEBT, AND TRYING TO GET OUT AGAIN FALLS WICKEDLY IN LOVE.

The regiment to which Ensign afterwards Lieutenant Somerton was attached had its station in London, and this gave him an opportunity of keeping up his friendship with Mr. Williamson.

The Lieutenant had become quite a dashing young officer, and his adventures began early, as we shall learn from an elaborate confession which he made to Mr. Williamson before he had worn his epaulettes six months.

They were sitting at the window of a famous hotel at Brighton, whither they had gone together for a day’s lounge. It was a pleasant summer[Pg 231] day, and after dinner, when Paul, smoking a cigar somewhat rapidly and drinking a little more wine than was customary for him to drink, said:

“I have been trying to tell you about something that has happened to me lately.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Williamson, in his lazy fashion putting up his legs upon a vacant chair, and nodding a smiling signal of approval.

Paul hesitated, and said it was rather a long story, and he fidgetted with a tassel that hung from the sword he had laid upon the window seat.

“All right, mon gallant homme, proceed!” said the literary barrister.

Paul gave a long pull and a strong pull at his cigar, and said he would proceed. “I must tell you,—I can’t rest unless I do,—so here goes.”

“Open confession is good for the soul,” said Mr. Williamson; “the auricular business is not to my fancy. But there, go on, Lieutenant, I am getting interested.”

[Pg 232]

“About a month ago Captain Macshawser gave me a tip about a certain steeple-chase, and his information turned out wrong, and——”

“You laid a wager and lost, yes,” said Mr. Williamson, looking out to the sea, and smoking with perfect content.

“And then, in order to get back what I lost, I ventured to take the odds about Fleetwing, and was unsuccessful again,” said Paul, with boyish frankness.

“Very good; I am glad of it,” said Mr. Williamson. “I hope you have been so well punished that you will, like the burnt child, dread the fire in the future.”

Paul did not like the quiet tone of authority and rebuke in which his friend appeared to speak; but he felt that the barrister was in the right, and had his interest at heart.

“You don’t sympathise with me much?” said Paul, moving uneasily in his seat, and smoking by fits and starts.

“O yes, I do, Lieutenant—O yes, I do; I[Pg 233] fancy that Macshawser’s a humbug; but I interrupt your narrative.”

“Well; these losses, and some extra expenditure which I felt called upon to make in a little dinner to some fellows belonging to the Guards, run away with my allowance twice over before I knew where I was.”

“You have been going it, as the saying is,—been fast in the double sense. We say a man is fast who is fond of gaiety, keeps late hours, bets on horse races, and takes ‘tips.’ In Yorkshire, a man who is ‘hard up’ is said to be fast,—fast for money. Are you fast for money now? If so, how much do you want?” said Mr. Williamson still, looking before him far away at the ships in the distance.

“You had better let me tell you the whole story through,” Paul replied. “I was ashamed to let anybody know that I wanted money; I could not summon courage even to tell you, and should not have had courage to do so even now but for another circumstance which has arisen out of it.”

[Pg 234]

“You are too modest,” said Mr. Williamson.

“I thought of a hundred ways of raising money, and I knew that some of our fellows borrow money of Jews; I did not know what to do. Whilst I was sitting over the Times and a cigar in my own quarters, my eye caught an advertisement about ‘money to lend.’”

Mr. Wilkinson grew particularly interested at this point, for a detective friend of his had told him some time ago that he had been on the trail of Shuffleton Gibbs, who had slipped him, in the character, he believed, of an advertising money-lender.

“I replied to the advertisement, and had a letter by return of post requesting me to call at No. 15, Chaucer-street, Lincoln’s-inn-fields. I called, and was requested to fill up a long form, in which I answered a great many questions; but I concealed my connection with the army. My life was to be insured, and a bill of exchange, backed by one good name besides my own, for two hundred and fifty pounds would secure to me[Pg 235] two hundred for three months. I paid the two guineas and a fee the next day for medical examination. Two days afterwards they informed me that the medical officer of the company had made an unfavourable report with regard to the state of my health, and that the loan could not therefore be granted.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Williamson, lighting another cigar.

“I asked for the return of the fees which I had paid, and was informed that no fees were ever returned. I felt that I had been swindled, but still could not rest until I had undergone an examination by our own surgeon, and been reported sound in wind and limb.”

“Well,” said Mr. Wilkinson, “you have been making experience; your story grows in interest; make a clean breast of it, perhaps I can help you.”

“I did not know what to do next; somehow these advertisements attracted my attention again. I found one which really did seem honest.[Pg 236] It stated that gentlemen in the army and others requiring temporary loans might obtain them with strict privacy on application to Mr. Jefferson Crawley, at Titchwell-street West. I wrote to Mr. Crawley, determined not to be done a second time. I was desired to call, and with some difficulty I found the place—rather a queer place, too; through a mews, and in a back, out-of-the-way corner I found a shabby-looking office, and entered. A small boy sat at a small desk and said his master was out, and whilst he was saying so a girl came into the office by a flight of stairs at the back.”

“Oh, there’s a woman in the case, is there?” said Mr. Wilkinson, in a somewhat cynical tone.

Paul threw the stump end of a cigar out of window, and coughed to conceal some little confusion which this part of the narrative occasioned him.

“I know you will say I have been a fool,” he said, with unusual energy; “but I can’t help it.”

[Pg 237]

“The first part of the confession has a good sound—confession and then repentance; but ‘can’t help it’ is a horse of another colour. Out with the whole story, my friend; you will find me mum as a priest, and I’ll give you absolution, too.”

“A beautiful-looking girl she was; I was quite struck by her appearance—so unexpected, you know.”

“Yes; go on,” said Mr. Williamson.

“She said she must apologize for Mr. Crawley; he had been quite unexpectedly called away and would not return until evening; but she was acquainted with my business, and would I kindly step inside for a moment. I followed her into a small room, a miserable sort of attempt at a parlour, wretchedly furnished. I took a seat and almost forgot my business—I was so taken up with the woman. She was to ask if I knew Captain Macshawser, and if that officer would join me in a bill. I felt ashamed to talk about the subject to a woman, and especially such a[Pg 238] pretty one, and I said as much, but in a different way.”

“You let her see that you were admiring her, of course,” said Mr. Williamson, adding, sotto voce, “innocent youth!”

“How it was I don’t know, but we got into a long conversation, and it came out quite by accident that she knew Severntown, and she spoke about the place so familiarly that I felt sure I had seen her before. I thought so at first, and was convinced of it when she mentioned the old cathedral city. I don’t know how long I stayed, but I said no more about money, and I never felt so much pleasure in talking to a girl in all my life. I went away, promising to call again, and I secretly hoped that Mr. Crawley would still be from home at my next visit.”

“And who was the lady, pray?” asked the barrister.

“I did not inquire at that time,” said Paul; “I longed so to see her again, that I called in the afternoon, and she was out; I was[Pg 239] very much disappointed. The boy said she would be in soon, and I sat down and waited. I felt miserable, I hardly knew why. I asked the scrubby-looking clerk if the young lady were Mr. Crawley’s daughter? He said ‘No.’ Was she his sister? I asked. ‘No,’ he said again. Somehow, I felt as if I dare not ask if she were his wife. Whilst I was thinking and wondering who she could be—such a sweet charming girl in such a place (Paul went on excitedly)—in she came. I jumped up and shook hands with her, and felt as if I had known her for years.”

Here Paul rose from his seat and walked about the room. Mr. Williamson had never seen him so agitated before. He had no idea that there was so much fire and enthusiasm in the young fellow. The barrister left the ships at sea, and watched his young friend with a kindly interest which he had not exhibited hitherto during the conversation.

“She asked me to come in,” said Paul, still[Pg 240] pacing the room. “We talked again of anything and everything but the business upon which I was supposed to have called. I could see that she was troubled about something—how I had courage enough to press her upon the subject I don’t know, but I did, and she began to cry.”

“Curse their tears!” said the barrister, between his teeth, as he removed his legs from the vacant chair, and, planting them firmly on the floor, gazed steadfastly at Paul.

“I took her hand; I don’t know what I said, but I think it was that I loved her, and begged to know how I could be of service to her. She looked up at me—with such despair that I could almost have cried myself—and begged me not to talk of love; she was married!”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Williamson. The remark was wrung from him, not so much by Paul’s story as by a touch of memory.

“I knew she was—I felt almost from the first that she was married; it seemed as if some devil[Pg 241] whispered it in my ear to mock me; but it only made me love her ten times more.”

“Unhappy boy!” said the barrister, quite sadly—“unhappy boy!”

“Her husband treated her cruelly, she said; he was a swindler, a thief, everything that was bad, and he had married her merely that she might assist him in his conspiracies. She would rather die than continue such a life, and I could not help but feel that the love she had inspired in me was returned; she seemed almost delirious for a time, asked me not to leave her, and clasped her hand to her head. At this the office-boy came in, and taking some water from a jug, said, ‘Put that on the top of her head,’ I obeyed him mechanically, and then the girl was herself again. ‘Peter,’ she said to the boy, ‘you will not mention what has occurred to Mr. Crawley.’ ‘Of course I shan’t,’ said the boy, and then she begged me to go. I made her promise to let me help her in some way, and she cautioned me not to have anything to do with her husband. She said I might call the next[Pg 242] night at six. I kissed her and left the house, not knowing where I was or what I was doing.”

“By Jove,” said Mr. Williamson, “it is an exciting story, and you tell it well, Paul; but I fear it is a sad affair: you are getting into troubled waters. Rest awhile, light another cigar, let us have some more sherry, and then you can go on; I think I know the end of it—poor fellow!”

The barrister put his hand quite affectionately on the Lieutenant’s shoulder, and then rang the bell, saying all the time, “Poor fellow!—poor fellow!”

[Pg 243]

CHAPTER XVII.
CONTINUES THE LIEUTENANT’S ADVENTURE.

They lighted fresh cigars as the sun went down in the West, and Arundel Williamson felt the spirit of old days come over him.

A sad train of thoughts and memories had been awakened in the barrister’s mind; and he placed his chair near his young friend, and bade him continue his story.

“Don’t be afraid, Paul; tell me everything and, believe me, I sympathise with you deeply.”

Paul was re-assured by the kindly tone of the barrister’s voice.

“I passed a wretched night that night when I had left her, thinking of her troubles, and trying to remember where I had seen her; and my mind wandered away to Avonworth[Pg 244] Valley, and it seemed as if I had known her when I was a child. When I went to bed I dreamt that she was my sister, and that we lived at the farm; and then I was rescuing her from some blackguard who had beaten her. I could not sleep, and I hardly know how the night and day passed. Macshawser came to me, and said he had had a mutual friend with him making a private inquiry. He alluded to Mr. Jefferson Crawley, he said; and wished I had mentioned the subject to him (the Captain) first. Of course he would have helped me at once; he could have put me in the way of getting the money apart from Crawley, though Crawley was a decent sort of fellow. He said he would back my bill for me; of course my allowance was safe. I told him I would consider the matter further, and I resolved at once to write to my benefactress and ask for a remittance on account: I felt that was the most honest way, after what she and Lord Verner had said to me.”

[Pg 245]

“Bravo!” said Mr. Williamson; “that was right.”

“As six o’clock struck by a church clock somewhere in the thick of the houses, I was at Crawley’s again. The office-boy was not there, Mrs. Crawley was alone. I trembled like a schoolboy in her presence. She seemed pleased to see me. Had I heard anything of her husband? she asked. I said ‘No;’ but I told her of the incident about Macshawser. She said she need hardly ask if she might rely upon my honour and secrecy. I assured her, and begged that she would show me how I could help her. It was not wrong to go thus far?”

Paul waited for his friend’s reply.

“Considering how far you had gone, no,” said Mr. Williamson.

“She said Macshawser was an agent of the Jews; that although he was an officer in the army, he was the secret spy and agent of money-lenders; that his business was to get into the confidence of people, and particularly[Pg 246] military men, and when they were in trouble for money he made inquiries as to their position, then told them where to go, and afterwards got a bonus from the usurer to whom he had made his recommendation.”

“She told you the truth; my friend of Scotland Yard could tell you some rare stories in illustration,” said the barrister.

“Her husband,” she said, “was an agent of a lower stamp than this gentleman—of a much lower stamp; and what was worse, he did not confine himself to this; but he cheated at cards, and expected her now and then to assist in plucking young men whom they met by accident at a friend’s in the West End, where Macshawser was an occasional visitor. Her husband had gone there now to dinner, and she was ordered to attend at eight o’clock. And then the tears rolled down her cheek, and I felt that I could have laid my life down for her.”

“Yes, yes—we are all alike,” said Mr. Williamson;[Pg 247] “those cursed tears, they make fools of us all.”

“Then she asked me if I did not truly pity her, and from that we got to a mutual confession of love. She knew it was wicked, and she had tried to fight against it, she said; but she loved me with all her heart, because I had had pity on her, and had loved her as a woman should be loved before I had known she was married. We set to thinking what we should do under the circumstances, but all that I could think of was that she must get away from this fiend, her husband.”

“How came she to marry him? Did she not tell you that?” asked the barrister.

“Not at that time, but she has told me all her history since. I went to see her the next evening at the same hour, and found her pale and ill, and unlike herself. She had had a violent quarrel with her husband, who had subjected her to gross insult on the previous night; she had refused to go out this evening, and I stayed with her until late, and tried to cheer her. We talked of Severntown,[Pg 248] and of her childhood. She never remembered her mother; she had always understood that her mother died when she was but a child. She dare not tell me, she said, how her younger life had been spent, lest I should despise her; but she would tell me by-and-by. The more she said to prevent me from loving her, the more my sympathies were excited, and I laid down a plan whereby she should leave her husband the next day, if she would.”

“Rash—rash boy!” exclaimed Mr. Williamson.

“I know it. I felt afterwards, in sober moments, that I had behaved most foolishly, but I could not help it. The next morning twice the money I wanted reached me from Barton Hall, and this determined my course of action.”

“Why did you not tell me of it at the time?”

“I dare not; I seemed to be impelled by an infatuation that overcame me completely. I went and hired a modest lodging for her out at Pimlico, not far from where the Dibbles lived; and that[Pg 249] evening at six I went again, told her what I had done, and implored her to come with me. She was paler and weaker than when I saw her the evening previously, and wandered a little in her talk. I told her she should not want—she should be kindly treated—and talked of happiness in a distant land. I hardly know what I said. She came with me, and she has never rallied since; she is very ill, and somehow I do not think she will live, and I love her so much, that if she should die, I think it would drive me mad.”

And then the young fellow threw his arms upon the table, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed like a child.

“Poor fellow!” said the barrister, “poor fellow!”

“Now, call me a fool, or what you like,” said Paul, in broken accents. “This is my trouble, and this my reason for going to town by the next train. I came with you to tell you my story; it has been breaking my heart, and I know you are my best friend.”

[Pg 250]

“Yes, yes,” said the barrister, taking Paul’s hand; “we are nearer and dearer friends than ever now, heaven help us! I will tell you of my trouble some day, Paul. But about this poor woman: has she had medical advice?”

“She has,” said Paul, “and every attention.”

“Ha! that’s well. I think it is time we returned to town, then,” said the barrister. “Come, cheer up, Lieutenant; cheer up, man!”

“I feel better now,” said Paul, taking up his sash, and slinging his sword round his waist. “A nice fellow to be a soldier, I am!” he went on, as he wiped his face with his handkerchief.

“You are a good fellow,” said the barrister; “unfortunate, but a good fellow. What a blessing it is we know each other! I thank that rascal Gibbs that he put a certain young fellow to much trouble years ago. I might never have known you but for that. It was necessary we should know each other: the hand of Fate is in this business.”

[Pg 251]

It was late when the two friends reached London. They drove from the station to Pimlico, and halted at a house in a quiet bye-street. They both entered, and dismissed the cab.

Mrs. Dibble let them in, and Mr. Williamson recognised her with pleasure.

“You did not tell me she was with Mrs. Dibble,” said the barrister.

“Did I not?” said Paul, hardly heeding the question.

“How is she to-night?” said Paul.

“Better—a little better,” said Mrs. Dibble. “She hath athked for you twenty timeth.”

“I will not keep you five minutes,” said Paul, as he ascended the stairs on tip-toe.

“Poor creature! poor dear love!” said Mrs. Dibble; “she’th had a thad life for one so young though we all have our troublth. I’m thure if my pa could rithe and thee me, it would break hith heart, that it would, to think that after having a boarding-thchool education, and being brought up[Pg 252] with accomplishmenth at my fingerth ends, that I thould have to let my huthband go out to thervice in hith old age, and live on the bounty of him and Mithter Thomerton.”

The bare contemplation of her lot set Mrs. Dibble weeping copious tears.

“In service? Why I thought Thomas had come back to live with you, and that you were going on quite comfortably again?” said the barrister.

“Tho he did, tho he did,” said Mrs. Dibble, wiping her eyes; “but it wath only to bring fresh troublth. We were perthecuted by a showman—a dreadful, drunken perthon—and then we had to move, and what ith worth, thith panic, or whatever it ith, in the Thity, hath been our ruin; the bank in which our all wath depothited broke, and left uth without tho much ath five poundth in the world. If Mithter Thomerton had not helped uth—God bleth him for it!—we thould have been in the workhouth, and one of the gentlemen at the bank who had known thomething of Dibble, he[Pg 253] offered him a place as his butler, and I came to live in thith little houthe, having thold motht of my other furniture: and loath I wath to part with that piano which poor pa bought me when I came home from boarding-thchool; and Dibble he hath a good place, and he comth home thometimeth, though what I thall do when the family goth for two month to Brazencrook, I don’t know; but the Lord have merthy on uth! My poor pa! my poor pa!”

The contemplation of what her poor pa would think of her forlorn condition was too much for Mrs. Dibble, and she lapsed into silent tears, whilst Mr. Williamson bade her be of good cheer and asked her to accept a guinea for “auld lang syne.”

Meanwhile the Lieutenant came down-stairs, looking more hopeful than he had done previously. He certainly thought the poor girl was better.

“Poor dear!” said Mrs. Dibble again; “tho young too, tho young!”

[Pg 254]

Paul shook hands with Mrs. Dibble, as he left the house, and then he and his friend walked arm and arm out into the night, each occupied with his own thoughts.

[Pg 255]

CHAPTER XVIII.
A PICTURE FOR ASMODEO’S CLOAK.

O for the pen of that ready writer who is always in the humour for work, who can always write, sir, who is never at a loss, who sits down before a ream of foolscap paper, and tosses off sheet after sheet, sir, until he is surrounded by piles of manuscript! I have seen him do it, continues the friend at our elbow—seen him do it. And then there’s Miss ——, who is so awfully popular, you know, and stands to her work like an artist at his easel; she can write two novels a year like fun, and clever books too. George So-and-so, he goes down on his knees to write, and turns off slip after slip like a gusset and band coming out of a sewing machine. Mrs. —— plods away all day long, whether she likes it or not—pegs[Pg 256] away, sir, and produces a certain amount of copy before she dines; and she can write two books at once, sir, like winking. That’s the woman for my money.

O for the pen of one of these ready writers, that we might throw off in a few rapid pages the conclusion of all that romantic story which Paul Somerton told the barrister a few evenings after that day at Brighton. If we sat before that ream of foolscap, and filled every sheet, we could not do full justice to the extraordinary narrative, nor to the imagination of Mrs. Jefferson Crawley, the young lady whom you met in the early part of our history as the showman’s daughter. You remember how she gobbled up the tripe on that first evening, when Mr. Dibble joined the company of the Temple of Magic to do the outside business. You would hardly give her credit for imaginative power. She handled the cards well, and was great in the basket trick, but you would not expect her to possess what phrenologists call Ideality, in a large degree.

[Pg 257]

Perhaps the education which she had received in a few months as the wife of our old acquaintance Mr. Gibbs, alias Jefferson Crawley, had been beneficial to her in this respect. Mr. Crawley nevertheless had been disappointed in the young woman. He did not find that her abilities as a shuffler at cards were of any great benefit to him; but she was useful in some respects. There was an air of respectability that was beneficial sometimes in speaking of “my wife,” and introducing Mrs. Crawley, though the class of persons to whom introductions usually took place cast knowing glances at each other, and commenced desperate flirtations with the young lady immediately. This was useful too, and Mr. Gibbs sometimes traded upon it in a way that was by no means pleasant to the showman’s daughter. She was not a refined young woman as you have seen, not over-particular as you know; but she was vain of her good looks, and had just sufficient of woman’s amour propre, speedily to contract a contempt for a husband who was base enough[Pg 258] and mean enough to be utterly indifferent to his wife’s honour.

These two soon understood each other, almost indeed from the moment when Mr. Jefferson Crawley, having run away with the young woman, wished to set aside the ceremony of marriage which Christabel, the mysterious lady, had punctiliously insisted upon. What a wedding it was! What a honeymoon! Yet not stranger than ten thousand other weddings and honeymoons. Truth stranger than fiction! If that strange little fellow on two sticks who appeared so mysteriously to Don Cleofas, would come and take you for an evening’s ramble, you would see in half an hour how far fiction falls short of the realities of life; how far the darkest pictures which those ready writers have limned in pen and ink are less appalling than the realities of sin, and wickedness, and woe, which exist in the dark places of our modern Babylon! Ask that detective officer who used to visit the late Mr. Christopher Tallant at Barton Hall; he could[Pg 259] tell you some rare tales of the class of people to whom Mr. and Mrs. Crawley belong. But even that gentleman would be surprised if Asmodeus sat him down upon St. Paul’s, and unroofed a few hundred yards of that mass of brick, behind which the great game of life is being played out in ten thousand different ways.

Before Mr. Gibbs had been married three months, he gave his wife permission to find a better home if she could. He vowed he had no desire to limit anybody’s freedom. As far as the work of the household went, he said, looking round the miserable den, he thought he should lose nothing by the departure of the lady of the house. He could easily get somebody else to come and clean his boots, and cut bread and butter for him. If the young lady thought it would advance her prospects to leave his humble roof, she might go; he should put no advertisement in the papers for her, he should employ no private detective to hunt her up: he was exceedingly obliged to her for becoming his wife,[Pg 260] highly honoured in fact, if not more so, but he should not break his heart if she returned to the sawdust and naphtha lamps of the Temple of Magic.

And so the young lady disappeared accordingly; but that wonderful account which she gave of her early life, and which Lieutenant Somerton repeated to the barrister, left out altogether those incidents to which her husband had alluded. She certainly did justice to the gambler’s tuition. Old Martin could never have taught her to be such a clever dissembler; and that melancholy clown who had on his deathbed presented her father with Momus, had certainly not wit enough to instruct her in such delicate cunning.

The daughter of respectable parents at Severntown, her father died early, and left her with a widowed mother. She had received but little education in consequence, and was obliged to go out to service. Her mother soon afterwards died, and then she was left alone in the wide,[Pg 261] wide world. She had lived for some time with her aunt, who was then a wealthy lady, residing at Carter Street West, but had since lost all her money in the panic, and had gone to Paris. Her aunt was too poor to take her along with her, or she would have done so; but she recommended her to a lady in whose service she had endeavoured to study, and carry out the good advice which her dear aunt had given her. The lady had a son who came to see her at intervals, a very handsome young gentleman, and who seemed very good. He was very kind to her, and she often saw him watching her. One day when his mamma (who was a widow) had gone out, he made love to her, and soon after he asked her to be engaged to him: she wished to ask the permission of her mistress, but he would not hear of it; she would never consent he said, and one day he persuaded her to elope with him, and in the end, after a long struggle between duty and inclination, she gave way.

And here it appeared the young lady had[Pg 262] broken down in tears, and Paul had soothed her, and vowed eternal love, like a weak, infatuated, silly fellow that he was. We almost question whether, had she told him the whole truth of her life, he would not have done just the same.

She soon discovered that her husband was a bad man, a gambler, and everything that was wicked, and she went to his mother to beg her forgiveness, and asked to be taken back as her servant. The old lady had ordered her to be turned out of the house, and her husband laughed and jeered at her when she related the incident to him. She had never really loved him, but had hoped to have a home, and to find peace, and she tried to love him, and was a faithful true wife to him; but oh, he led such a life! he was a cheat, a forger, everything that was bad, and not the old lady’s son after all, but the son of her first husband, who was a dissipated man, and had died of delirium tremens.

How Paul pitied her! O, if she had not been married! he had exclaimed in his ecstacy, as he[Pg 263] looked into her deep eyes, and nursed her hand in his.

She sighed at this, and wept again, and said there was something yet which she had not told him. Some day he should know all. Meanwhile she was so good, so kind, so affectionate. Mrs. Dibble even went so far as to say that if she had not been brought up at a boarding-school, she ought to have been, for her manners were quite boarding-school, and her disposition was heavenly.

Paul sent her books of poems, and novels, and all sorts of works, to read, that she might be amused and improve her mind; and it was astonishing how rapidly the young lady mastered their contents, and how ably she used the sentiments of some of those poems that were full of love and tenderness. It was surely native inborn tact this. The cynic would say that all women have it; that nature has given them cunning instead of physical strength. What a woman this would have been with a good education![Pg 264] What a woman with the French language on her tongue! The judgment of Shuffleton Gibbs when he sat in the show and thought he could make a fortune by her cleverness at cards, was that of a shrewd observer, though he had been disappointed.

What happy days these were to the Lieutenant, what happy hours, these stolen intervals, as Chrissy got better. Chrissy she had always been called she said, and that was nearer the truth than any other word she had spoken; for that old clown who taught her to read and write, had called her Chris in those wild days of her childhood. With good treatment and comfort, she had soon recovered her strength, and the roses came back to her cheeks, the roundness to her arms, and the brightness to her eyes. There was a little vulgarity in her appearance, and in her manners. The red in her cheeks was not of a delicate rosy hue, and her voice could not be called musical. Her nose was anything but classical,—not that we care for classical noses; no,[Pg 265] nor for classical foreheads either for that matter. To Paul Somerton Chrissy was beautiful, and that which you would call vulgar he looked upon as frankness and innocence, which charmed him all the more on that account.

Mr. Williamson soon had a surfeit of all this. The Lieutenant became quite a bore to him, and as obstinate as a mule. He would take no advice, and listen to no arguments that in any way interfered with his wild idea of living with this woman in some distant land. That special feature of interest in the woman’s history which had, as you will remember, brought up the name of Shuffleton Gibbs, soon disappeared; for Chrissy had described to Paul a young and dashing fellow as her husband, and they had both taken the description as true of course. The Lieutenant might have asked Macshawser what sort of a fellow Crawley was; but neither he nor the clever barrister thought of this, or if they had, perhaps the Lieutenant would have put his veto upon such a course, seeing that it might in[Pg 266] some way have led to the detection of Paul as Chrissy’s protector.

Now, Mr. Arundel Williamson had been hit in some escapade of his youth in which a married woman was concerned; and it was this you know which excited his sympathy so much for Paul, or he would long since have shunned that young gentleman’s society, though the fellows at the club to which the barrister belonged liked the Lieutenant for his pleasant, outspoken, honest manners, his free and easy and unsophisticated ways, and the perfect absence of military snobbism which was characteristic of him. But a good deal of this was assumed as a sort of standing argument against the barrister’s advice to Paul to give up his schemes with regard to the lady whom he loved so much, and remember that his duty to his family, to himself, aye, and to the army, was to avoid a disgraceful liaison.

Paul had once or twice become quite eloquent on this point, reminded the barrister of his philosophy, quoted some of those very broad maxims[Pg 267] which Mr. Williamson had repeated in that little room in the Temple, talked of equality, and raved against all aristocratic assumption on the score of birth and position. When the barrister replied, and endeavoured to show that the Lieutenant was making use of arguments which did not apply to the present case, Paul would hurl at him all kinds of absurd aphorisms about love equalising all ranks, and then rave about his own birth—a bailiff’s son, sir!

The only point upon which the barrister got the better of his friend, was when he quietly rehearsed the penalties attendant upon the crime of abduction, and more particularly the severity of the punishment which the law awarded to bigamy. Paul certainly retaliated with the Divorce Court, but he found himself weak in the combat, very weak when the barrister talked of bigamy. The time came however when that difficulty was at an end.

Three months of this feverish and wicked dream of love had passed, and Paul had worshipped[Pg 268] the idol which the fickle, cynical god, whom the classics supposed to reign supreme in affairs of the heart, had set up. How the rosy youth must have laughed (not in his sleeve, for he never had any sleeves according to the painters) at the simplicity of this young fellow who wore Her Majesty’s uniform! Perhaps Asmodeo was the true god after all; the lame monster with his goat legs, his long visage, his sharp chin, and his demoniacal eyes and mouth, is certainly a more fitting spirit to preside over some of Love’s entanglements than he of the gilded wings and the quiver full of arrows. But he boasted of assuming whatever shape he willed, and confessed that it was necessary to look well sometimes; Vice never pleased half so well unless it had a fair appearance.

Lieutenant Somerton did not dream of gods at all in the matter, and he would not have indulged his fancy upon such a cynical fellow as Asmodeo for a moment; he was in love, over head and ears, madly in love with this woman,[Pg 269] who thrust that wooden spoon into the bowl at the roadside inn, and ate her share of the repast like—well, like a vagabond, as she was, you know, in the eyes of the law—like a rogue and vagabond; for the law combines the two in its harsh description of the poor stroller. The Lieutenant would surely have been disenchanted if Signor Asmodeo had taken the bandage from his eyes and shown him that incident in the past; or that little scene in the show when Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, his dire enemy, had made love to her, and succeeded in his suit.

What a clever girl she was! The god “so gloriously celebrated by Agrippa and the Clavicula Salomonis,” and his friend Don Cleofas would have been delighted with her. His Spanish majesty would surely have painted her image on his cloak, and illustrated her curious and brilliant career!

One fine summer evening, when a gentle rain had washed the dust out of the two trees which lived out a shambling sort of existence at the back[Pg 270] of the house where Mrs. Dibble consented to act the part of guardian to that poor persecuted orphan, whom she loved as if she were her own—on a bright summer evening when the sun was shining out after the rain, and a refreshing breeze came up the Thames and moved the leaves of the trees in question, Chrissy leaned upon Paul Somerton’s shoulder, and told him that she must leave him on the next day. She was now quite well, she said, and her gratitude to him for his great kindness compelled her to take this course. His honourable and respectful conduct towards her, and her love for him, too, all urged departure. She had deceived him, deceived him wickedly, and had never until now felt courage enough to tell him how much she had wronged him.

Paul grew terribly alarmed at her earnest words, and begged her not to tell him, not to talk of leaving him. Where could she go? He could not live without her. O, that cursed marriage! O cruel Fate that had not brought her to him in the days of her early life! It seemed to him,[Pg 271] he said, that he had known her always. Her face was familiar to him when first he saw her. Paul had often said this, and poor Chrissy felt satisfied in her own mind that he must have seen that mysterious lady of the Temple of Magic; but, of course, she never assisted his memory one jot, and if memory had given him a quiet nudge in connection with his visit to Severntown with Mrs. Dibble, he would have repudiated the suggestion with scorn.

When he exclaimed, O that cursed marriage! Chrissy held down her head and sighed and wept and murmured out some pathetic words of Thomas Moore’s about forgiveness. She had rehearsed this point before Mrs. Dibble’s glass, and had committed the words to memory for the purpose a week previously. She knew that Paul could not marry her because she was Crawley’s wife; she knew that a divorce was a serious business, and that it might lead to the exposure of her real history. So she had resolved, the first week she was in Paul’s care, that when she was[Pg 272] once firmly secure of his love, she would make a pathetic confession of being single, and then fall at his feet and implore his forgiveness.

How cleverly she did this it is unnecessary to say. It was a splendid success; the confession jumped so well with the Lieutenant’s wishes that he blotted out the past at once, forgave her, and in his blind mad fashion felt perfectly happy. He went to his quarters that night determined to exchange into a regiment that was abroad or going abroad, and marry this poor girl, who had been so wronged, and who had knelt at his feet until his heart ached for her, and whose future happiness he vowed should be his continual care.

Mrs. Dibble had told dear Chrissy that she expected her husband coming to spend a day with them in the course of a fortnight; and as the chatty, old woman had told dear Chrissy how she had found poor Thomas with a set of nasty, dirty show people, dear Chrissy thought it best to bring her grand scheme of a new start in life to[Pg 273] an early conclusion. O, how she would love to go to India or anywhere beyond the seas, where she could begin her life anew, and prove to her dear, dear Paul, the depth of woman’s gratitude and love!

[Pg 274]

CHAPTER XIX.
“THE COMING EVENT.”

The preparations for the marriage of Lord Verner to Miss Tallant gradually drew towards completion, and the fashionable world was all agog at the event. The newspapers had published all kinds of piquant paragraphs about the beauty of the bride, her great wealth, the nobility of her birth, and the immense riches of the bridegroom. Introduced by the popular gossip-preface on dit, the Court Journal and Court Circular had fairly vied with each other in racy scraps about Montem Castle and Barton Hall. A journal devoted to the fine arts had made the discovery that many of the landscapes by the now famous artist, Arthur Phillips, were copies of the glorious scenery in[Pg 275] that beautiful valley of Avonworth where Barton Hall was situated.

Local newspapers dug up from local histories and elsewhere anecdotes of the Verners, and expressed their belief that his lordship the present Earl would now take his place at the head of the county, and mix in society, as his noble father had done before him. It was, indeed, confidently stated that this would be the effect of his lordship’s marriage, and the county was congratulated upon the event in a hearty, manful style. One journalist, evidently with the fear of London and Punch and Eatanswill before him, came out in a very explanatory sketch, in which he ventured to point out how legitimate it was that county people should make a fuss on the occasion of this marriage, and how proper it was that the newspapers should set forth the event as one of great importance. It was all very well for London people to think lightly of such things; but Londoners were altogether differently placed. They made fuss enough on the occasion of royal[Pg 276] marriages, and filled their newspapers with orange-blossom articles. In a city like Severntown the nobility were mixed up with the social, political, and religious welfare of the place. The citizens rejoiced in having such neighbours, and it was right that they should acknowledge the dignity and worth of their native aristocracy. In the present instance the union of an Earl of Verner with the daughter of a woman of the house of Petherington, and daughter of the late Christopher Tallant, a merchant prince, was an event of importance not only to the county of Severnshire but to England. The provincial editor, though he might feel that he was saying nothing silly, nor anything smacking of toadyism, thought it judicious once more in this place to contrast the difference between provincial editors and London editors. The latter might think it fine to laugh at enthusiastic provincials, but Londoners could not possibly enter into the feelings which must necessarily animate a provincial community on an occasion like the present. [Pg 277]Londoners who did not talk politics, and could not understand the intense excitement of an election, did not know what it was to live in a restricted community associated with noble and wealthy families who possessed means and facilities for being of the greatest social benefit to those amongst whom they lived.

Our friend got a little involved at this point of his elaborate justification of himself. There was so much of special pleading in his article that the intelligent reader might not unfairly think that he knew he was toadying a little, and was fighting an attack by anticipation. In one portion of his article he was very bitter; he said that the London newspaper-men, who professed to look down from the greatest heights upon provincials, were provincials themselves. Then he claimed all the best men in town as countrymen, and vowed that all the most noteworthy magazine articles were written by provincials. How the editor drifted into this irrelevant discussion was curious to note; how he got back again to the[Pg 278] subject in hand was a marvel of literary art. He finished by showing how the marriages of the great influenced the destinies of a nation, and he went back to the remotest times for illustrations of this important point.

Even at the risk of involving the narrative, we pause to tell the reader that the provincial thunderer in question has since succeeded in obtaining an appointment in town, and that he has begun already to look down from his high tower upon his humbler brethren of the Severnshire press; indeed, he is said to be the writer of that amusing satirical tract on “Mrs. Grundy’s Borough,” which lampoons so smartly the society, public and private, of the old city. Well, “circumstances alter cases,” as the Severntown Mercury wisely remarked in reviewing that offensive publication, which took the old city and the post-office by storm one morning not very long ago. The London provincial gentleman, if he be living now (and we hope he is living happily and prosperously), will we trust forgive our allusion to[Pg 279] this incident; he may say that it is more irrelevant to this history than that passage in his article to the subject discussed. Perhaps he is right; we bow to his opinion with all deference. We can assure him that we should not have mentioned him at all, only that our story seemed to demand it. Honestly endeavouring to place these records of modern history fairly before the reader, we could not, without something like a breach of faith, have excluded the journalistic features of the union of the houses of Verner and Tallant, and particularly when we consider the consequences of that interesting and delightful marriage.

It would appear that when the Hon. Elizabeth Petherington married Christopher Tallant, Esq., her family had discarded her. Being of high and noble birth, the other ladies of her family had not approved of the marriage, and when the male head of the Petheringtons died, the female tails cut themselves off from the wife of the merchant prince; so that neither Phœbe nor Amy had ever[Pg 280] heard from the Petheringtons, and Miss Tallant, in fact, knew nothing of them until she received a friendly and affectionate letter from Lady Petherington, reminding her of the relationship, and desiring that she might be by her niece’s side at the wedding. This renewal of family friendship resulted in the broken threads of other links being gathered together, and as those hymeneal paragraphs continued to appear in the fashionable newspapers, there opened up to the bride elect quite a party of relatives and friends, who came and visited her shortly before the time fixed for the wedding; so that all of a sudden Barton Hall became quite gay with visitors, and Phœbe was invited to come amongst her dear friend’s newly-found relations. Phœbe feared at first that she might be embarrassed in such high society; but she was not in the least, and Miss Tallant complimented her upon her beauty and her charming manners. As for Amy, she received her guests with the most graceful dignity, though her aunt, Lady Petherington, was piqued and[Pg 281] annoyed at the high tone of her niece. Her ladyship confessed to her sister that the young woman actually patronised her—she was sure of it; she had never met with such audacity. The poor thing was certainly rather good-looking and dreadfully rich, she believed—shockingly rich—so she supposed they must put up with her airs. The Verners were an old family, and wealthy, too, she said, and no doubt his lordship was marrying for money. What he could see in the young woman beyond that, of course, she was at a loss to know. The sister did not quite agree with her ladyship; she vowed she thought the young person very tolerable indeed, very tolerable; of course it did not concern her whether she were so or otherwise. An introduction to Earl Verner’s set—for of course he would go thoroughly into society now—was all she cared for, coupled with one month in the year at Montem Castle.

During their stay his lordship sent over carriages to convey them to Montem, where he gave them a magnificent entertainment, and showed them[Pg 282] his house and grounds. Miss Somerton was of the party, much to the disappointment of Arthur Phillips, who had come over on that day to sketch a particular spot which Phœbe loved.

Lady Petherington and her sister (who, by the way, were both grey, if the truth had been known, and wore false teeth) made themselves particularly amiable at Montem, and the eldest (Amy said she was fifty, at least) was by no means comfortable under what she called the ignorantly patronising airs of Miss Tallant. We fear Amy did not intend to enhance the happiness of Lady Petherington’s visits.

“They only came, your lordship,” she said to the Earl, when they were alone for a few minutes in the gardens, “they only came because I am going to be a countess.”

“Good, good,” said his lordship, swinging his eye-glass round, and looking admiringly at the fine woman who was laughing and chatting so easily.

“It is true. I never heard of them until the[Pg 283] other day: they cut my poor mother for marrying a commoner. Fancy, your lordship, only fancy Lady Mary Petherington cutting any one!”

Amy laughed quite bewitchingly at the idea of any one caring what opinion Lady Mary Petherington might have concerning them.

“There! Now I know you will think me shockingly ungrateful, after they have condescended so much,” went on the merry girl, patting his lordship’s hand with her fan, and flashing her big dark eyes upon him.

“What a merry laugh it is; it does one’s heart good,” said his lordship, offering Miss Tallant his arm, and leading her away at the sound of approaching footsteps.

“These ladies have only come to make your lordship’s acquaintance, not mine; they have determined to spend long visits at Montem Castle. I saw Lady Mary choosing her room when she was looking at those beautiful apartments on the first floor. I did indeed,” she went on, and then[Pg 284] she laughed again, and Lord Verner laughed, and said the Countess was full of fun.

Whether it was fun or not, he said the Countess of Verner should select her own guests, and at this moment their ladyships and Phœbe joined them on the terrace.

A few minutes afterwards, when Phœbe and the future Countess went up-stairs to put on their shawls, Miss Tallant sat down wearily in the first chair that presented itself, wearied and jaded with the part she had been playing. What a fine actress she would have made; her rôle would have included all the glorious women of the drama, from “Lady Teazle” to “Constance” in King John.

END OF VOL. II.

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CHAP.	PAGE
I.--ENTER THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF VERNER	1
II.--CONTAINS IMPORTANT REVELATIONS, AND TERMINATES FATALLY	21
III.--“ARCADES AMBO,” BUT FLOURISHING NEVERTHELESS	34
IV.--IN WHICH RICHARD TALLANT VISITS BARTON HALL AGAIN, AND ARTHUR PHILLIPS COMPLETES A GREAT WORK	50
V.--THE TWO TEMPLES	64
VI.--MRS. DIBBLE AND PAUL SOMERTON JOURNEY TO SEVERNTOWN	80
VII.--IN WHICH MR. SHUFFLETON GIBBS PRESENTS HIMSELF IN ANOTHER CHARACTER	92
VIII.--WHAT ARTHUR PHILLIPS SAW THROUGH THE MIST	108
IX.--IN WHICH AN IMPORTANT WILL IS READ	123
X.--ARTHUR PHILLIPS HAS A HAPPY GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE	135
XI.--DURING THE WINTER	145
XII.--DISCOURSES CHIEFLY OF UNREQUITED LOVE	159
XIII.--THE FIRST OBSTRUCTION IN A CERTAIN SCHEME OF AMBITION AND REVENGE	175
XIV.--OF HAPPY DAYS IN SPRING	193
XV.--FINANCE AND “FINESSE”	212
XVI.--IN WHICH A CERTAIN LIEUTENANT GETS INTO DEBT, AND TRYING TO GET OUT AGAIN FALLS WICKEDLY IN LOVE	230
XVII.--CONTINUES THE LIEUTENANT’S ADVENTURE	243
XVIII.--A PICTURE FOR ASMODEO’S CLOAK	255
XIX.--“THE COMING EVENT”	274

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Tallants of Barton, vol. 2 (of 3) : A tale of fortune and finance

THE
TALLANTS OF BARTON.

LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
ENTER THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF VERNER.

CHAPTER II.
CONTAINS IMPORTANT REVELATIONS, AND TERMINATES FATALLY.

CHAPTER III.
“ARCADES AMBO,” BUT FLOURISHING NEVERTHELESS.

CHAPTER IV.
IN WHICH RICHARD TALLANT VISITS BARTON HALL AGAIN, AND ARTHUR PHILLIPS COMPLETES A GREAT WORK.

CHAPTER V.
THE TWO TEMPLES.

CHAPTER VI.
MRS. DIBBLE AND PAUL SOMERTON JOURNEY TO SEVERNTOWN.

CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH MR. SHUFFLETON GIBBS PRESENTS HIMSELF IN ANOTHER CHARACTER.

CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT ARTHUR PHILLIPS SAW THROUGH THE MIST.

CHAPTER IX.
IN WHICH AN IMPORTANT WILL IS READ.

CHAPTER X.
ARTHUR PHILLIPS HAS A HAPPY GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE.

CHAPTER XI.
DURING THE WINTER.

CHAPTER XII.
DISCOURSES CHIEFLY OF UNREQUITED LOVE.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE FIRST OBSTRUCTION IN A CERTAIN SCHEME OF AMBITION AND REVENGE.

CHAPTER XIV.
OF HAPPY DAYS IN SPRING.

CHAPTER XV.
FINANCE AND “FINESSE.”

CHAPTER XVI.
IN WHICH A CERTAIN LIEUTENANT GETS INTO DEBT, AND TRYING TO GET OUT AGAIN FALLS WICKEDLY IN LOVE.

CHAPTER XVII.
CONTINUES THE LIEUTENANT’S ADVENTURE.

CHAPTER XVIII.
A PICTURE FOR ASMODEO’S CLOAK.

CHAPTER XIX.
“THE COMING EVENT.”

Transcriber’s Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Tallants of Barton, vol. 2 (of 3) : A tale of fortune and finance

THE TALLANTS OF BARTON.

LONDON: BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. ENTER THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF VERNER.

CHAPTER II. CONTAINS IMPORTANT REVELATIONS, AND TERMINATES FATALLY.

CHAPTER III. “ARCADES AMBO,” BUT FLOURISHING NEVERTHELESS.

CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH RICHARD TALLANT VISITS BARTON HALL AGAIN, AND ARTHUR PHILLIPS COMPLETES A GREAT WORK.

CHAPTER V. THE TWO TEMPLES.

CHAPTER VI. MRS. DIBBLE AND PAUL SOMERTON JOURNEY TO SEVERNTOWN.

CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH MR. SHUFFLETON GIBBS PRESENTS HIMSELF IN ANOTHER CHARACTER.

CHAPTER VIII. WHAT ARTHUR PHILLIPS SAW THROUGH THE MIST.

CHAPTER IX. IN WHICH AN IMPORTANT WILL IS READ.

CHAPTER X. ARTHUR PHILLIPS HAS A HAPPY GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE.

CHAPTER XI. DURING THE WINTER.

CHAPTER XII. DISCOURSES CHIEFLY OF UNREQUITED LOVE.

CHAPTER XIII. THE FIRST OBSTRUCTION IN A CERTAIN SCHEME OF AMBITION AND REVENGE.

CHAPTER XIV. OF HAPPY DAYS IN SPRING.

CHAPTER XV. FINANCE AND “FINESSE.”

CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH A CERTAIN LIEUTENANT GETS INTO DEBT, AND TRYING TO GET OUT AGAIN FALLS WICKEDLY IN LOVE.

CHAPTER XVII. CONTINUES THE LIEUTENANT’S ADVENTURE.

CHAPTER XVIII. A PICTURE FOR ASMODEO’S CLOAK.

CHAPTER XIX. “THE COMING EVENT.”

Transcriber’s Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

THE
TALLANTS OF BARTON.

LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CHAPTER I.
ENTER THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF VERNER.

CHAPTER II.
CONTAINS IMPORTANT REVELATIONS, AND TERMINATES FATALLY.

CHAPTER III.
“ARCADES AMBO,” BUT FLOURISHING NEVERTHELESS.

CHAPTER IV.
IN WHICH RICHARD TALLANT VISITS BARTON HALL AGAIN, AND ARTHUR PHILLIPS COMPLETES A GREAT WORK.

CHAPTER V.
THE TWO TEMPLES.

CHAPTER VI.
MRS. DIBBLE AND PAUL SOMERTON JOURNEY TO SEVERNTOWN.

CHAPTER VII.
IN WHICH MR. SHUFFLETON GIBBS PRESENTS HIMSELF IN ANOTHER CHARACTER.

CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT ARTHUR PHILLIPS SAW THROUGH THE MIST.

CHAPTER IX.
IN WHICH AN IMPORTANT WILL IS READ.

CHAPTER X.
ARTHUR PHILLIPS HAS A HAPPY GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE.

CHAPTER XI.
DURING THE WINTER.

CHAPTER XII.
DISCOURSES CHIEFLY OF UNREQUITED LOVE.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE FIRST OBSTRUCTION IN A CERTAIN SCHEME OF AMBITION AND REVENGE.

CHAPTER XIV.
OF HAPPY DAYS IN SPRING.

CHAPTER XV.
FINANCE AND “FINESSE.”

CHAPTER XVI.
IN WHICH A CERTAIN LIEUTENANT GETS INTO DEBT, AND TRYING TO GET OUT AGAIN FALLS WICKEDLY IN LOVE.

CHAPTER XVII.
CONTINUES THE LIEUTENANT’S ADVENTURE.

CHAPTER XVIII.
A PICTURE FOR ASMODEO’S CLOAK.

CHAPTER XIX.
“THE COMING EVENT.”