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by Joseph Hatton
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Title: The Tallants of Barton, vol. 3 (of 3)
A tale of fortune and finance
Author: Joseph Hatton
Release Date: May 21, 2023 [eBook #70827]
Language: English
Produced by: Sonya Schermann, Debrah Thompson and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALLANTS OF BARTON, VOL.
3 (OF 3) ***
THE
TALLANTS OF BARTON.
A Tale of Fortune and Finance.
BY
JOSEPH HATTON,
Author of “Bitter Sweets: a Love Story;” “Against the Stream,”
etc., etc.
“The wheel of Fortune turns incessantly round, and who can say within
himself I shall to-day be uppermost?”--_Confucius._
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1867.
[_The Right of Translation is reserved._]
LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.--WEDDING BELLS 1
II.--“YET OFT O’ER CREDULOUS YOUTH SUCH SIRENS
TRIUMPH, AND LEAD THEIR CAPTIVE SENSE
IN CHAINS AS STRONG AS ADAMANT.” 17
III.--COMING HOME 35
IV.--TRAVELLERS BY LAND AND SEA 49
V.--LORD AND LADY VERNER 60
VI.--IN WHICH DAME FORTUNE PLAYS OFF HER GRIM
JOKE UPON LIONEL HAMMERTON 74
VII.--CONTAINS A LETTER FROM A DEAR FRIEND, AND
TAKES THE READER ONCE MORE TO SEVERNTOWN 88
VIII.--PORTENDS A DEED OF VENGEANCE 101
IX.--GLANCES AT WILLIAMSON’S STORY, AND TERMINATES
PAUL SOMERTON’S ADVENTURE 112
X.--“FROM GRAVE TO GAY” 119
XI.--EXPLANATIONS THAT CAME TOO LATE 128
XII.--“WHAT THE MOON SAW” 144
XIII.--IN WHICH THE SEVERNSHIRE CORONER HOLDS
AN INQUEST 157
XIV.--THE CHIEF OF THE BRAZENCROOK POLICE MAKES
A BOLD STROKE FOR THE GOVERNMENT REWARD 175
XV.--CONTAINS A CURIOUS ILLUSTRATION OF DETECTIVE
PHILOSOPHY, AND IS AN IMPORTANT
LINK IN THIS HISTORY 184
XVI.--“BAL. TO R. T., £300” 198
XVII.--IN THE FIRELIGHT 209
XVIII.--THE BEGINNING OF THE END 221
XIX.--IN WHICH SEVERAL PERSONS QUIT THE STAGE
FOR EVER 245
XX.--CLOSING SCENES 262
CHAPTER I.
WEDDING BELLS.
As the sail which we first discern, like a speck against the sky,
comes into port at last, so the wedding-day of Miss Amy Tallant arrived
in due course of time; and in order that we may present the event to
our readers in the most familiar manner, we have compiled from the
newspapers the following account of it, discarding on the one hand
the rhapsodies of a Severntown reporter who introduced the whole of
the marriage service into his version of the ceremony, and omitting
on the other hand certain Swivellerish flights of fancy in which the
redoubtable Mr. Jenkins himself indulged after he had dined with
Richard Tallant, Esq., at his “palatial residence” in Kensington Palace
Gardens.
The marriage took place at St. George’s, Hanover Square. The bride was
accompanied to church by her brother, Mr. Richard Tallant, her aunt,
Lady Amelia Petherington, Miss Somerton, and Lady Georgina Evelyn.
The Earl of Verner, accompanied by his “best man” Lord Tufton, went
to the church from the Gordon Hotel, Pall Mall East; and the bride
from her brother’s princely residence, Kensington Palace Gardens.
The bridesmaids were Lady Georgina Evelyn, Lady Maria Fotherington,
Miss Fredrika Lionel, Miss Alicia Lionel, Lady de Witz, and Miss
Somerton. The bridegroom was first at the church, speedily followed
by the bridesmaids, who came from their respective residences. The
bride arrived at eleven o’clock, and was conducted to the altar by her
brother, a voluntary on the organ being played meanwhile.
Long before this, a distinguished party of friends and spectators had
taken their places in the church, and amongst them we noticed Lady
Duval, the Countess of Wharton, Major Darfield and Mrs. Darfield, the
Hon. J. Delafield and Mrs. Delafield, the Hon. Mrs. Dawkins, Miss
Elizabeth Dawkins, Miss Amelia Dawkins, and Miss Felicia Henrietta
Dawkins, the Misses Constantine, and the Marquis of Questfield, Sir
John and Lady Bewdley, Lady Elizabeth Himley, the Hon. Captain Evesham,
Mrs. Evesham, and Miss Evesham, Lady Worcester, the Marquis of Forth,
Mr. De Lawtworth and the Countess Dawnforth, His Excellency the French
Ambassador, His Excellency the Prince Calignousky, accompanied by the
Baron Dionsky and General Dronkoni, Mr. Dest, Lieut. Somerton, Captain
MacSchauser, &c., &c.
The bridesmaids awaited the arrival of the bride in the central aisle,
and their appearance was as charming as the loveliest bride could
desire. Their dresses were of white grenadine trimmed with cerise satin
and sashes of the same colour. The wreaths were of lilies of the valley
and violets.
The beauty of the bride was the theme of general admiration. She was
said to be much like the Petherington family, of which her noble
mother was reckoned the greatest beauty. Her bridal dress was of the
costliest and most becoming character,--a robe of white satin with a
veil of exquisite point-lace, which fell in gorgeous folds upon her
heavy sweeping train. She wore a necklace of pearls and diamonds, and
bracelets to match.
The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Francis Clifton, vicar of
Brazencrook, assisted by the Hon. and Rev. James Fitzpatrick. The
responses were given in clear and distinct tones, and the ceremony was
altogether most imposing and impressive.
Amidst the magnificent strains of the “Wedding March” the bridegroom
led the newly-created Countess to the vestry. The register having
been signed and attested, the bridal party left the church for the
Gordon Hotel, where a sumptuous _déjeûner_ was prepared for the bridal
party and friends. The bill of fare was quite a curiosity in the way
of luxurious indications of the feast, and the tables were adorned
with the most exquisite ornaments and rare flowers. The bride-cake was
designed by an artist of high repute, and was surmounted by a design of
the noble Earl’s magnificent castle of Montem.
Before the company retired from the dining-room, Lord Tufton rose, and
in a few appropriate sentences proposed “Health and happiness to the
Bride and Bridegroom.” The toast was received with rapturous applause.
In reply, Lord Verner said that a year ago he had not even dreamed
of such a day as this; but the time would never be effaced from his
memory as one of the greatest happiness he could possibly experience:
it not only was a day never to be forgotten by him, and always to be
remembered with gratitude and delight as that upon which his dear wife
had given herself up to his keeping; but it was to be remembered also
with unfeigned pleasure on account of the many friends it had brought
around him, and from whose society his former bachelor habits had, to
a great extent, excluded him. It was indeed the happiest, the most
important, the one red-letter day of his existence. Loud cheers greeted
his lordship’s earnest speech, and then the bride retired to prepare
for her departure for Horton Hall, Essex, the seat of Lord Tufton,
where they would spend the honeymoon. The Marquis of Questfield then
proposed “the Bridesmaids,” and Mr. Tallant acknowledged the deserved
compliment in eloquent terms.
At three o’clock the bride and bridegroom took their departure,
proceeding by special train to Corfield. The lady’s travelling dress
was pronounced to be in the best possible taste.
The journals then gave a list of the presents to the bride, which we
need not republish; the gifts were from great people mostly, and were
of the costliest character. They included necklets, with pendants of
diamonds and pearls; bracelets set in brilliants, diamonds, brooches,
workboxes inlaid with gold, dressing cases, Sévres vases, antique
china, crosses set with diamonds, writing tablets, watches, fans, and a
hundred other things of gold and silver and precious stones, and woods
and china, and leather work.
The monitors of the Press, who gave to the world this interesting
account of the marriage, may almost be said to have been everywhere
on that eventful day. They had been to Mr. Tallant’s residence and
seen all the wedding presents; they had talked with the fashionable
dressmaker and milliner who had had the making of the _trousseau_. They
had seen the _déjeûner_ laid out in that fine room of the Gordon Hotel;
but it was only the privilege of the writer of this history to follow
the lady into her chamber.
How handsome she looked! Those observant newspaper gentlemen might well
speak of her charms and graceful carriage. When her maid had removed
the long lace veil, and the bride’s hair had fallen loosely upon her
shoulders, she presented a picture of _débonnaire_ gracefulness and
beauty. And what a contrast they were,--the Countess, and Phœbe, with
the Miranda-like simplicity and sweetness!
“You may leave me now,” said the bride to her maid.
“Yes, your ladyship,” said the woman.
The title sounded strange and harsh somehow to the newly-made countess.
It seemed to cut her off from the people whom she had known from
childhood; and yet her heart beat with pride when she felt that she had
reached the highest point of her ambition--that all her wild dream had
come true.
“How charming you look, my pet!” she said to Phœbe.
“Reflected beauty,” said Phœbe, putting her arm round the bride. “Only
reflected beauty, for I never saw you look so pretty, so lovely as you
look this morning.”
The Countess smiled a little sadly, but this might only be a woman’s
tribute to the importance of the occasion.
“How kind his lordship is! how very kind,” said the bride, as she
discovered some new gift on the dressing table.
“It made me cry to hear him speak so earnestly and nobly to-day when
your health was proposed,” said Phœbe.
“You are very tender-hearted,” said the Countess, “I did not see any
one else look like crying; but the words touched me too. He is a truly
generous, warm-hearted man, I am sure.”
Phœbe looked at her friend, as much as to ask her if she had ever
doubted it. The Countess read the thought in an instant.
“You think me a strange woman. I have never thought much about his
feelings or his heart until lately, Phœbe, and never so much as I have
done this morning. It has been all ambition and revenge until to-day,
Phœbe; what is it to be in the future?”
She sat down as this thought presented itself to her, and looked at
herself in the great mirrors that repeated her supple figure over and
over again. She sat and looked at herself, and Phœbe, knowing her
secret, crept near her and laid her head upon her shoulders.
“Duty in the future,” said Phœbe softly; “your noble husband’s love and
generosity will make you love him in the end I am sure, as he deserves
to be loved; the path of duty lies before you and cannot be mistaken.”
“He has long since won my respect, Phœbe, and my gratitude; he loves me
with a good man’s truthfulness and sincerity, and I will love him; you
know how I have struggled, you know what I have suffered: let us both
blot all that part out now and for ever, Phœbe, and as you love me pray
that I may be sustained in the wifely path of duty and obedience.”
The Countess spoke like her former self in those past days before that
cloud of sorrow fell upon Barton Hall; in those past days when she was
the bailiff’s daughter and the sisterly companion of her whom she had
since supplanted in fortune and position.
The tears came into Phœbe’s eyes again, and the two women embraced each
other tenderly.
“Bless you, my own dear friend,” said the Countess, “believe me, I
will make reparation for all my unkindness to you. There dear, do not
reply--kiss me again and leave me--it is better I should be alone a
little while.”
Alone, the Countess fell upon her knees, and prayed with passionate
fervency--prayed as she had not prayed since that change came over
her on that never-to-be-forgotten day when she learnt of _his_
departure--prayed as she had not prayed since that scheme of ambition
leaped into her mind at the appearance of that carriage with the
coronet on the panel.
She rose with a calm expression upon her face, refreshed by the
outpouring of her supplications, and determined to do her duty in the
high station to which she had risen, and towards her husband.
Unlocking a small dressing-case which stood near his lordship’s latest
present, she took out an inner drawer which was curiously concealed.
Her hand trembled slightly as she withdrew the contents--a letter. It
was _his_ letter (if it might be called a letter)--the only memento of
him which she possessed except in memory. There were only three lines
upon it, and these were written on the day following that day when they
had walked together in Barton Hall gardens.
“Dearest--I shall be at Barton Hall at four o’clock to-morrow. Do
not let me go away without seeing you. L. H.” This was all the note
contained. For long days and weeks and months afterwards she had
treasured up that poor little scrap of paper--worn it in her bosom,
wept over it, kissed it, and cherished the memory of that hour of
happiness which followed it.
For a moment she held it in her hand hesitatingly. She felt that it was
the only link between the present and the past. Lighting a vesta, she
held the paper in the flame until it was consumed, and then she stamped
her little satin-slippered foot upon the embers. The flame burnt her
fingers before it went out, as if there were venom in the perjured
words that the fire was consuming. But this was nothing to the fire
which had seared her heart long since, burning into it those serpent
words that had looked so fair only to sting the deeper. But it was
over at last, and now she was Countess of Verner.
“My lady” rang for her maid, and prepared to dress for the bridal
journey. Whilst her robes were being removed she glanced round the room
which had been furnished with so much magnificence for her reception,
and then she thought, with a grateful smile, of the homage which her
husband had paid her in all things.
The maid being asked some simple question, told her how the health of
the bridesmaids had been proposed, and how her ladyship’s handsome
brother had made a beautiful speech in reply. This she thought would
please her ladyship very much indeed; but it only excited uncomfortable
thoughts in her ladyship’s mind--a vague kind of danger seemed to
threaten her through Richard Tallant.
Her ladyship asked no more questions, but went through the elaborate
process of her toilette in silence, and by-and-by left the room robed
in purple moire, and lace, and looking every inch a countess, to the
everlasting envy of Lady Petherington and her youngest sister, and to
the delight of her husband and the rest.
All this time the bells at Severntown, Avonworth, and Brazencrook rung
out over town and field and river. The summer air was full of their
glorious old music. The ringers in their shirt sleeves pulled with a
will, until the churches fairly shook again. Mighty jugs of ale passed
from hand to hand, from lip to lip, in the intervals of this labour of
love, and majors and triple bob-majors and all kinds of curious changes
were performed on the swinging bells. Avonworth caught the faint echoes
from Severntown, and Brazencrook, picking up the trembling tones from
Avonworth, took them up into its own ringing measure, and carried the
grand old-fashioned harmonies away down the river to distant villages,
where women stood at cottage doors and listened, and men rested on
their scythes to wonder why Brazencrook bells were ringing.
Glorious bells, merry bells, wedding bells! Arthur Phillips sat in his
studio with the windows wide open listening to the joyous music, and
thinking of the peal that would soon ring out the news of another
marriage. He looked away beyond the Linktown hills in the direction of
London, thought of his darling Phœbe in her bridesmaid’s dress, and
pictured her, in a wreath of orange blossoms at a country church, by a
time-sanctified altar in Avonworth Valley.
Happy bells, tuneful bells, olden bells, wedding bells! Luke Somerton
heard them as he sat with his wife at the Hall Farm, and puzzled his
brain with all sorts of vague happy fancies that seemed to soar upwards
in the smoke of his early after-dinner pipe. His wife spoke cheerily of
the music, but it was a great struggle for her. Something would whisper
in her ear that the Countess might perhaps have been her daughter, but
the next moment she remembered that Phœbe was there as her ladyship’s
friend, and that Lieutenant Somerton was amongst the distinguished
visitors. That strange dream of ambition, you see, had not all passed
away from the proud Lincolnshire woman’s heart.
Joyful bells, brazen bells, jubilant bells, wedding bells! Travel your
happy strains adown that glimmering river; no whisper of your tender
music can reach that home-bound ship that rides on the Indian sea.
CHAPTER II.
“YET OFT O’ER CREDULOUS YOUTH SUCH SIRENS
TRIUMPH, AND LEAD THEIR CAPTIVE SENSE IN
CHAINS AS STRONG AS ADAMANT.”
The day after the marriage of Miss Tallant, Lieutenant Somerton sat in
Mrs. Dibble’s front parlour, discussing, with her interesting lodger,
the details of his scheme for the future.
Embellished with several pictures and vases, a lady’s easy chair, and
other little things which the Lieutenant had purchased from time to
time, the room looked quite neat and attractive.
They would be content, Paul was telling her, with something a little
better than this in their distant home, where they would begin the
world all afresh, and remember nothing but their own true love for each
other. “What an infatuated fool he must be, most renowned Asmodeo,”
Don Cleofas would say. “Why, the young woman is vulgar too. Do you not
notice how ignorant she is? And what shambling efforts she is making
to hide it?” “You forget that my business,” says Asmodeo, “is to make
ridiculous matches, marry maids to their masters, greybeards to raw
girls; and see here, you forget the cloak!” Refreshing his memory upon
these points, Don Cleofas would be satisfied of course; and so must
we; for Paul Somerton sees only charms in “Chrissy’s” defects. We need
hardly say that she had improved considerably in her manners since that
conversation with Dibble at Severntown; she had long since ceased to
call things “stunning” and “fizzing.”
That gentleman, who was enamoured of her dexterity at cards, had done
much to prune her exuberance of expression in this respect, and it
was wonderful how quickly she further improved during her stay with
Mrs. Dibble, not under the tuition of that elegant lady, but with the
inspiration of Paul’s books and her own cunning instinct.
She had often thought of that night when first she heard the name
of Paul Somerton. “I know a young gentleman as would make such a
sweetheart for you--such a sweetheart!” old Dibble had said. And her
own remark--what if she should conjure into the basket that handsome
Paul Somerton, who talked so fine! How strange that she had conjured
him to her side! She wished she had seen him before she saw Crawley.
Why did he not come into the Temple of Magic first? It was not her
fault that he didn’t. She would have had him for her husband sooner
than she would have had that mean sneak, Crawley, who cared nothing
at all about her, and who never admired her at all after they were
married. And what a funny thing that she should be living with Dibble’s
wife! There were lots of murders and robberies, and other awful things
in that tale in the _Weekly Sensation_, but her own story was certainly
as strange as that of the young lady who was stolen by gipsies. She
had not been confined in a castle, and left for dead in a cellar to be
eaten by rats, been rescued by her father, and afterwards stabbed the
villain who had run away with her at first: none of these things had
come to pass yet in her history; but there was no knowing how soon they
might.
She was prepared at any moment, she felt, to enter the next phase of
her career, whatever it might be, and had gone so far in her imitative
insane fashion, as to sleep with a dagger beneath her pillow; but she
secretly hoped that nothing would occur to prevent her flying with
Paul. In her own fashion, she loved this mad-headed soldier, and she
dreaded the discovery of her wickedness and deception. If she had been
brought up in a respectable home, with moral influences about her and a
mother at her elbow, she might perchance still have done justice to her
home education, as she did now; but it is not necessary that we should
enter into speculations upon this point. Her story is before us, and
it is the duty of the writer to tell it fairly, and leave the reader
to form his own opinion about what education and good moral home
influences might have done for this woman of the booth and the fair,
the race-course and the gaming-room, who, with the brightness of youth
still about her, managed, with siren-like skill, to look so innocent
and attractive in the eyes of Paul Somerton.
The day after that grand wedding at St. George’s, Hanover Square,
Mrs. Dibble told Chrissy that her husband would be coming to pay her
a visit in a week or two, and Chrissy knew that it was necessary she
should leave Mrs. Dibble before that period: so she had talked of
change of air, and Paul, given over to the reckless passion of his
first love!--(Heaven save the mark!)--had resolved upon a quiet private
wedding at Brighton that day week. The Lieutenant was just explaining
his views when there came a loud knocking at the front door, and after
considerable bustle and confusion in the little narrow passage, Mrs.
Dibble burst into the room with her husband.
“Lor, Mithter Thomerton, Leftennant, thir, Thomath thaith he mutht
shake hands with you, and he hath come before hith time, becauth it
wath more convenient, and I’m sure you will excuthe him, when you think
of old times and----”
“Of course, of course,” said Paul, wishing old Dibble at Hanover; “and
how are you, Thomas? how do you do?”
Dibble made no reply, but allowed his hand to be shaken in the most
condescending fashion, whilst he fixed his eyes upon the young lady.
“Why, deary me!” he exclaimed, all of a sudden, “Miss Christabel, how
do you do? Well, who would ha’ thought as I should find you at Mrs.
Dibble’s?”
The lady addressed looked at Mr. Dibble with the greatest possible
astonishment, and then turned to Lieutenant Somerton, as if she sought
some explanation of this extraordinary conduct.
“Daughter of the Northern magician, you know,” said Dibble, addressing
the Lieutenant; “the cleverest young lady as ever I see. Lor’ bless
you, I----”
“What the devil do you mean!” exclaimed the Lieutenant.
“Surely the man is not sober,” said the young lady in her finest style,
and with just a faint smile at Dibble’s bewildered look.
“It hain’t the voice quite,” said Dibble; “but it be Chrissy, you know;
she was the mysterious lady and----”
“And what?” exclaimed the Lieutenant.
Before Dibble had time to answer he caught “Chrissy’s” eye and its
sudden expression of warning, such as that which he remembered coupled
with her threats about the pistol; so he only stammered out something
about being mistaken, and begging pardon----
“You’re alwayth making thome mithtake or other,” said Mrs. Dibble;
“there, come along in the next room. I’m thorry I allowed him to come
in, Mithter Thomerton, but hith headth bewildered, no doubt, with
having been away from home tho much and having previouthly had my eye
on him: and what he would do without ith a mythtery to me.”
The Lieutenant said, “All right, Mrs. Dibble, don’t apologise,” and
poor Dibble slunk away into the kitchen and sat down, Mrs. D. following.
“There, Thomath, never mind,” said Mrs. Dibble in her blandest tones;
“come and tell me all about it.”
But Dibble remembered how clever that mysterious lady of the show was;
how fierce she was, and he trembled at the bare idea of her exercising
any of her black arts upon him, in case he should betray her secret.
It was quite clear that she did not wish him to know her; but he had
made no mistake at all, he was sure of that; and Mrs. Dibble was
sharp enough to see that there was some mystery here which she would
assuredly have cleared up before Dibble went to sleep that night.
An unfortunate night altogether was this for the “mysterious lady.” Mr.
Williamson had sent a messenger to the house for Lieutenant Somerton
soon after Dibble’s strange arrival, and Paul had taken a cab, as
requested, to the Temple, where he found the barrister in company with
an unknown gentleman.
“This is Mr. Bales, the detective officer, of whom you have heard me
speak,” said the barrister.
Paul bowed.
“My friend, Lieutenant Somerton,” said the barrister, introducing Paul.
The detective nodded in deliberate professional fashion.
“Mr. Bales has executed that old warrant to-day, and Shuffleton Gibbs,
_alias_ Mr. Jefferson Crawley, of Carr Court, Regent Street West, is
now in custody. (Paul looked a little bewildered, and sat down.) Mr.
Bales is a great friend of mine, and I tell him that it might not be
advisable after all this time to reopen the case. Mr. Bales fears that
we shall be compelled to proceed with it. But there is, it appears,
some other case against him, though not quite so clear as that of the
pocket-book. Mr. Bales will call here again in an hour before anything
further is done: meanwhile you and I will talk affairs over. Good-bye
for the present, Bales.”
The detective officer nodded in reply and left the room, and then Mr.
Williamson, alluding to that first gleam of suspicion in connection
with Paul’s attempt to borrow money, went on to tell his friend that
this woman whom Paul had made up his mind to marry was the wife of
Shuffleton Gibbs. He believed he should be able to produce the marriage
certificate. Gibbs knew where she was, and had told this to the
detective. He had found her out within a week of her disappearance,
through Macschawser, and he talked boldly of an action for abduction
and other tremendous things.
Paul would not believe a word of it. His friend had surely entered into
a plot against him. Then he remembered the strange conduct of Dibble,
and hesitated.
“I have only one duty to perform in this matter,” said the barrister,
“and that is to show you the character of the precipice upon which you
stand, and then leave you to your fate. Have you obtained the sanction
for your change of regiment?”
“Yes,” said Paul; “and the vessel sails next month.”
“For the Cape of Good Hope?”
“Yes.”
“Now, my dear boy, I know you believe in my friendship; will you permit
me to investigate this affair for you, and undertake to give the facts
proper consideration before you take further action?”
“I will,” said Paul, “provided that in all you do you respect her
feelings, and remember that I love this woman better than all the
world.”
Mr. Williamson shrugged his shoulders.
“I love her better than all the world, and I only consent to this
active interference because I know she will come out of the inquiry
clear. The idea of her being Gibbs’s wife is absurd,” Paul went on.
“But supposing it is true?” said the barrister.
“I will suppose nothing. Why do you try to bring unhappiness between
us? In less than a month we should have been on the sea to begin a new
life in a new country--turning our backs upon the past.”
“And upon your friends,” said the barrister. “You would be leaving
father and mother and sister and friends in the society of an abandoned
woman.”
“Mr. Williamson,” exclaimed Paul, “I will not stand this!”
“In the society of an abandoned woman,” repeated the barrister, “not
like those poor people in the picture ‘Seeking New Homes,’ with the
association of pure affection and honest noble aims of independence.
Your whole life would have been blighted, your family disgraced, and
yourself a miserable man.”
“I will not get into a passion with you,” said Paul, “but I cannot
stand this, so good-night;” and before the barrister had time to
intercept him, Paul rushed out of the room and hurried away into the
street.
Meanwhile Mr. Bales returned. The barrister informed him that he
thought it would be impossible to proceed with the case of conspiracy.
The officer said he had another charge against the prisoner upon which
he could secure a conviction, and so the two parted; the detective
to complete his entry in the police charge-sheet and arrange for the
appearance on the next day of certain witnessess, and Mr. Williamson to
the residence of Mrs. Dibble, where he at once introduced himself to
her interesting lodger as Lieut. Somerton’s friend.
He did not hesitate at all about the part he should play. Assuming the
position of Lieut. Somerton’s legal adviser, he told the lady that Paul
knew everything, and when she assumed an injured and indignant air,
he showed her a copy of that very marriage certificate which she had
burnt. Nay, more; he said that he knew where her father the showman was
to be found, and that her husband, who was in custody, had explained
everything to the policeman who had apprehended him.
And yet whilst the barrister was utterly crushing the girl, and even
threatening her with a police cell, he felt a strange interest in her.
The remembrance of a well-known face which had fascinated him when a
boy came so vividly into his mind as he stood before the showman’s
daughter, that he grew strangely embarrassed in his manner. Shortly,
his assumed austerity gave way, and he found himself speaking very
gently and tenderly.
The girl was quick enough to observe this, and she proceeded at
once to make capital out of it, appealing to his kindness and
sympathy, assuring him that she loved his friend with all her heart,
acknowledging to the full how she had deceived him, and then humbly
soliciting the barrister’s advice.
Old memories came back to the barrister as the woman continued to talk,
and her tears did not fail to soften the hues of that picture of old
which would rise up between himself and the humiliated woman before
him. Leading her on from one topic to another he induced her to narrate
her history, and by slow degrees she repeated to him the heads of the
story which she had told Dibble on the Severntown race-course. Feeling
sure that this would excite the barrister’s sympathy, she hoped that it
might in some way make him her friend.
Watching the effect of all she was saying, the girl perceived that
her listener was peculiarly touched; and when at the proper moment
she produced that little miniature which she had shown to Dibble, Mr.
Arundel Williamson, exclaiming “Good heavens, can it be possible!”
threw himself back in his chair and nearly fainted.
Fixing her eyes upon him as he grasped the locket, the woman, with the
cunning of the race-course and the lodging-house, the precocity of
poverty, and her fixed faith in Carkey’s prophecy about her parentage,
felt at once that the hour of discovery had come.
“You are my father!” she said, with an air of pride and triumph. “That
lady was your wife.”
“God help us!” said the barrister solemnly. “He visits the sins of the
fathers upon the children indeed!”
“You won’t drive me away now,” said the girl quickly; “you won’t try
to make him hate me, and put me in prison now. If you don’t like me
to be your daughter, let me go away with him; tell him all that about
Gibbs is a lie,--he will believe you--he will believe anything--don’t
separate us--I will never tell anybody you are my father.”
The barrister made no reply; he rocked himself to and fro in his chair,
and looked vacantly at the girl, as if he were in a dream.
“I am your father,” said the barrister presently; “there is no doubt
about that. The sin and the punishment are so equal, and the parentage
is so fearfully verified in your own career and conduct: there is
no cheating heaven, no tricking the law of punishment in this world.
God knows I have suffered too, without this additional pain and
degradation.”
“You’re ashamed of me, then?” said the woman. “Lieutenant Somerton is
not; let me go away with him.”
“Never!” exclaimed the barrister: “never!”
* * * * *
“Well, it thertainly ith the motht exthraordinary thing I ever heard
of,” whispered Mrs. Dibble to herself and Thomas in the passage after
she had been listening at the keyhole for nearly half an hour: “motht
wonderful. Now come here, thir, and juth tell me all you know about
that woman. It’s bad enough to have one’s money lotht and brought to
poverty, without secrets of this sort being kept away from the lawful
wife of your bootham, Mithter Dibble. You thall tell me every word
before you go to bed.”
Dibble struggled a little against this decree, but without avail.
Whilst he was telling his wife all that he knew about Christabel, Mr.
Williamson was endeavouring to bring that remarkable young woman to a
sense of her position. To what extent he succeeded we may hope to learn
hereafter.
CHAPTER III.
COMING HOME.
Yes, they were coming home; the Earl and Countess of Verner were coming
home. The “Severntown Mercury” said so, and mentioned the exact day
on which they would return. Nay, more, the accomplished journalist
announced that during that very week his lordship had accepted the
colonelship of the Severnshire Yeomanry, and that the local troop
would receive the distinguished couple at the Severntown Station, and
escort them to the Junction, from whence they would continue their
journey to Avonworth. A member of the oldest county family, and the
most distinguished of the local aristocracy, the “Mercury” suggested
that the civic authorities should show his lordship some mark of their
respect as he passed through the ancient city on his way to the
historic home of his fathers.
The Right Honourable the Earl Verner was descended from that famous
Verner who figured so magnificently in the early days of the reign of
Henry IV. In the tournaments of that time, Henry, Earl Verner, was
the bravest and most formidable of all the gallants of the period. He
fought like a lion at the battle of Shrewsbury, and served the king in
various parts of the country with unequalled bravery and success. The
Verners had always been splendid men. There was another of the race
who distinguished himself as highly in the senate as the Verner of
Henry IV.’s time had in the field. It was to this senator that England
owed so much in those critical times when the doctrines of the French
Revolution were making progress in our own country. The Earl’s speech
in parliament upon this grand question was one of the most powerful
orations in history. He filled several high offices of state, and his
fine administrative ability could be traced throughout the important
epoch in which he lived. The present earl, though he had hitherto
taken no lead in public affairs, was an accomplished scholar, and had
contributed several important pamphlets to the literature of art and
antiquity; and he would, no doubt, now take that position in the county
to which his family distinction, his accomplishments, and his great
wealth entitled him.
The Countess of Verner had also sprung of a stock not by any means
of small celebrity. Her parentage might be said to have represented
the aristocracy of birth and commercial enterprise. Her father, the
late Christopher Tallant, Esq., had ranked high amongst the merchant
princes of Great Britain, and had come of an old Yorkshire family. Her
mother, a lady of the noble house of Petherington, was a descendant
of the Petheringtons of Fife. The Lord Petherington of that ilk it
was who distinguished himself in Egypt in 1800, and who fell fighting
the battles of his country in Spain. Celebrated for their beauty, the
daughters of the house of Petherington would be familiar to those
admirers of “female loveliness” who had studied “Garton’s Beauties of
the Court.”
The “Mercury” grew quite eloquent in its historical revelations, and
Severntown resolved, in accordance with the editorial hint, that the
Earl and Countess should be “received” at the station, and escorted to
the junction in right royal fashion. So, when the day came, there was
quite a crowd of people at the station. A troop of the Yeomanry Cavalry
were there, and their horses pranced and curvetted, and stood upon two
legs, in the most approved military fashion; a number of ladies who
had seats upon the platform, presented the Countess with a handsome
bracelet and a charming bouquet of flowers; the mayor came forward, and
made a pretty little speech to the newly-married pair; and the Earl
replied in a hearty address. Then his lordship conducted his wife to
a carriage, and drove off to the junction, amidst great cheering, in
company with the gallant Yeomanry on their prancing steeds.
But it was at Brazencrook where the greatest demonstration was made.
Severntown was somewhat proud and dignified; but Brazencrook was full
of rejoicing. Nearly the whole of the longest street in Brazencrook
belonged to Earl Verner, and the people had always been warmly attached
to the noble proprietors of the Castle of Montem. Brazencrook was the
nearest station to the castle, and Brazencrook determined to make the
return home something not to be forgotten. The Town-clerk had been
instructed to prepare an address for the occasion. The cordwainers
of the place had made the Countess a pair of dainty slippers; the
glass-cutters had manufactured and made wonderful toilet-bottles for
her; the ladies of the town had subscribed for a gold casket; and the
civic authorities had ordered the town to be decorated, and the bells
to be rung in honour of their distinguished friends and neighbours.
The old Guildhall was carpeted, and a daïs erected in the ancient
assembly-room. The earl had consented to bring his wife here to
receive the civic congratulations and the big town’s presents.
Brazencrook had always been celebrated for doing things well; it was
one of the leading mottoes of the local newspaper, that “if it was
worth while to do anything it was worth while to do it well.” Thus
the welcoming home of the earl and countess grew and grew out of the
first proposals into a demonstration worthy of royalty. If our friend
Asmodeus had taken you there on the morning of the celebration of this
return-home, you might have fancied that you had been transported
back to the “good old times” of provincial display. The visit of a
queen, the close of a three weeks’ election, the termination of a
great war, the inauguration of some old-world revels, or something on
an ancient scale of grandeur, would have seemed to be manifested in
those fluttering flags and banners; those half-military men in the
streets; that ox roasting in the market-place; those great casks of
ale ready tapped under the ancient piazzas of the market-house. Bands
playing, bells ringing, shops closed, triumphal arches receiving the
last-finishing touches, old gabled houses with devices painted up
between the windows, Odd-Fellows in sashes and aprons, gentlemen with
white rosettes on their breasts, women with babies in their arms, boys
climbing lamp-posts, and again Yeomanry Cavalry with brass helmets and
unmanageable horses, Brazencrook had never presented such a scene of
jubilation and bustle. The fine old town seemed to rub its jolly big
hands, and say, “How do you do, everybody--glad to see you. Have a
drink--we are going to enjoy ourself to-day. It is a little foolish to
make such a tremendous fuss, we know; but never mind;--better to do a
thing well, if you do it at all, you know.”
Somebody had drawn an allegorical figure of the town, and it had been
sculptured by a famous artist. It was a brawny athletic man, with a
hammer in his hand, leaning upon a rock from which water was supposed
to be bursting forth--the source of the river upon which the town was
built. If the figure could have spoken it would have said something
like what we have just written, and it might have laid down its hammer
and smiled pleasantly at the Brazencrookians as they bustled about on
that memorable morning.
There was a glow of pride and delight upon the rosy cheeks of the
Countess as she sat by her lord in that pretty open brougham which
conveyed them to the Guildhall. It was like the reception of a prince
and princess. Lord Verner bowed like a king to his bending subjects,
and the Countess smiled and bowed with a gracious condescension that
was quite charming to see. The people cheered and shouted and threw up
their hats, and “Welcome Home,” “Long Life and Happiness,” and good
wishes of all kinds greeted them from nearly every banner and triumphal
arch.
Meanwhile a dense crowd congregated at the Guildhall, and a fashionable
throng was congregated within. There had been many local feuds about
places. The town-councillors had to be accommodated first, and their
wives next, and we regret to say that quarrels which time will never
heal arose out of the preference shown to some ladies over others
in the selection of the committee to represent the ladies who had
subscribed for the casket. It was quite grand to see the aldermen in
their blue cloaks and chains, the councillors in their gowns, the mayor
in his cocked hat, the sword-bearers with their fur helmets on and
their beavers up. Then there were the mayor’s officers in their new
liveries, and his Worship’s own footman with a bouquet in his waistcoat
as big and as round as his own rubicund face. The military pensioners
with their shining accoutrements were drawn up in line ready to present
arms. Even Earl Verner was struck with surprise and amazement as his
coachman pulled up opposite the hall. What a scene it was, to be sure!
“Eyes front--fix bayonets--present a-r-r-r-rms!” could be heard half
way down the street, as a fierce old officer, on a plunging horse and
half pay, thundered out these commands to the pensioners; and then,
oh, how his stentorian voice was drowned with drums and fifes and
“hip-hip-hip-hurrahs!”
The Countess began to feel terribly nervous as his lordship handed her
out and introduced her to the mayor, who offered his arm and marched
magnificently into the Guildhall along the crowded corridor and into
the great assembly-room, where a thousand well-dressed persons rose to
receive the noble visitors. Onward through the smiling throng, with
his head in the air and the Countess by his side, went the Mayor of
Brazencrook, up to the daïs of crimson cloth, where the Countess sat
down in a gilded chair of state, and the Earl stood beside her, his
lordship looking almost as proud as his Worship the Mayor himself.
Suddenly the Countess recognised Phœbe, Arthur Phillips and the bailiff
sitting close by. She rose instantly, advanced towards them, and the
next moment had kissed her friend with a heartiness that made the
tears come into Phœbe’s eyes, and quite electrified everybody. Who
was the lady whom she had kissed? Everybody asked everybody else, and
nobody knew. Who was that strange looking little man with long black
hair? And who was that fine-looking country gentleman? Nobody knew,
and everybody made a guess in reply, so that there was quite a buzz
of conversation. Then the Mayor introduced the aldermen, who had all
promised to introduce their wives and didn’t; then the Mayoress was
introduced, and the Countess shook hands with her, and so did the
Earl; whereupon several friends of the chief magistrate’s wife said
the Mayoress was “stuck up,” and a score of other ladies said the
whole affair was a perfect farce, and they certainly would not have
sanctioned it if they had known there was going to be so much nonsense.
Who was the Countess, they would like to know? Nobody but a merchant’s
daughter, and her husband old enough to be her father. And who was the
Mayoress?--a seedsman’s wife,--and what a bonnet! It was a pity people
should make themselves so ridiculous! And the Countess too; there
were women in the room quite as handsome and quite as graceful. Fine
feathers made fine birds!
The Countess might fairly have disputed the prize for beauty with all
Severnshire, nevertheless; her chiefest competitor, to our mind, would
have been the artist’s _fiancée_, but the two styles of beauty were
entirely different, as our readers know.
It was not long ere the Town-clerk had read the civic address, and the
various presents were made. The Earl replied in a manner that promised
all the old borough hoped for with regard to the future; whilst the
Countess said a few words of thankfulness, which were so gracious, so
sweet, so becoming, so perfectly modest, that even the ladies who had
been excluded from the committee aforesaid could not resist joining in
the general expressions of approval.
How sincerely the Countess vowed in her own heart to be an obedient
and faithful wife to this man who had raised her to such a height of
distinction! He had never seen her look so affectionately upon him
as when they were once more moving on their way to his magnificent
house at Montem. The welcome which they had received at Brazencrook
was of such a right royal kind, that it kindled not only sensations
of pride in the woman’s heart, but feelings of the deepest gratitude.
The sublime and the ridiculous are often to be seen in very close
proximity. The Countess could not fail to notice some of the laughable
incidents of the Brazencrook display, but she felt to the full the
earnestness of the scene, the manliness of the civic address, the
outspoken, independent allegiance of the great body of her husband’s
tenants, represented by a fine old man, who talked of the ancient
days of Brazencrook, and how the retainers of the House of Verner had
fought, under previous earls, the battles of their king and country.
But it was the arrival at Montem Castle itself which most impressed the
Countess. That long drive through the luxurious park, that long line of
citizen soldiers, that body of local tenants at the castle gates, those
loud cheers, that other address of welcome, the bending servants in the
grand old hall, and the gracious words of the Earl introducing her as
the mistress of Montem Castle. She wept tears of joy and gratitude.
There was no acting in this. When she saw Earl Verner first she had
commenced to act a part which she hoped might lead up to some such
scene as this; but she had never imagined that the actress would weep
real tears, and feel a deep and fervent gratitude to the nobleman who
had taken her hand and placed her by his side.
CHAPTER IV.
TRAVELLERS BY LAND AND SEA.
In the morning after Mr. Williamson’s discovery of his daughter,
Lieutenant Somerton sought the woman whom he had loved so wildly--he
sought her with a troubled heart, and a half resolve to see her
no more, if she had deceived him so grossly as the barrister had
intimated. He had thought long and seriously over all the circumstances
which his friend had laid before him, and he resolved to search out the
truth.
When he reached the house, however, he was spared the scene of anger,
mutual explanation, and final triumph of love and frenzy which he had
imagined. The bird had flown; there was no Chrissy in the little house
with the trees at the back. The rooms were deserted, and Mrs. Dibble
sat weeping over the _débris_ of a hasty packing-up.
“She’th gone, thir: gone for ever,” said Mrs. Dibble.
“Yes,” said Thomas, who stood by, looking more frightened than
sympathetic.
“Gone--what do you mean?” asked the Lieutenant.
“She wath a wicked creature, thir, and she hath fled,” said Mrs.
Dibble; “if my poor dear papa could only rise from his grave and see
the path to which hith daughter Maria hath come.”
“Hang your papa!” exclaimed Paul; “tell me what all this means.”
“How dare you, thir,” said Mrs. Dibble, starting up; “how dare you hang
my papa! Ah, I forgot, of courthe poverty mutht be insulted, and I am a
wretched dependent, though I have had a boarding-school education, and
been brought up to----”
“Confound it, Mrs. Dibble: will you talk common sense for a moment. I
don’t wish to insult you, nor to be unkind in any way. Will you tell
me how it is that this lady has left your house?”
“Here is a note,” said Mr. Dibble, timidly taking a small _billet_ from
the mantel-piece.
Mrs. Dibble scowled at her husband, and began to weep afresh over her
fallen fortunes.
Paul hastily opened the note, which Dibble gave to him, and read as
follows:--
“MY DEAR PAUL,--I have saved you from a great sin and from
terrible misery. This wretched girl is my daughter. I have taken
her away; do not seek to follow us. You shall know _all_ in the
course of a day or two. ‘He visits the sins of the fathers upon
the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that
hate him, and shows mercy unto thousands in them that love Him
and keep His commandments.’
“Believe me to be ever yours in truth
and affection,
“A. Williamson.”
Paul read the note twice and in the greatest astonishment. His mind was
in a chaos of wonder and amazement. He sat down upon a chair, and read
the strange words over and over again, until Dibble interrupted him.
“It was all true, sir,” said Dibble, “what I said yesterday; she was
the show-girl, Chrissy, who conjured, you know, sir, at Severntown.”
Paul made no reply.
Mrs. Dibble only nodded her head to signify that she had had a
boarding-school education, and had been brought to this wretched
plight, nevertheless.
“She be main clever, surely,” said Dibble, “and improved wonderful.”
“When did she leave here?” asked Paul, looking to Mrs. Dibble for a
reply.
“Before daylight, by the mail,” she said; “and what with packing and
Mr. Williamson’s fidgeting and going on, and his wild ways, I hope I
shall never see such a night again.”
“They left together,” said Paul, staring vacantly at the barrister’s
note.
“Yeth, and Dibble fetched the cab.”
“Did she seem willing to go; did she leave any message for me?”
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Dibble. “She wath willing enough to go; but
anybody would have been willing to do whatever he thaid, he theemed to
order about so.”
“Order! in what way?” asked the Lieutenant.
“Why, ath if he were her father, which he thaid he wath, though that
wath never to be repeated to anybody but you, and he went home and
brought some money, and wath motht liberal for all we had done, though
I thertainly would have returned it if Mithter Dibble had not lotht
money in the panic, and that bank had not broke, which left uth almost
in poverty.”
The Lieutenant took little or no notice of Mrs. Dibble’s long speeches,
but they were full of daggers to Thomas Dibble, who would have laid
down his life if he could have obtained money enough to put an end to
his wife’s taunts about their losses.
Paul was altogether at a loss to know how to act. His first impulse
was to make an effort to follow the fugitives; his first impression
was that his friend had behaved treacherously; but when Dibble told
him all he knew about “Chrissy,” and her belief that her father was a
gentleman, and when he thought again of all that Williamson had said,
and of the dark shadows upon his early life, he resolved that he would
try to be patient, and wait for the next chapter in this extraordinary
story of his first love.
Meanwhile the fugitives were speeding on their way to Dover, their
destination being Paris. Whilst they were leaving England, a traveller
was journeying to London in whom the reader has a still greater
interest. Lionel Hammerton was coming home. He had only been a few
months at his post ere he left it. Nobody knew why he did so, or
upon what plea he had obtained permission. He had not been well,
his comrades knew; but a general depression of spirits rather than
any physical complaint seemed to be the secret of his reticence and
retirement. On board the vessel in which he went out his conduct
was set down to the motion of the vessel, and a few harmless jests
were made at his expense. He was advised to drink plenty of brandy
and water, which would soon bring his sea legs all right; but Lionel
Hammerton did not recover, except when he drank more brandy than was
good for him. Now and then this occurred, and at such times he was
pronounced to be a splendid fellow, a dashing, daring, high-souled
fellow.
Lionel himself hardly knew why he wished to return home. He felt
impelled by an unseen influence. Like the hero of some ghost story
who at Christmas had seen by his bedside the face of a loved one at
home, and a beckoning finger which haunted him day and night until he
set foot on board a home-bound ship, Lionel Hammerton could think of
nothing but returning home. There was something wrong, he could not
rest, he must go home and see the old country once more ere he settled
down in India. For days and weeks he struggled against this instinctive
longing to re-cross the ocean. That vignette which Arthur Phillips had
painted hung by his bed, inside those mosquito curtains! Had this aught
to do with his desire to return home? Did he repent of his neglect
towards Amy? Did he love her after all? Did the memory of those happy
days at Barton torture him with remorse? Or had that idea of Amy’s
mercenary motives evaporated in presence of that honest and noble face,
about which he had talked so rapturously in the artist’s studio? If so,
why did he not write to her and say so, or send some message to her
by Arthur Phillips? This would have been easy enough, and sufficient
too for Amy, who would have caught at the merest straw that offered a
prospect of regaining his love.
They passed each other on the sea, the two Indian ships--one
homeward-bound with Hammerton on board, the other on its way to
Calcutta with letters for him, and full particulars of his brother’s
marriage. What a world of trouble might have been spared to him and
others, had he yielded at once to those home-promptings, or waited
until those letters and papers had reached their destination!
As the vessel bounded along through the waters, Lionel shaped his
course. He was fain to confess that he wanted to see Amy, to see her
once more, and judge for himself by her own words and conduct whether
she truly loved him, or whether it was a mere mercenary passion. It
was a long time before he confessed even to himself that it was she
who drew him back to England--he could not rest without her. If she
were really true, true as the artist had painted her, true as he
once believed her, he would confess all to his brother, and ask Amy
to return with him to India as his wife. What a fool he had been, he
thought, to doubt her, and to come away without seeing her. What a
miserable lonely life it was out there in India without a soul you
cared for. How happy to have a wife there! No fellow ought to go out
to India without one. And what did it matter about a woman’s origin in
India, so that she was a lady in manners, and the wife of an officer
of rank in his own right? Why had he not thought of all this before?
It was only by degrees that he had permitted his thoughts to run wild
like this. The sea seemed to help him out of his troubles; it was so
boundless, so full of life and beauty. His thoughts appeared to mount
the white-crested waves and travel away upon them to some quiet sandy
beach where Amy was walking. Now that he had confessed to himself why
he was returning to England, he gave his imagination the freest rein,
and pictured the future as something almost preternaturally happy. He
never doubted for a moment that when he came back to Barton Hall and
threw his handkerchief at the feet of Amy she would pick it up and be
his slave. That pride which had had so large a share in his leaving
England and neglecting the woman whose love he had taken the trouble to
win, did not desert him on his return.
When he set foot in London he hesitated whether he should go straight
to Montem, run down to Arthur Phillips’ at Severntown, or take the
train to Avonworth. It had occurred to him more than once to visit
Amy secretly; but his better sense prompted him to write a note to his
brother telling him that he should visit him the next day, hoping to
return again to India by an early mail.
“He will be surprised,” Lionel thought, “to receive this; but he is a
dear old boy after all, and I will soon put him all right. I wish I had
had nothing to do with that infernal Stock Exchange business. I should
then have had no qualms at all about meeting him again so suddenly.”
The Hon. officer of her Majesty spent the evening of his return to
England at Drury Lane, and his magnanimous intentions with regard to
Amy were stimulated by the action of a drama, the chief lesson of which
was the levelling power of love, and the exaltation of beauty and
virtue above rank and fortune. Lionel went home to his hotel in quite
a sentimental mood, longing to confess his unchanging love and receive
Amy’s grateful acknowledgments of the sacrifice which he was willing to
make for her, raising the bailiff’s daughter to his own rank and making
her his wife and companion.
CHAPTER V.
LORD AND LADY VERNER.
A delightful September morning inaugurated the second day of the return
home to Montem Castle. The sun shone upon the grand old towers which
stood out in clear outline against the sky; and upon the old ruin with
its moss-grown walls and whispering ivy, a grey old token of the past,
with a long line of green turf stretching forth to the more modern
castle which had been built in presence of the ancient ruin. The modern
establishment had been built as closely as possible after the old
model, and furnished too in antique style, but with all modern comforts.
As far as the eye could see, stretched the noble park with grand old
trees sheltering groups of deer. From the terrace in front of the
castle half a mile of turf, interspersed with beds of flowers and
shrubs and winding walks and natural glints of rock terminated in a
broad expanse of lake, ornamented with sundry islands that looked in
the distance like floating gardens. Far away against the sky the Berne
Hills melted as it were into the Linktowns, whose topmost point was
hung with a misty mantle which the sunbeams fringed with gold.
The Earl and Countess of Verner sat at breakfast two mornings after
their return home in presence of this glorious scene. The windows were
wide open, letting in the perfume of autumn flowers, the song of birds,
the sound of plashing water flowing from an adjacent fountain. What a
paradise it was! Would Amy make it a desert? We shall see.
When her husband said they might expect his brother during the day,
Amy’s cheeks lost their colour for a moment, and her hand trembled;
but the change was not noticed, and a strong effort of will at once
restored the wife’s self-control. The announcement was so unexpected;
all her speculations had not prepared her for so sudden an appearance.
She had expected to meet this man some day, and had thought about her
manner of receiving him; but she had never dreamed that the trial would
come so soon.
“Shut the window, Morris,” said his lordship, “the air is rather
chilly, her ladyship will take cold.”
“Thank you,” said the Countess, gently.
“You have met my brother, I think,” said the Earl.
“Yes, at Barton,” said Amy, promptly, but with a cold chill at her
heart.
“Rather a strange fellow. Why he should return home so soon, I cannot
understand. You may leave the room, Morris.”
Morris and his second in command bowed and retired.
“There was a time when I could not bear Morris to be away from my elbow
for a moment,” said his lordship, “and now I would rather the fellow
were a mile off when you are here, my darling; there is no chatting
freely to one’s wife with that booby swallowing every word.”
His lordship looked across the table at the Countess in her white
morning-robe, and smiled. “I positively envy those Darby-and-Joan
people of the middle class, who are not bothered with a regiment of
servants.”
The Countess looked up and said there were Darbys and Joans, she hoped,
in halls and castles.
“I know of one couple,” said his lordship, cheerily. “George and Amy
are their names, and they will be candidates for the Dunmow Flitch.
Lionel Hammerton can hardly have heard of our marriage.”
“Not heard of it?” said the Countess. This was a new feature of the
case which had not presented itself to her mind.
“Unless the outward mail made a very quick passage indeed, he has not
heard of it; I question whether he can be acquainted with any of the
changes that have taken place in our fortunes during the past year.”
“What a surprise it will be for him,” said the Countess.
“Indeed, it will,” said his lordship.
“Was not his departure a very sudden affair?” asked the Countess.
“Not particularly so, my love,” said the Earl. “We had not contemplated
his entering the army--that was his freak. He indulged in the luxury of
speculation rather extensively, and I think I was a little emphatic in
condemning his large and useless expenditure. I feared he was making
ties of friendship which were not beneficial to him. Perhaps I said
so. In an excitable moment he said it would be better for him to join
the army, and go abroad for a few years. I dislike discussing these
personal questions; it rather bored me at the time, I remember; and I
said I thought it would be best. And so he made his own arrangements.”
“Then he knew that he was about to leave the country some time before
he went away,” said the Countess.
“Yes, he was Gazetted soon after our serious conversation, as he
called it, and sailed a month or two afterwards I think. I knew he
would soon be tired of it, but I had no idea that his return would
be so sudden. He will hardly know the place. I never saw so great
and complete an improvement as there appears in the grounds, and the
general re-arrangement of the house. The whole place is changed, and
with a mistress at the head of affairs, I seem to be quite in a new
world, quite. And what a delightful world it is, Amy!”
His lordship was charmed with his wife, and with everything around him.
The servants did not see a greater change in Montem Castle than they
saw in the noble master thereof. From a quiet, retiring, luxurious
student, who buried himself in his books, and lost himself in continual
admiration of his pottery or pictures, he had become a lively, chatty,
merry gentleman. Formerly, with a continual fear that he was going
to be bored, he had guarded himself as carefully as though he were
a confirmed invalid. No noises, no open windows, as few visitors as
possible; he had appeared to mope away existence, and Brazencrook
looked forward to a speedy successor in Lionel Hammerton; but old
Morris and the butler both said cracked jugs often lasted the longest,
and that ailing men mostly made old bones. Even they, however, were
surprised beyond expression at his lordship. It was marvel enough that
he should marry, but that he should have a really grand wedding, and
make public speeches, and come home “livelier than a cricket, sir,” as
Morris said, was something which they could never cease to wonder at.
He loved his wife with all that fervency which often marks the love of
an old bachelor, who is fascinated out of his former course of life by
a beautiful woman bent on winning him. There was nothing that he would
not have done to add to her comfort and happiness. All his bachelor
ways, his fogeyism, his books, his pictures, his china, none of them
could weigh in attractiveness against the delight of giving her the
smallest pleasure. Her ladyship knew this, and resolved to interfere
as little as possible with his habits and general course of life; she
would join him in his studies and in his pleasures she vowed, and be
his companion indeed.
She would also govern his household, and perform her wifely duties to
the letter. Were she twenty times a countess she would take her place
as the responsible head of the domestic government. She would give her
commands for the day, and do all things in order, as a wife should.
“You shall do whatever you please, my dear,” said his lordship, upon
the mention of this item in her wifely programme. “You are mistress
here, but do not rob me too much of your society; and one thing I must
insist upon.”
The Countess, who had risen and was standing with her hand in his,
smiled archly at the idea of his insisting upon anything.
“Yes, I _must_ insist; you are to remember that my name is George here,
just as it was when we were in Kent, and that I am to have a kiss
always when we part, you as you say on your morning duties, I to wait
your pleasure in the library.”
The Countess promised faithful compliance with this command, and went
on her way to the housekeeper’s room to signify her pleasure with
regard to the arrangements of the day. Amy (for we are privileged to
call her Amy still, and shall insist upon an occasional exercise of
that privilege) entered upon her domestic reign so mildly, and with
such unaffected modesty, that the old housekeeper gladly obeyed her
behests, though this extraordinary interference, on the part of a lady
and a countess, with household affairs was the subject of some slight
mutinous discussion that day in the housekeeper’s room and in the
butler’s pantry too.
Having discharged these morning duties to her own satisfaction by
an inauguration of her system, the Countess ascended the grand old
staircase and sought her boudoir, where she sat down to discuss with
herself and consider the situation which Lionel Hammerton’s letter
had created. She had refrained from asking many questions which her
heart had prompted her to ask at breakfast, fearing that she was not
altogether fulfilling her part of the solemn contract she had entered
into, by learning from her husband the motives which had actuated her
lover without confessing how much she knew of his brother. All she had
sought to learn was in the way of justification of her own conduct,
and she had been strengthened in this by his lordship’s replies. How
should she meet Mr. Hammerton? How much did he know of recent events
to prepare him for the change at Montem Castle? How far might surprise
betray him or her?
Whilst she was thinking of these things the sound of wheels attracted
her attention, and the next moment she saw one of the Earl’s close
carriages, with luggage on the roof, approaching the main entrance. The
conveyance had been to Brazencrook Station to meet Mr. Hammerton. She
had no doubt he had arrived. She watched the brougham roll along the
great drive, through the autumn-tinted trees--watched it, as she had
on another memorable autumn day watched Earl Verner’s carriage whirl
along, through the dying leaves, to Barton Hall. It was a coincidence
which struck her forcibly these two autumn days, and seemed to bode
evil to her. Did she love this man who had won her heart in those past
days, and whose neglect had urged her into a scheme of revenge? She
asked herself the question fearlessly, and her heart said No; but still
there was fear in the answer--a momentary fear that it were better
Lionel Hammerton were in India than here. Contrasting his conduct with
that of the Earl, remembering how niggardly he had been, in those early
days, of tender words, and how he had rather seemed to revel in her own
silent admiration than delight in her love; and how devoted the Earl
was; how noble, how generous; how he had raised her up not thinking
he had done so, but thanking her for his own happiness--thanking her
that she had consented to be the mistress of these grand old halls, and
the successor of a long line of countesses who lived in the history of
titles and beauty. Contrasting the two thus, Lionel Hammerton took but
an abject place, and Amy’s heart overflowed with gratitude to the man
whom she had sworn to love, honour, and obey.
Ringing for her maid, the Countess took a fancy to have her hair
dressed afresh, and then she put on a plainer dress, and in a little
time there came a message from his lordship that Mr. Hammerton had
arrived, and would lunch with them.
The Countess expected this, and was preparing for it. When she had
dismissed her maid, she surveyed herself fixedly in a mirror, as if she
were practising some peculiar expression. She was nervous, and wished
the day at an end. Why had he come here? If he knew of his brother’s
marriage, it would have been far nobler to have remained away from the
place? Did he know of it?
Let us answer that question to the reader. Lionel Hammerton heard of
his brother’s marriage for the first time from the servants at the
Brazencrook Station. He heard it, and with no pleasure; for although
he loved his brother with a generous affection, he had come to expect
that some day, in the ordinary course of nature, he would be called
upon to succeed him. Not only did the disparity of years lead to this
supposition (they were the offspring of two different mothers, the
former Earl having married twice), but the general opinion was that
the younger brother was so much stronger than the eldest, that he must
live out the other. This marriage, therefore, seemed to set up an
obstacle to his hopes. But the news did not affect him half so much as
might have been expected. The strongest feeling about it, we are bound
to say, was one of surprise, which was not a little increased when he
learnt that Christopher Tallant’s daughter was his brother’s wife.
All the way to the Castle he pondered over this extraordinary fact,
and wondered how it was with his poor friend, Arthur Phillips. There
was one thing which gave him comfort: if his brother could descend to
marrying a commoner’s daughter, surely he, a mere officer in the army,
might marry Amy, the daughter of the commoner’s bailiff.
This thought in some measure revived his spirits, which had been dashed
on the first blush of the matrimonial news. He could hardly believe but
what there was some mistake, but when he saw the trim flower beds, the
new gravel walks, the trim sunblinds, the cheerful brightness of the
windows, he felt that the bachelor days of Montem were certainly at an
end. “How odd,” he thought, “to take sweet counsel with my brother’s
wife about Amy Somerton; I will confide all to her ladyship before I
say anything to George--fancy Miss Tallant, Countess of Verner, my
sister-in-law. No wonder I was prompted to come back to England!”
CHAPTER VI.
IN WHICH DAME FORTUNE PLAYS OFF HER GRIM
JOKE UPON LIONEL HAMMERTON.
“Let me congratulate you, George,” were the first words which Lionel
addressed to his brother; “let me congratulate you upon your marriage
with the prettiest of charming women.”
“Thank you, thank you,” said the Earl, taking Lionel’s hand; “rather
unexpected, eh?--never thought I should marry, eh, Lionel?”
“No, I certainly did not,” said Lionel.
“The confirmed old bachelor, who could not be bored with a wife,
eh?--the lazy old fellow, too selfish to marry, eh?” said his lordship,
laughing aloud and rubbing his hands. “Did the wonderful news bring you
home?”
“No; I heard for the first time of your marriage, at Brazencrook. When
I left India I hardly knew why I left; but I think I shall be able to
tell you all about it in due time.”
“Well, no matter; you know you are always welcome, Lionel--always; my
home is yours, dear boy.”
“I know that, my dear George,” said Lionel, who again took his
brother’s proffered hand, and shook it heartily.
“You will find your old room in the old place,” said the Earl. “No
change there, except perhaps a little extra decoration. When you are
ready, come to me in the library, and you shall have an introduction to
your sister-in-law.”
“Delighted to renew the lady’s acquaintance in her new and
distinguished position,” said Lionel, leaving his brother smiling and
nodding at the foot of the principal staircase.
The old room was in the old place, at the end of the picture gallery,
and Lionel found no change there for the worse. He found Morris there
unpacking his portmanteaus; and he joked with the old fellow, and
asked him when he would be married. Morris thought the jest rather
grim, and said it was certainly time for him to think about it, now
that his lordship had taken a wife.
“Her ladyship is pretty, Morris, is she not?” said Lionel, taking off
his coat and throwing the window up.
“Very pretty, and as amiable as can be, too,” said Morris.
“That’s a good thing; what time do we lunch, Morris?”
“Two o’clock, sir,” said the servant.
“Ah, it is one now,” said Lionel, looking at his watch. “I shall have
time to dress and have ten minutes’ walk to collect my faculties for an
introduction to her ladyship, your mistress.”
“Yes, sir,” said Morris, depositing waistcoats and trousers, and
hanging up coats and caps and swords in the ample wardrobe; “shall I
ring for hot water, sir?”
“No, thank you, Morris; the news has made me hot. Never mind undoing
that leather case.”
“All right, sir,” said Morris. “You are looking a good deal bronzed
with the sun, but glad to see you so well. Anything else I can do, sir?”
“No, thank you, Morris,” said Lionel, taking no notice of the
servitor’s remark about his brown face, but wondering how Arthur
Phillips had taken his disappointment. “Somehow I never thought the
poor fellow had the slightest chance of marrying Phœbe. Poor Arthur!
Such a sentimental fellow, too, he was; it would almost break his
heart I should think; I will hunt him up to-morrow. Fancy George, Earl
Verner, my whimsical, apathetic, luxurious, moping brother, falling
in love with that pretty face at Barton, and marrying it! Wonders
will never cease! I suppose he must have seen her on one of his calls
on Tallant about those humbugging shares. Some people believe in the
exercise of a sort of electrical sympathy influencing friends at the
longest distances. Did that worry me in India? A stroke of fate, I
suspect, in the whole thing. Well, we shall see.”
Thus rambled on the current of Lionel’s thoughts as he washed and
dressed and gave his toilette sundry extra touches in view of the
new society which now graced the castle. What a terrible shock of
disappointment and surprise awaited him! It seemed as though fortune
were playing off some grim joke upon him.
As she passed through the principal drawing-room on her way to the
library, the Countess saw her brother-in-law walking towards the lake.
It was a fine manly figure, in a loose morning costume that set off
the broad shoulders and the stalwart limbs to perfection. How she had
loved that man! How she had listened for his footsteps and trembled
at his voice! She dared not think of the past; she would not think
of it, she would crush it out of memory. She clenched her fair white
hand as she made the vow, clenched it in an agony of resolve until her
fingers pained her; and she went in unto her husband crushing out that
forbidden, that cruel memory!
“Well, my darling, have you seen the Indian?” said his lordship, when,
the Countess entered the library. “I declare the fellow is as brown as
a gipsy.”
“I saw him from the window going towards the lake. There he is,” she
said, looking in that direction, “returning now.”
As she said so, Morris knocked at the door and entered with Lord
Cornington’s card. He was walking in the picture gallery, and wished to
see Lord Verner on particular business.
“I will come to him at once,” said his lordship. “Excuse me for ten
minutes, my dear; Cornington has called about the Darfield property;
I have put him off too long already; I will return as quickly as
possible.”
In the hall Lord Verner met his brother, and the Countess could hear
him say, “You will find my wife in the library, Lionel; your own
introduction will be sufficient: amuse her with an account of your
voyage until I return.”
The next moment Lionel entered the room. Amy pressed her hand upon her
heart and summoned up all her courage and fortitude. He looked at her
for a moment, and then with a sudden gleam of joy upon his face he
rushed towards her. Amy stepped back a few paces and coldly extended
her hand.
“Why, what is this, Amy?” said the Indian officer. “Surely some joke,
some jest to increase my present happiness at sight of you.”
“I do not understand you,” said the Countess, in real astonishment; for
she had dismissed from her mind the possibility of Lionel’s ignorance
of Mr. Tallant’s death and the discovery of Mrs. Somerton’s fraud.
“You are here to surprise me, to punish me for my neglect by a gracious
condescension; you have forgiven me, but I am to suffer for leaving you
so strangely. I see it all, dear, dear Amy.”
“Sir, is this the language which you address to your brother’s wife,”
said Amy, with a glow of indignation and alarm in her face.
“What do you mean? What is this? Pray be candid with me and forgive
me. Surely the jest has gone far enough; your looks alarm me,” said
Lionel, in a passion of appeal.
“There is no jest in this business,” said Amy. “I fear you do not
know all. Before Mr. Tallant died it was discovered that I, whom you
knew as Amy Somerton, was his daughter, and that the lady you knew as
Miss Tallant was, in truth, the bailiff’s daughter. I was Christopher
Tallant’s heiress, and I am now your brother’s wife, the Countess of
Verner.”
Lionel sunk into a chair and covered his face with his hands as Amy, in
a clear, firm voice, spoke these words. And this was what he had come
from India to learn. Was he in some hideous dream? He looked up only to
be the more convinced that he was a victim to cruel fate.
“And now, Mr. Hammerton, if you ever loved Amy Somerton, respect her as
your brother’s wife; and if you value his happiness or mine, guard as
a sacred secret the memory of that love which you once professed for
her. Now is the time to prove the sincerity of a passion which you
once professed, and which was the joy of that poor girl, until neglect
and indifference stepped between her and hope, and gave her hand to
another. For my sake, for your own, for your brother’s, leave this
house as soon as possible; whilst you do remain, blot out that memory
of the past--crush it out as I have crushed it--and never let Earl
Verner’s peace be disturbed even by a suspicion of anything more than
a mere acquaintanceship between yourself and his wife. As you fulfil
these my wishes, so shall I gauge your love.”
She left him as she said this, and when he raised his head he looked
for her in vain. The twin brothers in the “Comedy” were not in a
greater maze of bewilderment than was Lionel Hammerton. Though the
light broke in upon his mind during that cold resolute explanation,
it seemed like an ugly dream. He was like a man paralysed by a sudden
blow of misfortune, against which he struggled ineffectually. To fall
from the sunniest height of anticipated bliss into a Stygian gulf of
misery like this, was enough to unnerve a stronger man than Lionel
Hammerton. Pride, self-love, hope, fortune, happiness--all were struck
down when most they should have flourished. It had flashed upon him,
at first sight of Amy, that her friend, the Countess, had confessed
all with regard to his (Lionel’s) love, and that his generous brother
had concocted a delightful plot to surprise him. But for Amy’s fixed,
cold look, he would have been at her feet imploring her forgiveness,
and blessing her for coming there, that he might not lose a moment in
asking her to be his wife. And now she had slipped from him for ever,
and Fate mocked him with her as his sister-in-law! Was it true? Was
there hope yet? He would go out and walk; there was virtue in fresh
air. He took up his hat, and went forth into the old ruin; he clambered
up the rotten stone steps, and stood upon the moss-grown battlements,
where men-at-arms had defended the garrison hundreds of years before;
he looked round upon the glorious scene, mellowed with a thousand
tints of autumn; he watched the blue wreaths of smoke, mounting up in
tall ethereal columns from the old hall chimneys; he saw those purple
hills in the distance, beyond which he first met Amy Somerton. Then he
remembered the enumeration of her wishes so recently expressed--wishes
that were a command to him--a command by the observance of which she
would gauge his love.
“She shall have no reason to complain,” he thought, as he came back
again to the hall. “There may be some cruel plot of punishment for my
neglect at the bottom of all this; it is a slight hope, a weak plank in
the ocean of my disappointment, but I will cling to it for this day at
least.”
“Why did you run away?” said his lordship, when Lionel returned. “Did
the Countess frighten you? We are waiting for luncheon. Cornington
dines with us; he has just taken her ladyship in--come along, come
along!”
And the brothers, arm-in-arm, entered the luncheon-room, where Lord
Cornington was just handing Lady Verner to her seat.
The Countess never looked better than she did this morning, and she
led the conversation in her best manner; her racy, humorous repartee
reminded the Earl of his first introduction to her at Barton Hall. Lord
Cornington thought her one of the most brilliant women he had ever met.
Lionel Hammerton watched her, and replied to her sallies now and then
with undisguised astonishment. Lord Verner was delighted with his wife,
proud of her wit, proud of her beauty, proud of himself that she was
his wife.
None of them saw that weary, haggard look which Amy saw an hour
afterwards in the glass, when she had retired to her room. She was a
fine actress, and she knew it; but the effort now was a severe strain
upon her nervous system. She had hoped until yesterday that she would
not be called upon to act again for a long time to come. Gratitude
and respect had been ripening into love for her husband; but she
would never be herself so long as Lionel Hammerton remained. She was
beset with fear and alarm; fear lest her husband should discover the
love that had once existed between herself and his brother; fear
arising from her own conscience, burthened with the knowledge of the
revenge she had sought and obtained; alarm lest she should fall in the
estimation of her husband. This was the greatest fear of all; the idea
of losing one jot of that love and admiration which he had lavished
upon her, was torture. Her own fidelity and truth were safe; she never
for a moment doubted her strength to maintain her own self-respect
as Earl Verner’s wife; but there was a wretched spell upon her, with
Hammerton in the house, which made his presence a torment far greater
than she could have dreamed of. All those first passionate feelings of
triumph and revenge which had supported her during that time of Lord
Verner’s courtship, had vanished long since, and now she only prayed
for peace.
When the soft mellow gong, which announced dinner, resounded through
the halls and corridors of Montem Castle, Lord Verner, who had been
sitting with his wife in her own room, brought an excuse for her
absence. She was not at all well this evening, he said, and so Lord
Cornington and Lionel Hammerton and the Earl dined together, and Lord
Cornington re-echoed Earl Verner’s hope that her ladyship might come
down to tea. Meanwhile Lady Verner wrote to her dear friend Phœbe,
begging of her to come and stay a few days with her at Montem, and
telling her that Arthur Phillips should have an invitation to dinner as
long as her stay lasted.
CHAPTER VII.
CONTAINS A LETTER FROM A DEAR FRIEND, AND
TAKES THE READER ONCE MORE TO SEVERNTOWN.
“MY DEAR AMY,” wrote Phœbe in reply to her friend’s invitation, “your
letter was indeed welcome, though the news it contained startled me not
a little, and made me regret ever so much more my inability to respond
to your _kind_ and _sisterly_ invitation. My poor mother is so unwell
that I cannot possibly leave her at present. She is suffering from an
attack of the same kind as that which prostrated her at Barton Hall. I
hope she will be quite recovered in a day or two, and then I hope to
come to you.
“Dearest Amy, I am sure you will not give way in the slightest with
regard to that respect and love which is your noble husband’s. The
_trial_ has come earlier than you expected, but so much the better; it
will be the sooner at an end; trials in anticipation are more grievous
often than when they come upon us suddenly. The memory of your noble
and religious vow in that London hotel when you and I were alone
will support you, and God will help you to keep in the path of duty!
I know what your only fear is; but you may rely upon his respecting
your position and considering the happiness of his brother too much
even to utter an incautious word that shall compel you to confess all.
Should the worst come to the worst, my dear sister--and this is the
worst--there will be no shame in an honest avowal of the past. Don’t
fear, my dear, dear Amy, _he_ must have too acute a sense of his own
neglect to make him otherwise than your true friend, and you will find
him returning to India sooner than you expect.
“When mother has recovered I am to make arrangements for my marriage to
my own dear Arthur. Of course you have seen how famous he has become;
he is taking the highest position in art that is attainable. Ere long
he will stand at the highest point of success. He comes to us from
Severntown every week.
“You will be surprised to receive this letter from Lincolnshire. That
Oldhall farm of which my father used to talk so much is his, and
we have removed thither now a month past--during the month of your
honeymoon. We have left old Dorothy at Barton, and father is going to
write to you about the tenancy. We are not far from the birthplace of
Tennyson, your favourite poet. I don’t think I like the country quite
so well as Avonworth Valley; but it is a pleasure to see my father ‘at
home,’ as it were, in his native county.
“I shall write again in a day or two. Meanwhile accept my most
affectionate regards, and believe me to be
“Ever yours devotedly,
“Phœbe.”
“_Oldhall, Lincolnshire._”
Amy was disappointed with this letter, but she had grown calmer since
she had written to Phœbe; she had become more accustomed to the
situation, and Lionel Hammerton’s conduct had allayed her fears. He
observed a studious courtesy towards her, and had not in the slightest
alluded to the past by word or deed. It is true she gave him no
opportunity, although he had certainly once made an effort to be alone
with her in the grounds.
A succession of callers and visitors was of great assistance to the
Earl’s wife, and she encouraged his lordship to invite his country
neighbours to dinner. On several days she had to receive presents from
local manufacturers at Brazencrook--specimens of their wares specially
manufactured for her. This gave her occupation, and her gracious
manners speedily won for her a reputation of which she might well be
proud. She was pronounced in Brazencrook to be the most beautiful and
the least proud of any lady in the land, and the country people were
enchanted with her amiability and her sparkling conversational powers.
The old vicar and his wife, who had never agreed about anything in
their lives before, agreed that she was a charming woman, and all the
district was singing her praises in less than a week.
Mrs. Somerton’s health did not improve, and so Phœbe did not come
to Amy’s side, and Lionel Hammerton still remained at Barton Hall.
A hundred times he had resolved to go, but he had resolved, as many
times, to stay. By degrees Amy became more accustomed to his presence,
though she had taken an opportunity, after a fortnight had elapsed, to
hint that she was unhappy in his continued stay at Montem.
After this he went away to London for a month, preparatory to making
final arrangements for his return to India; so he said. During this
month Amy’s life flowed on again smoothly amidst these new scenes; she
received visits and returned visits; she had given a grand ball to the
county families surrounding Montem Castle, and his lordship had given
an _al fresco fête_ to his tenantry. Never had there been such gaiety
at Montem Castle; never had the old place rejoiced in so gracious a
mistress.
Meanwhile Lionel Hammerton led a life of excitement in London. Proud
and weak, as the reader has seen, Earl Verner’s brother could not
overcome his terrible disappointment. He was mad with vexation, and he
hated himself for losing the prize which had fallen so strangely to his
brother’s lot. That this woman had loved him with all her heart he now
believed, and that she had married his brother out of pique or revenge
he believed also. Why had he doubted her? That miserable thought about
mercenary motives; he despised himself for harbouring it, and yet it
was a plausible doubt, he confessed to himself. What should he do? Go
to India again and for good, without returning to Montem. He would.
There could be no good purpose served in seeing her again. It would be
manly to depart now. He would do so. Thus he would resolve at night
only to break his resolution in the morning, and the end was a cab
to Paddington and a ticket for Brazencrook. When Lionel had arrived
at Severntown, however, he changed his mind again, got out, and drove
to the College Green, where he found Arthur Phillips at work in his
familiar studio.
“At last,” said Arthur, reciprocating Lionel’s hearty greeting, “at
last; I feared you had forgotten your friend.”
“No chance of that,” said Lionel; “your name is in everybody’s mouth,
and I have seen your great picture ‘now on view.’”
“In England all this time, and not even a letter from you!” said Arthur.
“I meant to have looked you up the first day after my arrival,--I did
indeed, but at the time I thought you miserable.”
“Miserable!” said the artist with some astonishment.
“Yes; but it was I all the time who had reason for sympathy.”
“Let me ring the bell,” said Arthur. “There! Now go on.”
A man-servant answering the bell, the artist said, “Take Captain
Hammerton’s portmanteau into the blue room.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man.
“Of course you will make a short stay here,” said Arthur, once more
addressing his friend.
“I will not leave you to-day at any rate,” said Lionel. “May I smoke?”
“Of course you may,” said Arthur, opening the old cupboard by the
fireplace and producing cigars and lights.
“How familiar the old room looks,” said Lionel. “You have made no
change here.”
“No,” said Arthur; “none was required.”
“_You_ are changed, Arthur--changed for the better. You seem to have
lost some of your quiet dreamy nature. There is more animation in your
step and in your voice. How well you look!”
“Yes, thank God, I am well,” said Arthur.
“Success in all things--success in your profession--success in love,”
said Lionel; “you should look well and happy. By heavens, Arthur, I
envy you!”
Arthur shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly, and said no man could
judge another’s happiness sufficiently to justify envy.
“A sop to Cerberus that,” said Lionel. “You wish to discount your own
happiness that my misery may appear the less. It won’t do, Arthur.
But never mind, I have not come here to croak. I have heard of your
success, of your happy prospects, even in London, and I congratulate
you. You have deserved success; you deserve happiness. If I had
listened to you before I left England, I too might have been a happy
man. As it is, I am the sport of cruel Fortune, a broken-spirited, weak
fool, only fit for the society of idiots.”
“Tush, tush! talk rationally, my friend; we have all our troubles and
disappointments,” said Arthur. “You will soon get over this. Change of
scene, the performance of duty, will stand you in good stead, and help
you to look upon the past indifferently.”
“I fear me not, Arthur; I am dead beat. I came over to England for
nothing in the world else but to marry that girl; to throw myself at
her feet, and ask her to have mercy on me. In the meantime, as if the
devil himself had plotted against me, everything is changed--even the
woman herself. Fortune has been playing a game of ‘swop,’ and the woman
whom I could have married meets me as my brother’s wife.”
“The changes have been very remarkable--very,” said Arthur, altogether
at a loss how to say anything in the way of consolation.
“Remarkable! Good Lord! why, the world is turned topsy-turvy. _You_
have come right, Arthur, that’s one comfort, and it is my own fault
that I stand where I do. Does she love my brother? How came it all
about? Was it revenge? Tell me all you know, Arthur: it is some relief
to talk about one’s misfortunes.”
Arthur complied so far as he could with this request, telling Lionel
the story of the eventful period between his departure and return.
They sat talking together until evening approached, and then went in
to dinner, Lionel finding comfort in his friend’s kindly considerate
words and advice.
At night they walked forth together by the river. Lionel grew calm in
presence of the great swollen torrent, and listened to Arthur’s story
of his own life and its troubles, and of his plans for the future. They
talked of Phœbe too, and of Arthur’s years of patient hope. Lionel
laughed aloud with joy at the story of Richard Tallant’s discomfiture.
“I always hated that fellow,” said Lionel, in his loud emphatic way;
“he was a thief.”
“He had not too high a sense of honour, I fear,” said Arthur.
“He was a thief when I knew him,” said Lionel still more emphatically,
“and the confederate of that ruffian Gibbs. What a fine old fellow,
that father of his, to disinherit the vagabond!”
“It was a great blow to him, though he prospers still,” said Arthur.
“And I might have had some of the beggar’s money,” said Lionel, “had I
married his sister. By heavens! I would have pitched it into the river!”
“He does not want money, they say,” Arthur went on. “His losses have
been great lately, but he talks of going into parliament. In fact he
has selected my native town for the honour of his candidature.”
“Happy coincidence! Severntown was to have supplied me with a seat
in the house, if I had not been fool enough to run my head into that
Ashford Club den, and consented to soil my fingers with their filthy
Stock Exchange ventures. Upon my soul it is time I disappeared from the
land altogether.”
Lionel strode on as if he were keeping pace with his thoughts, and
intended to stride out of the land at once, and then he broke out into
a loud ironical laugh as he said,--
“Fancy anybody contesting a seat with a scoundrel like that fellow
Tallant; and yet Amy is his sister, and my sister-in-law. We must all
have been eating of the insane root, Arthur.”
“Fact is stranger than fiction,” said the artist.
“Fiction! Fiction halts miles behind the ordinary facts of daily life.
What is this fellow then?”
“A great financier, I suppose they would call him: his chief position
is that of managing director of the Meter Iron Works Company, which
his father founded,--one of the richest corporations in the land, I
believe.”
They little thought that Mr. Richard Tallant was really in serious
difficulties at this very time. Whilst others of his class had been
content to make large fortunes and retire, Mr. Richard Tallant had
gone on playing for higher stakes. Men who had no money to begin with,
had succeeded in humbugging the public out of thousands; and others
who commenced cautiously and equally unscrupulously with thousands,
had retired upon magnificent fortunes. Richard Tallant might have been
amongst the latter had he been less covetous; and now he stood in
imminent peril of losing nearly all: nothing but timely aid could save
him.
CHAPTER VIII.
PORTENDS A DEED OF VENGEANCE.
The difficulty of getting up the evidence to support a charge of
conspiracy, in the absence of Mr. Williamson, and Lieutenant Somerton’s
unwillingness to prosecute, saved Gibbs from one of the perils which
threatened him; and the other case which Mr. Bales had against him
also fell through. But the ex-swell was reminded by the Court that he
had had a narrow escape, and that his escape was rather owing to a
technicality in the law than to any doubt of his guilt.
Gibbs had been falling lower and lower, as our readers will have seen,
since the night of his expulsion from the Ashford Club. Now and then
Fortune’s lamp had blazed up for a moment, but only to flicker down
again, and tempt him into lower depths of degradation. From bad to
worse, from fashionable gambling to swindling, from cheating at cards
to forgery, Gibbs had run the gauntlet of vice and immorality. From
a Stock Exchange bear to a money-lender’s cad; from an advertising
sharper to a begging-letter writer; from haunting clubs to frequenting
hotels; from hotels to taverns; from taverns to gin-shops; from
gin-shops to the lowest night-houses, Shuffleton Gibbs had become a
mean, shabby, out-of-elbows, unshaven outcast of society, who had twice
been within a gaol, and seemed likely to die in the gutter.
There is no exaggeration in this rapid downward career--it is a common
occurrence. We are not romancing, we are not sermonising, we do not
believe in the Maine Law, we have no sympathy with trumpet-and-drum
teetotal demagogues; but we are none the less sure in our belief that
the first step aside from the straight path, unless at once retraced,
will lead to misery if not to ruin, and that the man or woman who
descends to “neat gin” is beyond human redemption. There is hope in
beer, in wine, even in brandy; but the gin-drinker swallows a devilish
elixir that destroys him body and soul. There is something heroic in
brandy, something noble, the smack of the grape is there, the origin
of the liquor has a glory in it; in gin there is debasement; the
juniper berry has no classic history; who does not shudder, too, at
the compound which the habitual gin tippler consumes--the fumetacious
spirit, imbued with turpentine? Ugh! Whilst brandy fires the soul of
the hero, the gin of the London stew stimulates the morbid passions of
the thief and the murderer!
Shuffleton Gibbs had come down to gin and fog, to gin and darkness,
to gin and the reeking night air; he was the habitué of the lowest
night-houses, a shivering miserable wretch, and all the more dangerous
to the man whom he hated with the low grovelling murderous hate of raw
gin and poverty.
We have told the reader how Gibbs had applied for assistance to his
early friend, Richard Tallant, and how he had been discarded and
disowned. He made another effort still, a last effort, the effort of a
miserable hungry beggar, in whose heart every spark of pride and honour
has been drowned in juniper juice and turpentine.
“I have done with you, sir,” said the managing director of the Meter
Works, “you are an impostor; I never saw you before.”
“Not at Oxford,” said the shivering beggar, “not when somebody wrote an
epigram on the name of Tallant?”
“Never! This will be my answer always.”
“Not at Westminster, at the Ashford, at Madame ----”
“Never, sir!” exclaimed Richard, stopping Gibbs in his enumeration of
the places on the highway of infamy where they had supped together. “I
once knew a scoundrel who led astray a wealthy merchant’s son and broke
the father’s heart; you are something like that aristocratic sneak,
but you are not he. The man I mean was a swell, wore light kid gloves,
and splendid shirts. They did say he wore stays, and thought himself a
woman killer; _you_ are not that man, but some blear-eyed, shambling
vagabond who would impose upon a gentleman in order that he may give
you a night’s lodging in the station house.”
“You infernal damned scoundrel,” said Gibbs, rushing towards the cool
satirical friend of former days; “you miserable mushroom huxter!”
Richard Tallant was by far the strongest man of the two, and he felled
Gibbs to the ground with ease.
“Now, shall I ring the bell and have you pitched into the street, or
will you get up and go home to dinner, or go to your club and have
devilled chops and champagne--eh?”
Gibbs gathered himself together and stood before his victor, clenching
his hands and teeth, and trembling with passion.
“I will go,” he said, hissing out the words as if they scorched him.
“The cat will mew; the dog will have his day.”
Mr. Tallant rang the bell. A servant came on the instant.
“Show this fellow to the door; if ever he presumes to make his
appearance here again thrust him into the street and give him in charge
of the police.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man, “this way.”
Gibbs followed his guide muttering, and nervously clutching his fingers.
“Now then, old ragamuffin,” said the servant when they were in the
hall, “hoff yer go.”
Hunger, as Zimmermann says, is the mother of impatience and anger,
and never had mother a more worthy son than Shuffleton Gibbs. It was
hunger which had driven him to make that third application to his
friend; hunger and thirst; hunger for money as much as hunger for
food. He had neither money nor credit, even in the stews, where he
had exhausted both, when he made this last appeal to Richard Tallant.
But he got money somehow that night, and he swore an awful oath that
he would wreak a terrible revenge on the head of this vile scoundrel.
The red-eyed, low-browed, crouching gin drinkers who sat with him at
the midnight orgie--even they noticed the satanic malignity of Gibbs’s
countenance, as it worked and writhed under a passion too deep for
words; they knew that, whatever it might import, that awful oath would
not be broken. They fairly clanked their glasses and knocked their
skinny knuckles upon the table to see Gibbs so much excited, and the
women, with witch-like grimaces, pledged his “health” and wished him
“luck.”
There is generally a weak point somewhere in the schemes of men who
set right and virtue at naught, and who endeavour to build up wealth
and fame upon false pretences. Religious sceptics will direct your
attention to instances of undeserved poverty and sufferings borne
through a whole lifetime; will show you persons dragging out wretched
lives of penury and want, and prove to you that they are good, honest,
honourable people. As companion pictures, they will show you men of
wealth and station living luxuriously, and rejoicing in the highest
state of worldly happiness. And then they ask you what sort of a
sermon or essay you can write upon the text, “God is love.” But the
sceptic-critic has little or nothing to say about real happiness, and
how that is divided amongst the human family. If he had, perhaps he
might puzzle a good many by pointing to the colliery districts, the
factories, or the nail country, and showing you the hard, bitter life
to which thousands of children are born daily. What a blessed thing to
some of these people is the future, founded on true Christian faith!
But our critic of the ways of Providence does not tell you of the
miseries of keeping up appearances which are behind some of those marks
of wealth; and he does not tell you how scores of the prosperous ones
to whom he points come to grief at last, as they deserve. He fixes them
before you in their full career of success, but he does not show you
their disappointed hopes, their unfulfilled ambition, their social cuts
and wounds, the grievances of their women, the social failures of their
sons and daughters; and, what is more, he does not show you the end of
the men whom he holds up as prosperous, happy, luxurious, revelling,
wealthy villains.
Depend upon it, men such as Richard Tallant, who have trampled upon
honour and honesty, and above all, upon parental kindness (however
mistaken that kindness may have been), are punished in this world
below, whatever may be their lot in that which is to come.
The weakest point in Richard Tallant’s policy was the want of a course
of conciliation towards Shuffleton Gibbs. Fate would, no doubt, have
met him with a just retribution in some other way had he escaped the
result of this mistake; but it is no part of our business to consider
what might have been, we who are considering the facts of Richard
Tallant’s career; and as it has not been our purpose to be mysterious
in this simple narration, we do not hesitate to tell you that Richard
Tallant sealed his destiny when he resealed that letter of his former
companion,--the last abandoned representative of a fallen line of
gentlemen.
He little knew how often he was accompanied after this by a shadow
more than his own. Once or twice, thinking he was being watched,
he had turned round suddenly in the London streets to see a figure
disappear as suddenly in some dark entry, or round an adjacent corner.
He thought this was fancy at first; but finally beginning to fear,
he armed himself. He had never thought of Shuffleton Gibbs at these
times. A superstitious dread took possession of him at the outset,
thoughts of his dead father haunted him, and occasionally sent him home
hot, and feverish, and nervous. Latterly he rarely went out on foot;
but still a mysterious figure occasionally flitted by as he alighted
from his carriage. Sometimes it seemed as if an arm were upraised.
That same figure would stand now and then in front of the great house
where Mr. Tallant resided, and contemplate the lighted windows, and
then disappear by crooked unfrequented ways, up dark alleys, along
neglected streets, away city-wards, until it entered a dirty gin-shop
or some wretched lodging-house, where it would assume the appearance
of Shuffleton Gibbs, but sufficiently changed in feature to render
disguise unnecessary.
Weird, restless, sunken eyes, sharp features, a nervous twitching of
the mouth, and a continual watchfulness, like that of a man charged
with some desperate mission of blood; it was a miserable wreck tossed
about on the dark sea of criminal London without sail or rudder, bound
for no port, without a name, without papers; and yet with a compass
pointing its trembling finger unerringly in one direction, where the
signal lights burnt red and murky on a dark and dreadful shore.
CHAPTER IX.
GLANCES AT WILLIAMSON’S STORY, AND TERMINATES
PAUL SOMERTON’S ADVENTURE.
It came at last, that story of Williamson’s life; it came in a heavy
letter franked with foreign postage-stamps; and Paul Somerton read it
with hot curiosity.
There was nothing particularly new or startling in the narration. It
was the old old story of sin and sorrow, with perhaps darker hues of
melancholy in it, here and there, than usual.
During his University career, at a very early age, Williamson had been
attracted by the wild beauty of a woman who was the daughter of an
adventurer--a man without principle--seeking in a son-in-law an annuity
for himself, as well as a husband for his child. Williamson related
by what mean and mercenary arts this man of the world had lured him
on, and how the daughter had shared with her father in the shameful
plot. A long, long story of love, and doubt, and fear, and unholy
passion;--of mad, blind love, and desperate resolves; of a clandestine
marriage, and exposure; of a widowed mother’s death; of a son’s sorrow
embittered by his wife’s ingratitude, and a father-in-law’s impecunious
and drunken habits. A long, long story of woe and violence; of a brave
man’s struggle against the miseries of a worse than unloving wife, and
a wretched home, in the midst of comparative wealth.
Soon there appeared on the scene an infant with bright eyes, and a
young doating father seeking comfort in its innocent loving ways,
in its happy smile, and its first words. But this gleam of sunshine
quickly disappeared, and then there came clouds again, darker and
darker; and, finally, there stood forth in the immoral darkness a
husband’s shame, a wife’s infidelity, a father’s miserable death from
drink.
Paul shuddered as he traced out the dreary story with the writer’s
special notes and comments, intended to apply to Paul’s own position
and act as awful warnings.
Then at length the husband was alone. The wife had fled with a _cher
ami_ of former days. Her child disappeared, too. She knew that the
infant would have been a source of consolation to the forlorn and
broken man; hence her fiendish vow that he should see it no more. The
wrongs which she had heaped upon him induced all this fierce hatred
and malice; and, finally, Williamson was alone in the world with his
sorrows.
Years passed away, and he heard a strange story of the death of his
wife in connection with a travelling theatre or circus. The name of a
celebrated comedian, who had by misconduct been reduced to the booth
and the fair, was mixed up with the event in some way; but Williamson
could never clear the story up satisfactorily, and all his efforts to
obtain tidings of his child proved ineffectual. How he had lived since
those terrible days of his early life his friends knew; that there was
a dark shadow upon his history they knew also; but of the misery and
despair, the blighted career, the hopes destroyed, the opportunities
misapplied, the broken-down ambition, the aching heart, they knew
nothing.
And this woman--this wife of Shuffleton Gibbs--this scheming,
unscrupulous woman, was his child! That Paul Somerton should never
see her again would be her father’s chief care; his next, a life-long
effort to redeem her from herself, to straighten the crooked mind, to
win back to the darkened conscience some faint light at least of purity
and truth--to combat with the inborn devil, that some essence of the
angel might still revive within that human soul.
And then the writer grew eloquent upon wonderful cases of conversion
from the lowest depths of sin to paths of virtue; the faith of the true
Christian broke out in burning words, and here and there expressions
of parental hope in the future. But so far as Paul was concerned, he
was reminded in firm, but kindly words, that there stood between him
and this woman marriage vows plighted to another, and the claims of a
long suffering father pledged to a great and holy work of religious
duty. Some day, ere the deep shadows of the future closed upon them all
for ever, and there was an end of passion and repentance, they might
meet again, but for the present their paths in the great world lay in
different directions.
Wearied and unhappy, Lieutenant Somerton lay down on his bed that night
when he received this letter. The next morning he woke with a sense of
pain and weakness. For days after this he was delirious. His constant
attendant during this time was his gentle sister Phœbe, who came to
town with her father on a special summons from the young officer’s
medical attendant.
Though in point of time we anticipate slightly some of the events of
the next few chapters, we think it well to finish Paul’s “first love”
adventure in this place. We take the liberty, therefore, to say that
when he had sufficiently recovered his father took him down into
Lincolnshire, and in course of time, amidst the bracing air of wolds
and fens, health and strength came back to him. What a quiet, dreary
time it was these few months, in the heart of the great agricultural
district! Sluggish rivers, with sedgy banks; long hard roads; low trim
hedges; sleek, short-horned cattle; big hay-ricks and straw stacks--how
familiar they became! Then there was an occasional ride to the hounds,
visits to the local markets, unsophisticated evening parties, and all
the other rural pleasures of the place.
Paul felt happy in the society of his new sister, as he called her--the
happiness of an aspiring mind in the presence of its superior; and
Arthur Phillips, with his grand thoughts and his quiet manner, was a
welcome guest at the old Lincolnshire house. Mrs. Somerton was not a
happy woman, though she evidently made a constant effort to appear so;
but Luke was full of life and spirits. He was the leading man of the
district, and rapidly becoming the most popular. It was like reading
a book, his Lincolnshire friends said, to hear him talk about farming,
and the newspapers reported his speeches in full when he presided at
the District Agricultural Society.
After a time the Lieutenant rejoined his regiment, and left England for
the Cape of Good Hope, a wiser and a better, though not a happier, man,
for his adventure with the barrister’s mysterious daughter. He kept his
secret all the time in the Lincolnshire fens and marshes, and carried
it with him to Kaffir-land. May we hope to hear of him before our story
closes, that he found consolation in the love of some other woman more
worthy his devotion. The lacerations of young hearts often heal with
astonishing rapidity.
CHAPTER X.
“FROM GRAVE TO GAY.”
Joy and grief, how they alternate! What a busy, sorrowing, cheerful,
merry, sad, wicked, virtuous world it is! Births, marriages, and
deaths!--a text for all preachers--a safe guide for novelist and story
teller. Births, marriages, and deaths! The same story every day told by
every newspaper. What then can a true history of life be but a story of
births, marriages, and deaths?
Unroof yon street, friend Asmodeo, and let the reader judge for
himself. Here a child is born; there a bridegroom has just brought home
his newly-married wife; yonder lies a dead man with sorrow weeping by
his side. Carry us away to that village in the soft, sunny country.
The same story still. Births, marriages, and deaths--joy and grief
alternating! What bells are those that ring so merrily? What bell is
that which groans, and sobs, and wails?
Thank goodness, the merry bells are for our ears in this chapter. The
sound comes from a great square tower, that stands up like a beacon in
the Lincolnshire cornfields. The clash and clang of the bells comes
rushing out through the belfry apertures into the clear air amongst
the rooks and the swallows. The dead who lie beneath those gaunt,
crumbling, half-buried grave-stones, hear them not, though they rung
out joyously at their marriages. The hard, grimy faces in the church
porch, and the cherubims that ornament the water-spouts, hear the bells
now quite as well as the men and women who passed them by on their
way to the altar years and years ago. You would think the birds heard
the melody and rejoiced in it; they chirruped, and sung, and flitted
to and fro with a gaiety which they rarely exhibit in autumn days;
for they knew the year was coming to an end, and that the north wind
cometh after harvest. That ancient sluggish river, which had been
red in olden times with the blood of the last Saxon warriors, let the
bell-music rest upon its bright bosom in which the clouds mimicked each
other, and hid themselves amongst spikes of waving rushes and green
water flags.
They were ringing, these Lincolnshire bells, in celebration of the
marriage of Arthur Phillips and Phœbe Somerton, who had walked arm in
arm to church to be married, unattended save by Luke Somerton and Paul,
and their own true love. It was Arthur’s wish that it should be so; and
nobody but those most intimately concerned knew of the marriage until
the bells, big with the secret, burst their iron bonds, and gave birth
to that joyous melody.
And whilst they were ringing out their blithe and hopeful song, the
Earl and Countess of Verner were discussing the happy event at Montem
Castle, walking by the side of that sunny lake in the park.
“The news comes so suddenly,” said her ladyship, “that it is almost
tantalising.”
“What a sly little fox it is,” said his lordship.
“I have pressed her upon the subject several times, but unsuccessfully.
Never mind, I will be even with her. It has been in my mind very often
to tell you of my idea of a wedding present for these dear friends of
ours.”
“Yes, yes,” said his lordship; “what is it, dearest?”
“Oh, something so dreadfully expensive,” said the Countess; “something
almost unheard of as a wedding present.”
“You excite my curiosity,” said his lordship, gaily.
“It is something belonging to you--a gift in your own possession.”
“Our pictures?” said his lordship, eagerly.
“No, my love.”
“Our pottery, our books, our jewels?” said his lordship, tossing a
stone into the lake for the amusement of a water spaniel.
“No; I fear you cannot guess,” said Amy.
“Then I will give it up at once: whatever it be, Amy, it is yours to
bestow upon bride or bridegroom,” said his lordship.
“Thank you, my dear George; how good you are,” said the Countess.
“Not half good enough to have such a dear, dear wife as you, Amy,” said
the loving old lord. “And now what is it?”
“The Barton Hall Estate,” said Amy, triumphantly. “The house where
Phœbe was born, where she lived, and which was really her home, the
fields in which she walked, the rocks and trees which her husband loved
to paint, the place where Phœbe and your Amy lived and loved together.”
“Good, good!” said the Earl.
“You consent?” asked Amy, joyfully.
“Certainly,” said his lordship, “with all the pleasure in life; you
never doubted it. Besides, the estate is your own, Amy.”
“My dear love,” said the Countess, a warm affectionate smile lighting
up her beautiful face; but her countenance fell immediately, as Lionel
Hammerton emerged from a thicket close by.
“Oh! Lionel, going for a ramble?” said the Earl.
“Yes,” said Lionel, raising his hat to the Countess, “the weather is so
tempting, and my time down here so short.”
“Indeed; when do you leave us then?” asked the Earl.
“Next month,” said Hammerton.
“Thank God!” said the Countess in her heart.
“Your friend the artist is married to-day,” said the Earl; “a quiet
wedding all to themselves, and a secret.”
“I understood it was to be so,” said Hammerton. “I hope they will be
happy.”
“As happy as two other friends of yours,” said his lordship, merrily.
“Happier, if that were possible,” said Lionel.
“But it is not possible,” said his lordship. “Is it Amy?”
“I think not,” said Amy, casting a side-glance of defiance at Lionel.
“When two people marry, happiness comes to them in a hundred different
ways.”
“What do you think her ladyship’s wedding present is to be?” his
lordship asked.
“Diamonds and pearls, and bracelets of gold, and rubies,” said Lionel.
“Her ladyship has good choice of jewelry and things that are costly.”
Amy could understand the covert sarcasm of Lionel’s reply, but his
lordship laughed and said:
“I knew you could not guess. I tried much more likely presents than
those, without avail. Guess again.”
“Books of poems bound in gold, full of legends of love and constancy.”
“No--you’ll never guess. What do you think of the Barton Hall Estate
for a wedding present?”
Lionel hesitated and looked at Amy, who had taken her husband’s arm and
was walking quietly by his side.
“I am not joking. What do you think of a woman who presents to her
friend Barton Hall, and the lands surrounding it, chiefly on account of
the dear associations connected with it, and all that sort of thing?”
“Why, that she is a truly noble woman, and worthy to be the wife of
Earl Verner,” said Hammerton, with genuine enthusiasm.
“Thank you, brother--thank you,” said the Countess, with tears in her
eyes, and something of the tender expression of those past days which
Lionel was honestly trying to blot out for ever.
“Why, my darling, there are tears in your eyes,” said his lordship.
“Tears of joy and gratitude,” said Amy; “gratitude for your kindness,
and joy that your brother thinks me worthy to be your wife.”
Earl Verner hardly knew what to make of this little outburst of
feeling; but he loved his wife all the more for her generosity to her
friend, and said he hoped Lionel had never doubted that his wife was
equal to any previous Countess of Verner.
“Never, your lordship; and this act of gracious consideration for
her friend, this sanctifying of the past, if I may use so strong a
phrase, by the gift of Barton Hall to Arthur Phillips and his wife, is
a crowning act of grace which has no parallel in the history of the
ladies of our house.”
Earl Verner did not see that there was quite so much in it as Lionel
would make out; but he had never doubted his wife’s generosity, and
Lionel had. There was a peculiar graciousness in the gift which would
especially commend itself to one who knew more intimately than Earl
Verner did, the early history of his true and faithful wife.
CHAPTER XI.
EXPLANATIONS THAT CAME TOO LATE.
“I have many times endeavoured to converse with you alone; you have
studiously prevented this until now,” said Lionel Hammerton, addressing
the Countess, as she sat at the piano the morning after their meeting
by the lake.
Lord Verner was in the library, indulging in his morning’s devotion at
the shrine of his favourite author.
“I feared you until yesterday; I fear you no longer, because your
sympathies have at last been awakened in my favour,” said Amy.
“I thought you mercenary--let me confess it--I thought you worldly and
selfish; that you had married not only for revenge, but for riches.”
“You are pleased to be candid,” said Amy, a little indignantly.
“Not to wound you, any more than myself; for I loved you with all my
soul----”
“I must not listen to you if you talk of love,” said Amy, interrupting
him.
“You must, you shall,” said Lionel, firmly. “It will be the last time.”
“Have I deserved your reproaches?” said Amy, looking straight into his
eyes. “You, who deserted and neglected the woman whom you professed
to love,--deserted her because of her lowly birth,--did you think
there was no pride as well as humility in love? How did you mention my
name to your artist friend when you left England without even saying
farewell to me?”
“What did I say to Phillips?”
“Yes, I asked him. It was the last straw to which I clung.”
Lionel remembered his parting conversation with Arthur.
“What did he say?”
“He would not tell me how you had spoken of me. This was when I was
rich, Lionel, an heiress, possessed of fortune--aye, and of modest rank
too. I pressed him. He confessed you had spoken of me. ‘Did he speak
of me as you would wish to have heard your sister spoken of by the man
whom she loved?’ I asked him.”
“And what was his reply?”
“He said ‘No;’ and from that moment I renounced you and your false
love. I had only been in a whirl of jealousy and pride before.”
“He said truly--Arthur Phillips said truly; but O, I loved you then,
Amy, loved you still in my heart; and when I returned to England,
ignorant of all the changes which had taken place, I came to throw
myself at your feet.”
Amy trembled as he spoke, trembled at the thoughts of the happiness
there would have been in this; but respect for herself, gratitude to
her lord, womanly, wifely pride stepped in and restored her former
self-command.
“And what _did_ you say then to Arthur Phillips?” asked the Countess.
“I thought you cared more for my position, for my presumed wealth
and prospects, than for myself alone,” said Lionel. “Why did you
interfere in my private affairs? why make those inquiries concerning my
relationship with Richard Tallant, or my doings at the Ashford Club?”
“It brooks little now how much I loved you, Lionel; and an explanation
of my motives can do no good, seeing that neither of us can restore the
past; but Heaven knows I grieved that your station was so much higher
than that of the girl who loved you so well. And still I could not
bear to see you fall, to hear of your noble nature lowering itself to
the level of the base and the mean, to have it sullied by contact with
gamblers, and----”
“There was no thought of self in this? no jealous watching over my
expenditure? no worldly speculations of the future?” said Lionel,
hurriedly interrupting her.
“For shame!” exclaimed the Countess, rising; “for shame! If this is
how you interpreted my weak conduct--if this is how you estimated the
homage of my poor girlish heart--thank God, Lionel Hammerton, you and I
_are_ parted for ever! Had my love been blessed with your acceptance,
this discovery would have been like a curse upon it--it would have
broken my heart.”
Lionel bowed his head before this storm of womanly indignation.
“Never talk of love again, Lionel, unless you can believe that
woman’s love has nothing of self in it; that it is above the world
almost as much as the angels are; that it is self-sacrificing, meek,
lowly--content to be trodden upon by the living idol which it sets up
for worship. _This_ is _true_ woman’s love: in my love for you there
was, indeed, the worldly leaven of pride; the inborn spirit of my race,
I suppose. But for this I should have sunk under your neglect and
withered and died. With pride came the desire for revenge; and the love
that was scorned and neglected, I plucked it out of my heart, trampled
upon it as _you_ had done, and in its place, Lionel, I planted
Ambition. As fate would have it, your brother came in my way, and I
am his wife. I have sworn to honour, love and obey him, and I _will_
to the end. His kindness, his devotion, have already made me deeply
grateful to him; and love, the love of devoted friendship--not that
passionate love of past days, but constant considerate love--will come
with time. And now you know all my secret.”
“You can never forgive me,” said Lionel; “I can never forgive myself.”
“Just now I thought I could not, but I can forgive you, Lionel: I do
with all my heart. Do you forgive me? I ought to have waited--I know
all that meek and lowly love should have done--but my soul was on fire
with my wrongs, my hopes were all cast to the winds; my mother, or
rather Mrs. Somerton, taunted me with my folly, and I scarcely knew
what I did.”
“God bless you, Amy!--if there be aught to forgive, I forgive you
freely. I was anxious that we should both understand each other;
that there should be a mutual explanation, a reconciliation, Amy--a
restoration of some little of that old love in which we may pray for
each other as brother and as sister.”
Amy gave Lionel her hand, as the tears coursed down her cheeks: he took
the fair white fingers and pressed them to his lips; and just at that
moment a face peered in at the window. It was Richard Tallant; he had
come down to Brazencrook, left his luggage at the hotel, and walked
over to Montem Castle, smoking a cigar, and revolving his position
and prospects in his mind. He had come over to see the Countess on
business; he wanted a large advance of money, or some security which
would enable him to raise funds. He was in what commercial men call
a “cleft stick,” and he would speedily be what they call, in equally
significant language, “up a tree.” Not content with a moderate fortune,
he had continued his course of speculation, and the tide had turned
against him. The bills which he had unwarrantably kept afloat in
connection with the Meter Works had been mostly “done” by a discount
house which had suddenly failed, and there were large payments to meet
without delay. A bank, of which he was a director, grew suspicious
of his transactions, and he was called upon by his colleagues to
put his accounts straight. Another bank, where he had deposited his
Meter shares, suffered from so great a pressure that the manager was
compelled to threaten that in two days those shares would be sent into
the market for sale. Therefore, without some immediate and extraneous
aid, he was a ruined man.
In this fix he determined to seek the assistance of his sister. He
had compelled her to help him before, and, what was more, to invite
his co-operation in that famous marriage ceremony. He had paid a
formal visit to Montem since then, and had not received any further
encouragement for keeping up the family connection. But he felt that he
had a hold upon the Countess; if she would pay for her secret once, she
would pay twice--and she should.
“The ill-mannerly fellow,” said Lionel, as he caught a glimpse of the
face in the window.
“It is my brother Richard,” said Amy; “what can he possibly have
come here for, without announcement, and evidently on foot, from
Brazencrook?”
Lionel left her, and the next moment Richard Tallant sent in his card.
Her ladyship’s reply was, that she was indisposed, and would not be
able to see Mr. Tallant at present. He would find Lord Verner in the
library.
“Thank you,” was Richard’s reply. “I will take a little walk, and
return shortly. I will not disturb his lordship.”
Meanwhile the Countess sought her room, and Lionel called old Morris to
pack his trunks that he might leave for London by the morning mail. He
felt that it was now really time he should leave Montem Castle for good.
The Countess did not put in an appearance until dinner-time, and she
was surprised to find her brother dressed and waiting to conduct her to
her seat.
“Lionel has ridden Hector into Brazencrook,” said his lordship; “he
fancies that he must make certain inquiries himself concerning the
trains; he finds that it will be necessary for him to be in London
to-morrow. It has suddenly occurred to him that he must really get back
to India. Queer fellow, Mr. Tallant, my brother.”
“So it would appear,” Mr. Tallant replied.
“And you are a queer fellow too! Imagine, my love, he had left his
luggage at the Verner Arms in Brazencrook, and declined my invitation
to dinner. Of course I ordered his luggage to be sent for immediately.”
His lordship had done this, not because he had any particular regard
for Mr. Tallant, but simply in the hope of pleasing his wife; for,
truth to tell, the Earl disliked this fellow, who had been a source of
so much sorrow to that poor old man, his father.
The dinner was a dull affair, despite Lord Verner’s efforts to make it
cheerful. The Countess complained of headache. Mr. Richard Tallant
would talk of nothing but money and finance, of foreign bonds and
national liabilities, and great houses which were at that moment
experiencing the pressure of the panic more than they had felt it when
the storm was at its height.
Lord Verner thought politics almost as dull a theme as finance; but
he was more at home when Mr. Tallant spoke of the probability of a
Government crisis, and Lady Verner found that she, too, could say
something about Whigs and Tories, Liberals and Radicals; and so by the
time the last course was removed a conversation had been started and
maintained in which Mr. Tallant did not monopolise all the talking.
Lady Verner rose to leave the room much earlier than usual at dessert,
and tea was announced before the two gentlemen had well tasted the
Earl’s choice old port.
“Her ladyship is early to-night,” said Lord Verner. “I suppose she is
anxious that we shall come into her dominions as soon as possible.”
“Perhaps her ladyship fears you may become a financier, if I am
honoured with your society too long over wine,” said Mr. Tallant.
“No fear of that,” replied Lord Verner. “Hammerton induced me to invest
in some new companies, and I don’t think it at all likely that I shall
make such another mistake.”
“There are peers of the realm, and cabinet ministers too, bishops also,
who have thought it quite legitimate to do a little in finance lately,”
said Mr. Tallant; “your lordship might do worse than be at the head of
some gigantic company.”
“You think so?” said Lord Verner.
“I do indeed; rank and fortune, the highest aristocracy in the land,
have not thought it _infra dig._ to take part in promoting the
commercial prosperity of their country.”
“Gigantic companies seem to be gigantic humbugs just now, Mr. Tallant,
and I assure you that is not in my line; and so we will in to tea--Lady
Verner does not like to be kept waiting.”
From the grand old oak dining-room, with its black polished
wainscoting, its great black elaborate sideboard and antique chairs,
into an adjacent drawing-room, was quite a little walk over Turkey
carpets and soft fluffy mats. The tall flunkeys in attendance were a
splendid match both in manner and matter; and, however much Mr. Richard
Tallant might ape this sort of thing at Kensington Palace Gardens, he
could not help feeling that he was in presence of the real thing here.
There was no veneering at Montem Castle, no attempt at display, none
of that demonstrative show with which Plebeian Upstartism impresses
you. Whatever there was at Montem Castle struck you with its reality,
even to the form and ceremony. It was not put on for special occasions.
The inmates were used to it. The best of everything was for my lord
and lady, and the guests came in for their share of the best. There
were certainly in the castle grand plate services for state occasions,
when numbers were the chief consideration of cook and butler; but the
grandeur of Montem Castle one day was the same as the next, and Mr.
Tallant felt that this was the great difference between his place at
Kensington Palace Gardens and the magnificent realities of Montem.
The drawing-room in which the Countess awaited her husband and brother
was the smallest of the two drawing-rooms--an exquisitely furnished
room in which pale green and pale gold predominated in colour. The
walls were enriched with delicate water-colour sketches, and there were
dainty vases and statuettes here and there. Pale green curtains hung in
massive folds beside each window, and the cornices above were floral
designs in white and gold. Mirrors between each window reflected the
pictures and the vases and the cabinets over and over again, and the
great chimney-glass carried facsimiles of the chandeliers far away as
though you were looking down a long vista, until the hundreds of wax
candles flickered like stars in the distance.
The blinds were not drawn, and one of the windows looking out upon
the terrace was open; for it was twilight and unusually hot, and the
harvest moon was just rising.
The Countess, in a low evening dress, and wearing the diamond necklace
which his lordship gave her on her marriage, was sitting near a tray of
silver service, and one of those said matched servitors handed to the
Earl and Mr. Tallant tea and coffee, whichever they desired.
In a short time Mr. Tallant said he should be compelled to return to
town in the morning, and he would like to have a little conversation
with her ladyship on some family matters that would not interest Lord
Verner. As it was such a charming evening, might he suggest a walk on
the terrace.
“By all means, if Amy would like it; I think it would do you good, my
love. Lionel will be here presently, and he and I can chat whilst Mr.
Tallant is engaged with you.”
“I hope her ladyship will pardon the liberty I have taken,” said Mr.
Tallant, “and your lordship too.”
“Certainly,” said Amy, “kindly ring the bell, my love.”
One of the matched ones came presently and brought her ladyship an
Indian shawl, followed by her ladyship’s maid, who brought a light
Tuscan hat; and then the Countess and her brother went out upon the
terrace, whilst the moon was beginning to show itself through the
evening clouds and in the lake beneath.
Whilst they were on the terrace the vicar of Brazencrook, who had been
visiting in the neighbourhood, made his appearance, and he and the Earl
becoming interested in an abstruse topic upon which the parson desired
reference, they adjourned to the library, leaving the Countess and her
brother alone.
CHAPTER XII.
“WHAT THE MOON SAW.”
“The amount is too large,” said the Countess; “too large, I am sure,
even if I asked his lordship to assist me.”
“I must have it, and you must get it,” said Richard Tallant.
“Indeed!” said the Countess; “you are very peremptory.”
“As peremptory as Fate,” said the other.
They had walked along the terrace, past the modern mansion and beneath
the ruin of the old castle, Amy thinking it best that they should be
out of danger of being overheard by servants who might be near any of
the upper windows above the terrace.
Lionel Hammerton, who had ridden in from an opposite direction, saw
the two figures, and, leaving his horse in the stable, walked round the
back of the house to the ruin. The speakers had not noticed him; and
as he approached behind an angle of the ruin he was startled by Amy
speaking in an angry voice, and her brother answering with threats. He
crept within the shadowy wall, beneath a clump of ivy, and listened.
Perhaps Amy might require his help.
“By whatever means you may deem best you must help me out of this
difficulty,” said the brother.
“It would certainly be more becoming to speak respectfully, and
leave musts and threats out of the question until I have time for
consideration.”
“There is no need for consideration. Yes or No: it is easily said.”
“Suppose I say, No?”
“Then I go straight to that fool, your husband----”
“Sir!” said Amy, “this is an outrage!”
“Call it what you please--I go straight to Lord Verner, and tell him
of your love for his brother.”
“But what will that avail you now? It is an old story, and I am
married.”
“Lord Verner does not know that you were madly in love with his
brother; that he cast you off.”
“No, no--how despicable!” said Amy.
“He cast you off, I say; that will be my story to Lord Verner. I shall
tell him as a matter of duty. And something more too. Why is Mr.
Hammerton here?”
“Because he is Earl Verner’s brother, of course, and this is his home
when he is in England,” said the Countess.
“Because he is Lord Verner’s brother, poor fool! Because he is your
lover, my sister!--your lover!”
An exclamation of pain escaped from Amy’s lips at the baseness of the
insinuation conveyed in these words, and Lionel had almost rushed out
to strangle her maligner on the spot; but discretion prompted him to
remain where he stood.
“Oh, yes, it is very fine to assume an injured tone, but I saw him kiss
you this morning--I saw him through the window. You cannot deny it.
What will Lord Verner think of that? Eh, _ma bonne sœur_?”
“And this will be your story to Lord Verner,” said Amy, trembling with
indignation, “if I do not find the money you ask for?”
“It will most assuredly,” said Richard.
“Then tell your story, sir--tell your story at once; I will rather
throw myself upon Lord Verner’s love, the consciousness of my own
innocence, and the honour of Lionel Hammerton, than buy your silence
any longer, you miserable unscrupulous man,” said Amy; and then it
seemed as if she hurried away, or as if they had passed within the old
court-yard of the ruined castle.
Just then the moon shone forth brightly for a moment, and Lionel heard
voices again in the direction of the court-yard; but the intervening
walls were too thick for him to hear distinctly anything that was said.
As he came forth to reconnoitre a pistol was fired, and then a terrible
cry broke upon the still evening air--a shriek that echoed through the
broken old corridors, startling the bats and the owls. Hurrying to the
spot, Lionel found Richard Tallant stretched upon the turf. And now
the moon shone forth in all its autumnal glory, sending a pale gleam
through the court-yard and athwart the figure of the dying man.
Hastily raising the body up, Lionel found that the man had been shot
through the right temple. The ball must have penetrated the brain, for
he was quite dead, and the blood was streaming down his pale cheek.
One of the castle servants had heard the report of the pistol and the
cry that followed it, and he had hurried to the ruin too, and found
Lionel supporting the dead body. Mr. Hammerton bade him alarm the
household, and in a short time Richard Tallant was lying dead in the
room to which his luggage had been carried.
What a terrible night it was--that night of the murder! The police
came from Brazencrook, and made all sorts of inquiries. They found a
pistol lying near the spot where the body was found. A case of suicide
was the first suggestion; but it seemed that a breast-pocket in the
gentleman’s coat was turned inside out, and torn as if something had
been violently removed from it, and there was a bruise on the back of
the right hand as if the deceased had attempted for a moment to defend
himself after he had fallen, and been struck with a stick or with the
butt-end of the pistol.
“Where is her ladyship?” Lionel asked of the maid.
“In her room, and very unwell indeed,” was the reply.
Who could have committed this terrible deed? The thought flashed
through Lionel’s mind, and with it just the whisper of a terrible
suspicion. What an awful weight of anxiety and misery it was!
The superintendent of the Brazencrook police intimated that he would
like to put a few questions to Mr. Hammerton and the groom in his
lordship’s presence, and also to Lord Verner himself. His lordship,
therefore, invited the officer to go into the library with himself and
the Brazencrook vicar, and here the policeman finished his inquiry for
that day in the following manner:
First he obtained from Lord Verner the particulars of Mr. Tallant’s
arrival, and having brought the story up to the point where Mr. Tallant
went out upon the terrace with his sister, the policeman desired to
see Lady Verner, that she might continue the narrative; whereupon Lord
Verner rebuked him as an insolent fellow, and reminded him that he was
in the presence of the Lord-Lieutenant of the county.
“Who has only a duty to perform, like myself,” said the officer.
“You cannot see Lady Verner,” said his lordship; “and your desire to
do so is an impertinence. If you choose to conduct your inquiries
respectfully you may continue them; if not, were you twenty times a
policeman I would have you bundled out of this room, sir. There!”
“I bow to your superior authority, your lordship,” said the officer,
calmly. “May I ask you one more question before I proceed to put one or
two to your servants?”
“You may,” said Earl Verner.
“Did this gentleman come here on business?”
“I think he had some little business with his sister, the Countess.”
“Thank you, my lord,” said the officer.
“What is your name?” asked the officer, turning to the groom.
“Jones--Peter Jones,” said the man.
“Tell me all you know about this affair,” said the officer, “and how
you found the deceased.”
“I had suppered up Hector after Captain Hammerton had returned from
Brazencrook, and I was just leaving the stable when I heard a gun or
pistol fired off, and somebody shout. I went in the direction of the
sounds, and there saw Mr. Tallant dead, and Captain Hammerton holding
his head up.”
“Very good,” said the officer.
“Will you kindly explain what you know about it, Captain?”
“I heard the report of fire-arms,” said the Captain, “and hurrying to
the spot, found the poor gentleman dying. He was not quite dead when I
raised him up.”
“How far were you away from the spot, sir?”
“A hundred yards, perhaps.”
“You were near the ruin, then?”
“Yes; by the keep.”
“Had you been there long?”
“Only a short time.”
“Were you with the deceased?”
“No.”
“May I ask what brought you near the ruin?”
“Seeing some one walking there, I had gone in that direction when I
gave my horse to Jones.”
“Did you see one or two persons?”
“I thought I saw two.”
“Did you hear voices?”
“I believe I did.”
“Did any one leave the ruin whilst you were there?”
“I cannot say.”
“Did Lady Verner? Her ladyship had been walking on the terrace with her
brother.”
“I don’t know,” said the Captain, his heart beating wildly with a
burning suspicion that haunted him like a ghost.
“You were going towards the figures when you heard the pistol,” said
the officer. “Did you go straight in the direction of the persons you
thought you saw?”
“Not quite.”
“You put the keep and that corner of the ruin to the right between them
and you?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Captain Hammerton. There will be an inquest to-morrow on
the body. I suppose we may rely upon your attendance.”
“Certainly,” said Lionel.
“Shall we remove the body for the inquest, your lordship?”
“It is not necessary,” said the Earl.
“Good-night, my lord--good-night, gentlemen,” said the officer, leaving
the room.
When he was clear of the castle gates the police superintendent
despatched the policeman who was with him to Brazencrook for three more
officers, who were to meet him near the ruins as quickly as possible.
When they came he posted them at various distant points commanding the
castle, and bade them take any person into custody who might attempt to
leave it during the night, the vicar of Brazencrook alone excepted.
* * * * *
In the castle that night two persons gave themselves up, during the
still hours, to their wakeful thoughts. When the Countess heard the
whole story, a terrible solution of the mystery suggested itself to
her mind. Lionel Hammerton had overheard her brother’s threats, and
had shot him in his fear and passion; for he knew how much the Earl’s
happiness was bound up in the love of his wife. It was a terrible
thought, but came again and again into Amy’s troubled mind; and all
the time, think whatever he might, it seemed as if the devil whispered
in Lionel’s ear, “She killed him.” He knew that it was a miserable
morbid thought arising out of excitement, and overhearing the dead
man’s threats, and his violent taking off occurring at so important
a moment for Amy’s peace. And so these two fought with the ghosts of
fancy, whilst the policeman half suspected Lionel, who had blood upon
his coat, which, however easily accounted for, was still blood for all
that.
* * * * *
What a blessing it would have been for them all if they could have seen
that dark, halting shadow, which had flitted about amongst the ivy,
and in out-of-the-way nooks and corners of the old ruin all the day
long; that same figure which had haunted Richard Tallant in the Great
City; that same figure which, on the night before, had slept beneath
a tree in Kensington Palace Gardens, near Mr. Tallant’s house; that
same figure which had glided behind his carriage in the early morning,
and perched upon the springs behind; that same figure which had
travelled by the same train, and disappearing amongst the passengers
at Brazencrook, had haunted Richard Tallant far away in the distance,
through the harvest fields, and along the white highway; that same
figure which had leaped upon him with a hissing taunt, and pressed the
cold weapon to his head that the work of destruction might be certain.
Oh, if the police could but have met that creeping, stealthy figure,
as it hugged that pocket-book, and crept away towards the woods for
shelter, until the rain, which had been threatening to fall, should
come down, and obscure the moonlight. In less than an hour great clouds
rolled before the moon, and the rain fell in big splashing drops upon
the trees, carrying now and then to the ground the first brown leaves
of autumn.
CHAPTER XIII.
IN WHICH THE SEVERNSHIRE CORONER HOLDS AN
INQUEST.
At noon the next day an inquest was held on the body at “The Magpies,”
the inn nearest Montem Castle--a roadside hostelry that stood back from
the road, as if it had stepped aside for shelter beneath those great
walnut-trees and elms which stretched their umbrageous arms over the
lichen-covered roof. An open space in front was occupied by a pump and
a wide trough, to which waggoners brought their horses, whilst they
sat on the adjacent seat and tossed off brown sparkling ale from small
glasses, which they refilled with a sort of pride from blue foaming
jugs. There was the sign swinging between two bars like a wooden
banner, displaying three magpies in solemn conclave near a wood.
The lichens on the roof had gradually dispersed themselves over the
coping-stones of the old house, and the brown and yellow excrescences
vied with the changing hues of the sheltering trees.
Upon the day mentioned there were unusual signs of life at “The
Magpies.” A crowd of idlers and gossips, men from the corners of
Brazencrook streets, and boys and girls and hulking farm-labourers,
lounged about the house, watching every movement of the police, and the
coroner and the jury, with a dull but observant curiosity. When the
jurymen went to view the body of the deceased man, and the spot where
he was found, the little crowd followed at a respectful distance, and
then came back again, after a walk of nearly three miles, to stare in
at the window where the inquest was held, or drink beer in the tap-room.
The coroner opened the inquiry in a long and judicious address upon the
circumstances of the case, and stated that the superintendent of the
Brazencrook police had been anxious that Lady Verner should be called
upon to give evidence. He regretted, however, that her ladyship, who
was unwell when the dreadful occurrence took place, had been so shocked
by the event that she was now seriously ill, and her medical attendants
were anxious that she should have repose of mind and body. His lordship
had, however, kindly signified his intention of being present; he
believed that he was now in the house, and if so, they would hear his
evidence first.
Lord Verner entered the room opportunely at this moment, with his
lawyer from Brazencrook, and followed by reporters from the adjacent
towns, where the news of a “Dreadful Murder in the Old Ruin of Montem
Castle” had already supplied materials for sundry second editions of
sundry newspapers. There is no more startling illustration of the
rapid rate at which we live in these times than that afforded by the
chronicles of our daily history. The other day, we were grubbing over
the files of an old newspaper which was published weekly, coming out on
Saturdays at noon with a foolscap sheet of postal news and rumours, a
few advertisements, and sundry marriages and deaths; it was the leading
journal of a great city--a city divided by a river, upon which vessels
came and went on their way to America and the East Indies, and other
distant countries. In this Saturday’s paper we came across a paragraph
of local news, to the effect that “We hear that a dreadful murder was
committed in Bedminster, on Wednesday evening;” then followed two or
three lines indicating the manner of the murdered man’s death; and this
was all the information considered necessary for the reader. Bedminster
was really a portion of the city in which the journal was published,
and in the present day that same paper would, between the time of the
murder and the Saturday publication, have reported the fullest details
of the crime, with a description of the scene of the murder, the
antecedents of the dead man, a full report of the inquest and finding
of the jury, and, supposing the criminal captured, a full report of
the examination before the magistrates, and committal, occupying in
the narration of this one case as much type and paper (to say nothing
of writers and printers) as would have published the old journal for
several weeks.
Thus the local newspapers of Severntown, and Brazencrook, and
Avonworth, gave the whole district the speediest and fullest
information relating to the tragedy, with an eloquent and graphic
sketch of the scene by that smart gentleman who “did” the Verner
marriage with the prayer-book service in it.
They told how Lord Verner was the first witness examined, and how his
solicitor, Montagu Masters, Esq. (of the firm of Masters & Filmer of
Brazencrook), watched the proceedings in the interests of the family.
They repeated that story of the deceased’s arrival and his going out
to walk, which is already fully known to our readers. Then they gave
the evidence of Jones the groom, and finally the somewhat remarkable
statement of Lionel Hammerton, which was the most interesting portion
of the inquiry, seeing that the coroner cautioned the Captain in
unusually solemn terms that what he said would be taken down in
writing, and as he was unfortunately with the deceased when Jones came
up, that circumstance might possibly prove inconvenient and troublesome
to him, to say the least.
Mr. Montagu Masters had quite a battle royal over this point with the
coroner; but her Majesty’s representative finally put the lawyer down
by intimating that he was only permitted to be present in this court by
courtesy, and that he (the coroner) would conduct this inquiry in his
own way.
This most effectually prejudiced the minds of the jury against Lionel
Hammerton, who certainly gave his evidence in a hesitating and dubious
manner, which seemed fully to justify the suspicion of the police that
he had murdered the deceased.
In the midst of Lionel’s examination the groom was recalled.
“How long after the Captain gave you his horse was it that you heard
the noise which induced you to go to the ruin?”
“About a quarter of an hour,” was the reply.
“Did the Captain go straight in that direction when he left the stable
yard?”
“He went the shortest road.”
“Was he in the habit of taking a walk in that direction after riding?”
“I can’t say.”
Then the surgeon was recalled.
“The bruise upon the right hand is recent, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Supposing the deceased had shot himself, it would have been almost
impossible that he could have fired the pistol with his left hand?”
“Quite impossible, I should say, and considering the position of the
wound there would have been some little difficulty with the right; but
of course he could have used both hands; the wound is quite compatible
with the supposition of suicide.”
The superintendent of police was also recalled, and he said that at
the place where the deceased gentleman fell there were marks as if a
struggle had taken place, and on searching the body no papers had
been found. Morris, his lordship’s man, had seen the deceased with a
pocket-book, and from the way in which the breast-pocket of his coat
had been dragged open and torn, it would seem as if something (perhaps
the pocket-book, as that could not be found) had been forcibly removed.
He would also venture to point out to the coroner that although the
groom hurried to the spot immediately upon hearing the noise, the
Captain was there before him with the deceased’s head upon his knee. If
he had committed suicide the Captain must have been close to the spot
at the time, and yet he heard voices.
Mr. Masters protested against this police statement.
The coroner said it was not evidence, and he was not taking it down.
Lionel Hammerton said he had no objection to the policeman’s
theorising. He certainly was the first on the spot; and there was blood
upon the coat which he had just been informed the policeman had sent
for to the hall.
It was well Earl Verner had long since left the court and knew nothing
of this, or there would have been a fierce struggle between the leading
authorities.
The points which stood out most prominently in the inquiry were the
facts that the deceased had come to Montem on some business with his
sister the Countess; that in the twilight they walked out to converse;
that Lionel Hammerton, on returning from Brazencrook, instead of going
into the house, goes towards the ruin by the nearest route; that no
more is heard or seen of Lady Verner; that by-and-by a pistol is fired
off, and Hammerton is found supporting the body of the deceased; that
there is evidence of a struggle, though a brief one; that Hammerton
can give no reason for going towards the ruin except that he saw
two figures; that nobody can throw any light upon the nature of the
business between the deceased and his sister; that the visit was
altogether a peculiar one, the deceased leaving his luggage at the
Verner Arms at first, and then sending for it, as though he were not
certain of a kind reception at the Castle; that neither paper nor notes
are found upon him; that his pocket-book is missing, though his watch
and purse, containing gold, remain. If the deceased was murdered the
crime had been one, not prompted suddenly by robbery so much as by
revenge, or a robbery of papers or letters of some kind which might be
more valuable than money.
The inquest was adjourned, and in the evening Lord Verner and his
brother had a long, serious talk in the library; but it consisted
chiefly of speculations about Tallant’s death, and the Earl firmly
believed that he had committed suicide.
“What figures did you see, Lionel?--Her ladyship must have returned
into the house, poor soul, for her maid tells me she had a terrible
headache, and came in very soon after she brought her shawl and hat.”
“No doubt,” said Lionel, “it could not have been her ladyship.”
Poor fellow, what was he to say! “What a tangled thread we weave, when
first we practise to deceive!” One lie led to another; with that awful
suspicion burning in his heart,--and it would not go, despite all his
efforts--Lionel’s chief aim was to shield the Countess.
“You heard voices, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Were you listening to them, or what?”
“I did listen a moment or two.”
“Why did you listen? what did you suspect?”
“I do not know; there are times when we do things the most trivial
without being able to explain why or wherefore.”
“So there are. Your belief that you heard voices, and the statement
that you saw two figures, clearly point to the theory of murder as
against suicide.”
“Yes,” said Lionel.
“How could the murderer have escaped? You were on the spot in an
instant almost, it seems.”
“I was there very quickly.”
“And you saw no one?”
“No, only Tallant on the ground.”
“From what Masters says, there is no doubt that that fool of a
policeman has taken it into his thick head that _you_ killed Richard
Tallant,” said his lordship, in a tone of contemptuous coolness.
“I thought so last evening, and see it clearly to-day,” said Lionel.
“Let him have a care, Lionel, how he tampers with the name and fame of
the house of Verner. By heavens I will punish him! The thing is absurd
on the face of it.”
“I suppose the idea is that a man found by the side of one who is
murdered should be able to give a succinct account of his death.”
“Once a policeman starts a theory of his own respecting any particular
crime, he thinks of nothing else; he follows no clue which does not
support that theory; he rejects all evidence that may tell against it;
his leading idea is that somebody must be apprehended and convicted for
it; and this Brazencrook fellow is a shallow-pated, ambitious booby,
whose fingers are itching to have a distinguished prisoner; he is
anxious to create a sensation,” said the Earl.
And so they continued to talk the affair over, whilst the gossips in
the neighbourhood and throughout the country theorised upon it, and
cleared up the mystery in their own way. Meanwhile, Lady Verner, to all
appearance, continued very ill, and no word concerning recent events
was to be whispered in her hearing; but when there was no one present
but her maid she brightened up and insisted upon hearing of all that
had occurred. Lady Verner was not so ill as she seemed.
At night when the shallow-pated and ambitious policeman, as Earl Verner
called him, was smoking his pipe over his own fire, and relating the
incidents of the day to his admiring wife, an assistant in the shop of
the leading gunsmith of the place knocked at the door and wished to see
the superintendent privately and on particular business.
“I come as an act of duty,” said the young man, “although I know I
shall lose my place by it, for the master dared and forbade me to come
to you.”
“Yes,” said the officer, shutting the door of his private office,
and taking his seat at his desk beneath a long row of handcuffs and
cutlasses.
“Captain Hammerton bought two pistols at our shop to-day.”
“Yes,” said the officer, writing down the words, the name of the
assistant, the name of the master, &c.
“A revolver, and an ordinary pistol.”
“Yes, go on; I will not interrupt you, tell your own story.”
“He bought the ordinary one because it attracted his fancy--the stock
was peculiar. The revolver, he said, he wanted to take to India with
him, and he was going to London in the morning.”
“Going to London in the morning; yes,” said the officer, writing
industriously.
“He bought bullets and powder.”
“Yes,” said the officer.
“That is all; hearing what I did about the inquest, I though it right
in the interest of justice that you should know this.”
“Quite right; did he take the pistols with him?”
“No; we were to send them by Lord Verner’s groom when he passed with
the letters.”
“Oh!” said the officer, “that alters the case. When did the groom
call?”
“Not until this morning.”
“What the deuce is the good of that?” said the officer angrily; for he
was greatly disappointed. He had hoped that the next moment when he
should produce the pistol found in the ruins, the gunsmith’s assistant
would identify it.
“That will do--thank you all the same, though there is nothing much in
it; however it _may_ be useful; if so you shall hear from me again.”
When the officious apprentice had gone, the Brazencrook chief leaned
back in his chair and soliloquised.
“It shows he was thinking of pistols, at any rate--that is something;
he had deadly weapons in his mind. Not much in that perhaps, being
a soldier, but put this and that together. And then about going to
London to-day. Ha! I must get at that point. I’m morally certain he
killed the man, and Lady Verner knows something about it. There was a
quarrel, something about her perhaps; she is pretty and young, and----”
Another knock at the door, and enter a gentleman whom we have seen
before, though a stranger to the chief of the Brazencrook police--Mr.
Bales from Scotland Yard.
The Brazencrook officer was delighted to receive so distinguished a
visitor.
Mr. Bales said he knew something of the murdered man and his
connections, and on making certain representations at head-quarters,
he had come down “on spec,” in fact, “on his own hook.” A large reward
would, no doubt, be offered for the discovery of the murderer, for it
was a case of murder,--nobody in their senses could doubt that--and
Lord Verner would, of course, second the Government efforts to clear up
the mystery.
The local officer said, mysteriously, he was not so sure of that; he
believed he was on the right track; if such should prove to be the
case, of course, he would have the reward, or at any rate the greatest
share of it.
“Certainly,” said Mr. Bales, “certainly; I have not come down here to
rob you, my friend.”
“Well, I think not; you are too great a man; but that is mostly the
little game of the London detectives who come interfering in a thing
like this, ‘on spec,’ as you say.”
“It is not mine, I assure you.”
“Then we will make a bargain.”
“Yes, if you like.”
“Supposing my clue is right, and I get hold of the right man, you lay
no claim to the reward.”
“I consent.”
“And supposing you are the successful hand, you divide the reward with
me.”
“I consent to that also--but it is just possible neither of us may
touch the money; there is generally a third party who brings these
things to light in country districts: somebody comes and gives
information of something that has escaped the police, eh?” said the
London detective, with just a slightly sarcastic smile.
“There will be nothing of that sort in this case,” said the
superintendent, who made up his mind there and then that, supposing a
reward were offered, and that he received the announcement of the same
in the morning, he would, at all risks, apprehend Lionel Hammerton.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CHIEF OF THE BRAZENCROOK POLICE MAKES A
BOLD STROKE FOR THE GOVERNMENT REWARD.
The Brazencrook officer, after sleeping upon the resolution he had
made, received notification of the Government reward; and, determined
not to be bilked by Mr. Bales, he went off quietly the next morning to
Montem Castle, and asked for Captain Hammerton.
When Lionel appeared, he said,--“Will you be good enough to come a
little way with me; there is a man who has a question to ask you?”
Lionel looked puzzled for a moment at the request, and then
replied,--“Certainly, if you desire it.”
“Yes I do,” said the officer; and without another word they went forth
together.
When they were outside the Castle gates, the superintendent said, “The
truth is, I did not wish to make any fuss; but I went to Mr. Smith,
the county magistrate, early this morning, and upon the facts that I
considered it my duty to lay before him, he granted me a warrant for
your apprehension; and I now claim you as my prisoner on the charge of
wilfully and maliciously killing Richard Tallant.”
Saying this the officer laid his hand upon Lionel’s arm, who started as
if he had been stung. The officer thereupon gave a shrill whistle, and
two policemen rushed out from a hiding place in the hedge.
“If you will go quietly with me,” said the officer, “I will dismiss
these men.”
“You may rely upon it I shall make no attempt to escape, not that your
men would intimidate me were I inclined to have a fight for it,” said
Lionel, stretching himself up to his full height and surveying the
force. “You represent the law so far that you are its officer: you may
dismiss your fellows.”
The chief did so at once, and when he and Lionel reached “The Magpies,”
there was a cab waiting to convey them to Brazencrook.
When Earl Verner learnt what had taken place, he rode to Brazencrook,
and demanded that Lionel should be released, fumed and threatened, and
at last discovered that although he was an Earl and Lord-Lieutenant
of the County, the Brazencrook police superintendent was master of
the situation. Lionel was taken before the Brazencrook bench, and
remanded until the conclusion of the inquest, and was then conveyed to
“The Magpies” at the request of the coroner, that he might hear the
remainder of the evidence.
The jurymen were considerably surprised at what the Brazencrook officer
had done, and so was the coroner, who said, in commencing the business
of the day, that the superintendent had, he hoped, acted on evidence
which had come to his knowledge since the business of the previous
day; otherwise he had no hesitation in saying that he had committed
a serious error. He was a plain, outspoken fellow, this Severnshire
coroner, who, though he might not always conduct his investigation with
legal discretion, fearlessly searched out the truth, and endeavoured to
do justice.
It was soon noised abroad that the Earl’s brother was in custody; and
this fact was conclusive in the minds of large numbers of persons,
especially of the lower order, that he was guilty. There was a great
crowd about the inn on this second day, and a numerous body of
policemen, chiefly of the county force, to keep the mob in order.
“The Magpies” never had so good a time of it. The landlord had been
compelled to send into Brazencrook for fresh supplies of beer and
spirits, and several additional waiters had to be employed in serving
the thirsty customers.
The only additional witnesses were the gunsmith’s assistant and a
railway clerk; the former to make that absurd statement about the
prisoner purchasing pistols and ammunition, which were not sent home
until after the murder; the latter to prove that it was Lionel’s
intention to leave Montem Castle that day. But there was another
fact which the officer thought a great deal of. In the prisoner’s
pocket-book there were some memoranda relative to an account between
the deceased and himself, with regard to some share speculations prior
to the panic, and in the margin was written in pencil,--“_This was a
downright swindle of Tallant’s._”
In addition there was a scrap cut from a newspaper, alluding to a
_fracas_ which had taken place at the Ashford Club, and in which the
Hon. Lionel Hammerton’s name was mentioned, and also Mr. Tallant’s.
Our readers will remember that Lionel had alluded to this gossiping
paragraph when he left England. They also know that Hammerton had been
led into speculations by Tallant, which had ended in grievous losses
that seriously involved Lionel, and had cost the Earl no small sum. The
policeman naturally argued from these papers and memoranda, that there
had been a quarrel between his prisoner and the deceased; and he laid
them before the coroner’s jury with an air of triumph.
But the coroner strongly advised the jury to adjourn for a week, and
they did so, leaving the onus of committing the prisoner for trial on
the magistrates. Meanwhile Mr. Bales, the detective, did not agree
with the opinion of the Brazencrook police. The case bothered him
considerably, he acknowledged; but he could not bring himself to think
that the prisoner had killed Richard Tallant. If the crime had been
committed in London, he would certainly have looked up Mr. Shuffleton
Gibbs; for, in the course of the inquiries he had made in those past
days for Mr. Christopher Tallant, and since then, he had come across
suspicious transactions in which Mr. Gibbs had been mixed up when the
ex-swell was in the hey-day of his questionable glory. Hunting out this
same gentleman for Mr. Williamson, and finally bringing him to Bow
Street to be unsuccessful in his charge against him, the detective knew
that Gibbs had appealed to Mr. Tallant in vain for assistance. But
Gibbs was a broken-down, drunken wretch: what could he do down here?
However, it might be worth while to run up to town, and see if the
fellow had been away.
In the evening Mr. Arthur Phillips and his wife arrived at Montem
Castle. The Earl welcomed them heartily, and poor Amy, who had come
down-stairs wrapped up with shawls, fell upon her dear friend’s
shoulder, and sobbed until Phœbe’s heart ached with sympathetic sorrow.
What a weary, weary time it was!
Lord Verner started early the next morning to town, that he might
personally consult his London solicitors, and take some potent action
against the police, or the magistrates, or anybody and everybody by
whom his brother was detained in custody. The poor Earl was almost
beside himself with indignation and passion.
And all this time that shrinking, hiding, halting, slouching figure,
which the reader has seen before, had found shelter in Brazencrook.
Moving in the darkness, with the rain splashing on the highway and
hissing in the hedge-rows, the figure stalked back again towards
Brazencrook, instead of getting away from that town, as the cunning
mind had planned. But having no knowledge of the district, and being
nervous and excited, and lacking gin, the wretched criminal had
succeeded the next day in reaching the town he would have avoided; and
when Mr. Bales was thinking of going to town as a sort of forlorn hope,
or an excursion by the way, to see Gibbs, this same Gibbs was imbibing
his favourite liquor at a sixth-rate tavern at Brazencrook, and reading
a full account of the murder in the “Brazencrook Daily Banner.”
“Hang that bruise on the hand,” thought the half-tipsy reader--“clear
case of suicide but for that--clear case of _felo-de-se_--they might
have buried the beast in the cross-roads. A rum go if they hang that
swell Hammerton--a very rum go. I must burn this pocket-book, and the
cheques too for the matter of that--it’s no good trying to cash them; I
can get rid of the notes easily enough. What an infernal scoundrel he
was, to be sure--threatening his sister the Countess! By Jove, I was
close to him then; she ought to thank a fellow for stopping his mouth.
How he clutched me--a good thing the pistol was pretty heavy, but
confound that bruise and the torn pocket! That policeman is a clever
fellow; nobody else would have thought of the pocket-book: wish I’d had
time to get his purse--these notes are a nuisance. I’m safe enough,
that’s one thing--good idea following the thief by train, deuced good!”
Thus the gin-drinker’s thoughts flitted through his mind, as he sat
before the tavern fire drinking raw spirits and drying his clothes, a
poor thin, wretched-looking object, with one foot in the grave, as the
slipshod servant had said to her boozy master, when he asked who it was
that had such “a big swallow.”
CHAPTER XV.
CONTAINS A CURIOUS ILLUSTRATION OF DETECTIVE
PHILOSOPHY, AND IS AN IMPORTANT LINK IN
THIS HISTORY.
“Well, I shall be off to town,” said Mr. Bales to the superintendent of
the Brazencrook police, on the third morning after his arrival. “This
case is a floorer to me.”
The constable smiled, and thought he had certainly done the detective.
“I have been connected with Scotland Yard for some years now, and had a
tolerable experience in America too, and I don’t think I have felt so
helpless as I do in this business; so I called in to say good-bye, and
wish you well through the case.”
“Don’t go for a few minutes,” said the superintendent: “rather a
singular disappearance of bank notes has been reported to me just
now; you may like to hear the story; being here on spec, you know, and
not a very successful spec, perhaps you might like to try your hand at
another case.”
The speaker smiled a little sarcastically, but as much as to say,
having beaten your head off in this Montem business, I can afford to be
generous.
“All right,” said Bales; “better luck next time.”
“Will you hear about this note job?”
“Certainly,” said Bales.
Whereupon three gentlemen entered the room. The first, a fat, fussy
little man, said he was the proprietor of the Brazencrook Music Hall;
that half an hour ago he went to the Old Bank to pay in three hundred
pounds. It consisted of a miscellaneous roll of notes. He pushed the
money upon the counter towards the receiver in the usual way; and at
that moment “this gentleman,” pointing to the Rev. Thomas Barnes,
curate of All Souls, asked him a question about some subscription to
a fund for a poor family formerly in his employ, and when he turned
round the money was gone.
The second speaker was the receiving clerk at the bank, who said when
Mr. Flooks came in he noticed that the gentleman pushed a parcel upon
the counter; but when he laid down his pen to take it there was no
money to be seen.
“What were you doing when Mr. Flooks entered the bank?” asked the chief
of police.
“I was casting up some figures.”
“Did you attend to Mr. Flooks at once?”
“I did not; I finished my casting first.”
“Did you see the notes on the counter?”
“I saw something which appeared to be a bundle of notes.”
“When did you know the money was gone, Mr. Flooks?”
“As soon as I turned round. I expected the receiver had taken it up,
but he said, ‘Where’s the money?’”
“And there were only you and Mr. Barnes here in the bank at the time?”
“That’s all,” said Flooks.
“And did nobody come in and go out?”
Upon this point there was a little difference of opinion. The curate
believed a person passed out whilst he was speaking to Mr. Flooks. The
cashier also thought a man came in and went out again.
When it was discovered that the notes were gone, careful investigation
was made by the manager of the bank on the spot, and a search was
instituted, which had been considered rather offensive by the receiver;
but the money was gone, and here the story ended.
“Have you the numbers and description of the notes, Mr. Flooks?”
“No; I very seldom take any precautions of that kind about notes,
because I always make a point of paying all cash into the bank myself.”
Here, it seemed to Bales, was another case as free from a clue to the
criminal as that of the murder at Montem. He felt as if his skill were
specially challenged, and he resolved at once to delay his return to
London.
“You will really not be offended at my meddling in this case?” he said
to the Brazencrook chief.
“Not at all--not at all. I question whether Mr. Flooks really put any
money on the counter. These professionals, as they call themselves,
are up to so many dodges for advertising and all that sort of thing.
If he did put any money on the counter, I suppose the fact of a parson
condescending to speak to him flurried him, and he forgot where he was,
because they have been preaching against his entertainment.”
The superintendent was quite friendly in his conduct towards Mr. Bales,
and said he should be glad if he hit the mark in this business better
than he had done in that other little affair.
Mr. Bales, after paying Mr. Flooks a private business visit, and seeing
several letters referring to £280 (which was really a payment to Flooks
for the goodwill, scenery, &c., of a small music-hall establishment
at Severntown), went to his lodgings, reported himself for two days
further leave of absence, lit a cigar, and quietly thought over the
story he had just heard. There was clearly nothing in the Brazencrook
officer’s idea about Flooks having lost no money: there was the
transaction before him accounting for the receipt of £280 out of the
£300. Could the cashier himself be the thief? No. The curate?--the
receiver? No. Had the job been done by a professional thief? He thought
not. He could not exactly say why. He thought that this was a case of
sudden temptation and robbery. This was his theory: the receiver had
been busy at his desk; Flooks, the Casino proprietor, flurried, as the
policeman had said, by talking to a parson--had been engrossed in the
clerical conversation; a third party had come in on business, and had
walked out again unobserved with the notes in his pocket. Under such
circumstances, the thief would naturally become worried and nervous,
when he got into the street, as to his next step. What would he be
likely to do? Brazencrook was a large town--a town of some eighty
thousand inhabitants--a busy, bustling place. What would the fellow
do--slink away? If he were a professional thief, no doubt he would.
But a new hand--there was a cab-stand close by, and he would call a
cab--of course he would, Bales repeated to himself. He made inquiries
at once. There were only two flys on the stand, and the drivers had not
taken a fare that morning.
“Drive me to the next stand,” said Bales, stepping into the first cab.
He was unsuccessful at the second stand and at every other. No driver
remembered having taken up any person near the Old Bank at about eleven
o’clock. He determined to see every cab-driver in Brazencrook before
he gave up this first part of his theory of the robbery. The Abbey
chimes were slowly hammering out the morning hymn for the second or
third time that day, when the detective alighted from the last cab to
prosecute his inquiries on foot, resolving to stop every fly he met in
the streets.
The chimes had hardly finished, when an old fellow pulled up an empty
cab near the Abbey entrance, and got off his box to tie a dirty
hay-bag upon his horse’s nose.
Bales put his question to him--had he taken up anyone near the bank
that morning?
Near the bank! Yes, he had.
“Who?”
“A gentleman’s servant.”
“Did he come out of the bank?”
“He did.”
“Here is half-a-crown--take me to the spot where you took him up.”
“Certainly, with pleasure, sir,” said the man, and in a few minutes he
pulled up within a few yards of the Old Bank.
“And now drive me to the place where you put him down.”
In ten minutes he pulled up again. Bales alighted.
“Well, where did he go?”
“He went into that house yonder--the last in the crescent.”
Then Bales made the driver describe the servant carefully, and after
taking a note of the number of the fly, he knocked at the door of the
last house in the crescent, feeling convinced that he was on the track
of the roll of notes.
A maid servant came to the door.
“Is James in?” asked Bales, familiarly.
“We have no James here,” said the girl, smiling. “Our James is a
Thomas.”
“Well, is he in the house?”
“No, he ain’t,” said the girl.
“He was in this morning,” said Bales.
“Yes, but he ain’t now; he’s gone into the country.”
“When did he go? I want to see him very particularly.”
“About an hour ago. His aunt’s took very bad.”
“Where does she live?”
“That I can’t tell you.”
“When is he coming back?”
“Ah, that’s what master’s just asked me; but that’s what I don’t know.”
“All right,” said the detective to himself, as he left the house. “This
is my man.”
He made inquiries at the railway station, but nobody remembered having
seen “Thomas” there. Only one train had gone out within the hour, and
that to London. Bales telegraphed to Paddington, but at the same time
felt pretty well satisfied that Thomas had not gone away by train.
He made inquiries about other conveyances leaving Brazencrook. There
was a coach to Severntown, but only on Monday and Friday, and this was
Tuesday.
“There’s a carrier’s cart to Avonworth,” said the ostler at the Verner
Arms.
“Avonworth! That is on the high road to Severntown and London?”
“Yes, it be.”
“When does it go?”
“About four o’clock on Tuesdays, and six on Saturdays.”
The carrier’s cart had been gone two hours, and there was a train to
Avonworth half an hour hence. “Perhaps my friend started to walk, and
the carrier will pick him up. The road to Avonworth is his most likely
way. He may have started with the carrier and gone the whole journey.
It is what he might do, innocent or guilty,” thought Bales.
In a short time Bales had donned his countryman’s attire--the smock and
all-rounder, without which he never travelled; and by half-past six
he was at Avonworth. The carrier’s cart had not arrived. He loitered
about, and presently had the satisfaction to see it come creeping along
the dusty highway, and finally enter the “Lion” yard, and, what is
more, out stepped “Thomas.”
The man did not enter the inn, but walked away out of the town and
along the road towards Severntown. By-and-by he left the highway and
turned into the turnpike road. He wore an overcoat and an ordinary hat,
but nobody could have mistaken the light brown livery trousers.
Bales followed him at a distance for a couple of miles, and then
“Thomas” entered a roadside inn. Shortly, the detective was sitting in
the same room, where he had ordered brandy-and-water hot. And lo and
behold, Mr. Bales recognised the face of our poor friend, THOMAS DIBBLE.
The detective directed the girl to bring him a pint of hot ale and gin,
known by the euphonious title of dog’s-nose, of which smoking liquor he
politely offered a glass to “Thomas.”
Poor Dibble treated this little act of courtesy coldly, but tasted the
liquor notwithstanding, and then Bales began to talk. He was a farmer,
going to be married; he was on his way to Brazencrook to see his Sarah,
who lived in service there. How far was it to Brazencrook? Dibble did
not know. It was a nice place, Bales had heard? Yes, _he believed_ it
was. And then Bales ordered some more gin and ale, for the night was
closing in wet and cold.
At length the ice was thoroughly melted, and the two men talked and
smoked and drank in good-fellowship. “Thomas” was highly amused at the
detective’s simplicity.
As the evening wore on Dibble gradually became thick and confused in
his speech, and then Bales saying it was time for him to go, rang
the bell and asked the girl to see if the landlord could change him
a fifty-pound note. This was the sum he had saved for the purpose of
marrying Sarah at Brazencrook!
“You shan’t schange a fifty-pun’ note,” said Dibble; “noshing of the
short.”
“No, master could not change a fifty-pound note,” the girl said;
“pretty well, he thought, if he could change a five-pound note.”
“All right,” said “Thomas,” thrusting his right hand into a
breast-pocket of his coat, and producing a roll of notes, “I’ve got a
five pun’ note.”
Poor Dibble! When the detective showed him a pair of handcuffs, and
charged him with robbery, he burst into tears.
It was as the detective had guessed, a case of sudden temptation. The
robbery had been committed just as he had suggested; but there was no
thirst for money for its own sake in poor Dibble’s wickedness. For
weeks and months he had brooded over his wife’s misfortunes; her taunts
had sunk deep into his heart; he was miserable beyond description to
think how she had been reduced; and all in a moment this bundle of
notes had seemed to offer him and his wife release from their troubles.
He had been sent to the bank to change a cheque. The notes were close
to his hand; he touched them; nobody was looking; he seized them, and
walked out of the bank as he came. Hurrying back to his master’s, he
gave the cheque to an under-servant, as though he had not had time to
go to the bank, and then after that one bit of cleverness, he made a
shambling excuse about an aunt in the country, and left Brazencrook.
Poor Dibble! He did nothing but moan about his poor dear wife,--his
poor injured wife.
This smart bit of police detection was destined to lead to more
important and startling results than the capture of Thomas Dibble,
otherwise we should not have narrated it so circumstantially.
CHAPTER XVI.
“BAL. TO R. T., £300.”
When Dibble was fairly locked up in the Brazencrook station, and Bales
had indulged in a quiet joke with the Brazencrook chief, he had the
curiosity to examine the roll of notes after Mr. Flooks had identified
them.
Two of these notes were new Bank of Englands, and were for £10 each.
At the back of one there were some figures in pencil,--a calculation
evidently of interest, and the result was carried down at the
corner--“Bal. to R. T., £300.” Then the figures had been run through
with the pencil, as though the writer had made a simple calculation of
moneys on the spur of the moment, and the sum showed a balance of £300
to “R. T.” Who was “R. T.”? Singular that these should be the initials
of the man who was murdered at Montem! Mere coincidence thought the
detective,--nothing in it; nevertheless, he would see Mr. Flooks again.
“Do you remember whether these notes were paid by the Severntown man in
the £300?” said the detective.
“I do not.”
“Yet you identified the bundle easily?”
“O yes, I could swear to the lot. But wait a moment; we will go into
the Treasury.”
And into the Treasury (as theatrical managers call the room occupied by
the cashier of the establishment) they went.
“You paid me a balance of petty receipts and other things yesterday
with the balance of the receipts of the night before.”
“Yes,” said the treasurer, “twenty pounds.”
“Did you pay me in these notes?”
“I think so; I am not quite sure.”
“Where did you get them?” asked the detective.
“From the bank. I changed your cheque for £30, for the purpose
of paying a poor-rate when you were away at Severntown,” said the
treasurer.
The detective extended his inquiries to the bank. A cheque had been
cashed as described; but it had been paid in gold. The two notes in
question had not passed through this bank.
Bales went back to the music-hall treasury.
“Did you cash that cheque yourself?” he asked the cashier.
“No, sir; I sent the porter to cash it.”
“Will you let me see the porter?” said Bales.
Mr. Flooks sent out for the porter, who was no less a personage than
our old acquaintance the showman, Digby Martin, _alias_ Bill Smith,
“The Magician of the North.”
“You cashed a cheque on Friday for the treasurer?” said Bales,
addressing the porter.
“Yes,” said the man, hesitatingly. “Yes, I did.”
“Send that dog out,” said Mr. Flooks; whereupon a tall grey animal
which had followed the porter in a very undog-like attitude, quietly
disappeared behind the scenes.
“You got the money in gold?” said Bales, fixing the porter with his
cold grey eye.
The man hesitated, held down his head, changed colour, and then looked
at Mr. Flooks.
“Don’t look at me,” said Mr. Flooks, “attend to this gentleman.”
“What is your name?” Mr. Bales asked.
“William Smith’s my own name; Digby Martin was my professional name
before I came down to being a porter,” said the man.
“Come, you answered that question quickly enough; now why can’t you
tell me with the same rapidity whether you got gold for that cheque at
the bank or notes?”
“I forget,” said the porter, sulkily.
“No, you don’t. Now come, Mr. Smith, you changed the gold for notes
yourself; you can’t deceive me. Now where did you get the notes?”
The porter made no reply, but turning upon his heel to leave the room,
he said he did not know what the gentleman meant.
“Then I’ll tell you, my friend,” said Bales. “I arrest you, William
Smith, on the charge of being concerned in the murder of one Richard
Tallant.”
We need hardly say that the music-hall gentlemen were not a little
surprised at this striking _dénoûment_; their astonishment was much
greater than the porter’s.
“Oh!” said the porter, when the detective produced those same
“bracelets” which had frightened poor Dibble. “You’ve got the wrong
’un, guvner; but suppose I put you on the right track?”
“You had better be careful,” said Bales: “anything that you may say now
can be used in evidence against you.”
“All right, guvner, the truth’s the truth, and you shall have it. I’ve
always done my duty by you, Mr. Flooks,” said the porter.
“Yes, you have been a sober steady fellow for this year past,” said Mr.
Flooks.
“There’s a bill out offering a reward to discover the man as did the
deed, ain’t there?”
“Yes,” said Bales.
“I knows that, ’cos I’ve read it: me and Momus read it last night, and
there’s a free pardon for him as confesses who may know about it, and
yet was not actually concerned in it.”
“Yes,” said Bales.
“Then here goes! The day after the murder as me and Momus were having
a bit o’ dinner in at the Music-Hall Tavern at the back of the house
here, a traveller comes in--a half-starved looking sort of a chap--and
he sets down afore the fire. Momus, that’s my dog, sir, one of the
wonderfullest animals out, sir. Momus smells at him, as if she had met
him afore, and walks round him on her hind-legs. That causes me to take
notice of him like. The gal comes in, and he orders some grub, and asks
if there’s a fire in the other room: she says yes, and in he goes. ‘Do
you know him, Momus; does yer know the gent, old gal?’ She wags her
bit o’ stump, as much as to say ‘I does,’ and so does yer guvner, says
I, all of a suddent; ’cos it just then flashed on me that it were my
son-in-law. Yes, gents, I ain’t talking no bosh--my son-in-law, Mr.
Jefferson Crawley.”
Mr. Bales pursed up his lips, and gave a low whistle at this, and could
not resist making other indications of his surprise and satisfaction.
“Oh, you knows him, do yer?” said the porter. “Well, arter a bit, I
goes into the room, and I sees him a reading the newspaper all about
the murder, and when I goes in he drops it as though it had bitten
him. ‘Don’t yer like the news, guvner,’ says I? ‘don’t you like it,
son-in-law?’ He looked awful at this. He bolted with my gal ‘Chrissy,’
you know.”
The detective whistled again.
“Oh, you know’d her, did yer?” said the porter.
“I know she was not your daughter,” said Bales.
“S’help me Davy, but you seem to know everything.”
“Never mind, go on,” said Bales.
“Well, he looked hawful, as I said afore, and I thought as he was a
going to faint. He didn’t, however. He rung the bell and ordered a
pint of gin, and drunk it off, and then he seemed better. ‘How come
you here?’ says he. ‘How come you here?’ says I. ‘You seems to have
been travelling; and what’s that blood on yer shirt?’ says I. ‘Blood?’
says he. ‘Yes,’ says I. ‘O, I had a bit of a row.’--‘O,’ says I. With
that I says, ‘Where’s my gal?’ and then he begins to say as how she’d
treated him shameful, and a lot of it, and gets to abusing me. Then he
says, ‘We’re relations, you know;’ and I says, ‘Yes, of a sort.’--‘I
was a gentleman,’ says he, ‘till I know’d your daughter.’--‘Perhaps,’
says I. ‘Fact!’ says he; and then he tells me how she brought him to
poverty, and all that, which I quite believe; and then, after his grub
he says, says he, ‘We’re relations--brothers in distress, deceived by
a wretched gal;’ and it was a fact too; ‘so let’s drink,’ says he; and
he had another pint of gin, but I was not to be tempted. However, I has
a little, and then I leaves him sitting afore the fire, drunk I should
think, and he paid for what he had: so I leaves him, as he had took a
bed for the night. ‘You’ll stand my friend?’ says he, as I was going;
‘relations, you know!’ and all that. When business was over, about
twelve o’clock, I goes again, and I finds him muddling over the fire,
still drinking gin, and I hears as he’d changed a five-pound-note; so
says I, ‘Guvner--son-in-law, money’s flush with you;’ and he says,
‘Father-in-law, it is; and if you’ll be my friend, it shall be with
you: swear,’ says he, and his hands trembled awful to behold: so I
swears. ‘I’m hawful bad,’ says he, ‘being out in the rain; be my
friend--take care of me;’ and I says, ‘All right, guvner;’ he puts his
hand into his coat, pulls out a pocket-book, and gives me them two
notes; then he seemed as if he was off his head, and I and the gal sees
him to bed. That ere pocket-book, and the blood and altogether bothered
me a good deal; and when I changed that cheque, thinks I, I’ll get rid
on ’em; ’cos you see, I didn’t know what might happen, and somehow I
thought as my son-in-law might have had a hand in the job, and you
see, as we were sort of relations, and all that, I didn’t like to say
nothing, and especially as he wor so bad--so hawful ill--and that’s
the whole truth o’ the matter.”
“And what became of him?” asked the detective; “don’t answer unless you
choose.”
“O, bless yer life, he’s there now in bed, and it’s my humble opinion
as he’ll never stir out of it again.”
He did “stir out of it again,” nevertheless, and the decayed showman
and his son-in-law were in Brazencrook lock-up within an hour, to the
relief and release of Lionel Hammerton; for the Brazencrook chief
deemed it necessary to get two magistrates at once to authorise the
Captain’s release from custody.
What a change came over the spirit of the Brazencrook policeman’s
dream, as he smoked his pipe and talked to his wife on this night
over the kitchen fire! It needed all the wifely consolation which his
admiring spouse could bring to bear upon his deep dejection, to save
him from utter despair.
“I’m a ruined man! I’m a ruined man!” was all the defeated officer
could say. His two new prisoners were not more chapfallen than the
Brazencrook chief, through whose fingers had slipped government reward,
credit, reputation--everything which he hoped to gain--by his rash act
of the morning.
CHAPTER XVII.
IN THE FIRELIGHT.
Earl Verner returned from London by the evening mail, after having put
the law into active operation on Lionel’s behalf. When he came bustling
into the coziest of cozy drawing-rooms, having rushed in before anybody
had time to go out and meet him in the hall, he was most agreeably
surprised by a singularly happy-looking family party.
Lionel Hammerton, in the easiest of easy chairs (the hero of the
evening, the especial delight of all beholders just then), was sitting
near Mrs. Arthur Phillips, on one side of the fire. On the other sat
the Countess, looking almost herself again, and close by her side was
the artist. Before the fire, sitting in a rather constrained manner,
was a stranger--a mild-looking, inoffensive gentleman, with brown
curly whiskers and expressive grey eyes. This latter person was Mr.
Bales, whom Lionel had brought with him from Brazencrook, in order that
he might relate the singular story of his capture to the Earl. His
lordship being away, the Countess had insisted upon Mr. Bales coming
into the drawing-room and telling her all about it.
And so they had sat in the firelight, this happy grateful group of
friends, listening to the detective’s story. It was one of those first
chilly autumn nights with falling rain, when the farmer begins to have
fears for the wheat which should have been carried the week before;
one of those nights when the shortening of the days begins to be more
particularly apparent, and when you feel that winter is really not far
off, and the sooner it comes the better. So the curtains were drawn
over the windows, and the great dogs in the fireplace were weighted
with a glowing pile of wood. The firelight fairly contested supremacy
of effect with the numerous wax candles, sending flickers of light
into the furthest corners, and reflecting its radiance in the mirrors
on the opposite side of the room. Mrs. Arthur Phillips, with her wealth
of wavy hair, her deep blue eyes, and those half-parted lips,--a round,
rosy dimpled beauty,--(Dicksee’s Miranda arrived at the full beauty of
womanhood),--looked like some painter’s dream of perfect loveliness in
this softened light of evening. There was just a shade of melancholy
now and then upon her fair hopeful features; but her newly-awakened
joy at Hammerton’s escape, chased the shadow away almost before there
was time to note it. The Countess looked considerably older than
Phœbe; there was an air of matronly and aristocratic dignity in Amy’s
manner which was entirely foreign to that of Phœbe. The anxiety which
Amy had undergone had left its traces upon her; and for the last few
days she had suffered a world of agony and remorse, which she could
never explain to anybody. She had endured the cruellest tortures on
Hammerton’s account. She could not have borne up against her fears and
sorrows much longer; but for Hammerton’s timely release the Earl would
have known everything, and from her own lips.
Never had she prayed so fervently for guidance and succour and mercy as
she had done during these few days of her severest mental agony; and it
seemed to her as if her petitions had been specially answered in this
most unlooked-for and marvellous release of Lionel Hammerton,--not only
from custody, but from suspicion. And _he_, how grateful he was on her
account; and he had felt a bitter pang of self-condemnation when he
thought how deeply he had wronged her in his foul and absurd suspicion.
It seemed to him as if Fortune had willed it that he should be unjust
to this woman; as if Fate had put a finger upon his love to blight his
dearest hopes. This woman, whom he had loved and lost through neglect
and suspicion; this woman, the memory of whose love he had vowed to
treasure up as a sweet dream of the past,--again had Fate stepped in
and cast down the idol.
And so they sat there in the evening whilst Mr. Bales related to
them the story which we have already told in the previous chapters,
and they all pitied poor Dibble. When “Thomas” was in his cell, he
insisted upon telling Mr. Bales how he came to commit so great a crime.
The reproaches of his wife had rung in his ears night and day. It had
seemed as if the devil had told him to touch that roll of notes; and
when he felt his hand upon the money, he could not help taking it.
Crying like a child, and sitting on the edge of the little prison
bedstead, Dibble said he had never known before what that beautiful
prayer meant, in which we asked our Father to lead us not into
temptation.
Whereupon the Countess told Earl Verner what she knew of Mrs. Dibble,
and hoped that something might be done for both of them.
Mr. Bales said Mrs. Dibble’s money had been all lost in one way or
another during the panic, and this had led to all their misfortunes.
“Have you written to her, Mr. Bales?” the Countess asked.
“I have not, your ladyship. The prisoner was most anxious that I
should not do so: it would kill her, he said.”
“What can we do, my lord, for these poor people?” asked the Countess,
earnestly. “Is there no means of obtaining the man’s release?”
“I fear not,” said the Earl. “Who is the prosecutor, Mr. Bales?”
“The bank, I think, your lordship. It is a question whether the
money belonged to the bank or to Mr. Flooks. The bank repudiated all
responsibility at the outset.”
“Oh, but surely they could be induced to withdraw from the affair, or
make it up in some way, seeing that the money is restored?” said the
Countess.
“There is a serious offence, my love, called compounding a felony,
which might be an obstruction to your wishes,” said his lordship. “My
friend, Lord Tufton, is chairman of Quarter Sessions, I must talk to
him upon the subject to-morrow; he can advise us best.”
“Meanwhile, however, we can do something for this woman Dibble. She
was very kind to Lieutenant Somerton,” said the Countess; “we must take
care of her.”
“I go to town in the morning,” said Bales. “I shall be happy to be your
messenger to her.”
“By what train, Mr. Bales, do you leave?” her ladyship asked.
“At ten o’clock, your ladyship.”
“That means half-past nine from Montem?”
“It does, my lady,” said Bales.
“I will see you before you go, if you please, at nine in the morning,”
said the Countess.
“So early!” exclaimed the Earl.
The Countess smiled and nodded assent.
“One cannot rise too early to help a poor creature in trouble, Mr.
Phillips,” said the Countess, aside; adding, “and now, Phœbe, I think
we may retire.”
Phœbe took her ladyship’s proffered arm; Lionel Hammerton opened the
door, and the two women went up-stairs to sit and talk of the past and
the present, and the time to come; to have one of those long confiding
gossips which are so charming to newly-married friends. But there
was a gloomy shadow now and then which seemed to lay an icy finger
upon their warm and tender words--the shadow of the dead man, Amy’s
half-brother--who lay in that darkened room above.
The gentlemen, when they were alone, adjourned, upon Earl Verner’s
invitation, to the billiard-room, not for the purpose of playing at the
fascinating game of billiards, but to smoke and talk and drink spirits
and hot water before they went to bed.
Lord Verner had heard in town that if Tallant had lived two more days,
he would only have lived to be a disgraced and ruined man. His shares
in the Meter Works had been sent into the market and sold, a heap of
bills had been dishonoured, and he was involved to the last degree.
“I have a shrewd guess that he came down here to see if he could get
money from his sister; knowing her generous disposition, I do not doubt
that he came here as a forlorn hope. My solicitor said the opinion in
town was that he had committed suicide.”
“I am anxious to see his servants,” said Mr. Bales. “I think his butler
will be able to give some strong testimony against this man Gibbs.”
Then, upon a remark from Lionel, they discussed the career of
this miserable wretch. Lionel did not hesitate to relate the full
particulars of that scene at the Ashford Club, which our readers will
remember.
The detective thereupon added some other curious details of the
downward career of Gibbs, carefully guarding himself in respect to
Richard Tallant’s connection with some of the transactions which he
narrated. If his lordship had not been “a sort of relation” of the dead
man, he would have made his stories more piquant with the introduction
of some of the financier’s schemes.
There was quite a cloud of smoke amongst the beautiful carved leather
work of the billiard-room ceiling, before the Earl and his friends
thought it necessary to adjourn. Their closing conversation turned upon
the great success of Arthur Phillips as an artist; and Earl Verner
complimented him more particularly upon his taste in selecting a wife.
Arthur deftly changed the subject, and Lionel readily caught at the
opportunity to urge his brother to take no steps against that silly
policeman at Brazencrook; but Earl Verner would make no promise at all
about it.
“We will talk of that to-morrow,” he said.
They sat for an hour over the fire, Lionel, Arthur, and Mr. Bales,
after his lordship had gone to bed; Mr. Bales telling the two gentlemen
all he knew about Paul Somerton. Lionel said he wished the young
fellow had gone to India; he would like to make his acquaintance and
apologise to him for a little act of discourtesy which lay heavily on
his mind. It appeared from what the detective said, that Williamson had
the credit at his club of having eloped with another man’s wife, and
his oldest friends were his severest critics. It was quite a joke at
the club, Williamson’s philanthropy, now: some of the fellows put the
affair down to constitutional weakness. He had done something of the
sort, they said, when he was a very young fellow. That he was a fool
was the worst thing they said of him nevertheless, and some of them
pitied him, wondered at his silly infatuation, and was glad to hear
that the husband had made no objection to his wife’s fresh choice. But
they missed the barrister’s quiet benevolent face; some of them would
miss the sovereigns that he lent so readily; and the motion of the
clerical gentleman who called himself a professor of Hebrew mythology,
that his name be expunged from the list of members of the club, was
negatived unanimously.
Lionel could have sat all night listening to Bales telling these
stories of Paul and Williamson, Tallant and Dibble, and so could Arthur
Phillips, had that pretty wife of his not been waiting for him.
“Ah, I see you want to be off,” said Lionel at length: “good-night,
old boy. Bales and I have no magnetic attraction to induce us to lay
down our cigars. Ah, well, never mind, Bales, we can’t all expect to be
Arthur Phillipses. Good-night, dear old boy. Bales and I will smoke
just one more cigar.”
But old Morris, who would persist in sitting up until the Captain was
ready to retire, looked at his watch and found that it was four o’clock
by the time he had put the gas out and gone to bed,--shuddering with
superstitious fear as he passed the room where the body of Richard
Tallant was lying.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
How utterly friendless this dead man appeared to be. Nobody came to
Montem Castle to weep over the bier; no man or woman came to look their
last upon the white calm face. Two solicitors had been down to make
inquiries concerning the state of his affairs. One of them represented
the Meter Iron Works; the other was the solicitor to a banking company.
Neither of them cared to go up that great oak staircase of Montem
Castle into the room where the dead one lay. Their business was of
a professional character. Lord Verner tried to avoid seeing them.
Lionel Hammerton represented his brother, and endeavoured to answer
the questions which the legal gentlemen asked; but they fought very
hard for an interview with Lord Verner. They were anxious to learn if
there was any chance of his lordship contributing funds towards putting
his brother-in-law’s affairs in a solvent condition. They regretted
that the extraordinary state of Mr. Tallant’s affairs would not allow
of their delaying their visit to Montem Castle until the funeral was
over. Lord Verner winced at this reference to the murdered man as his
brother-in-law, and promised to consider the application when the
gentlemen were enabled to furnish a complete balance-sheet of the
deceased’s financial position.
The house in Kensington Palace Gardens was closed. One or two slouching
fellows with big watch-chains, black hair and prominent noses, had
called there soon after the news of the murder, to know if the master
was really dead. The first gentleman of this class begged to look at
the pictures in the dining-room. He had never looked closely into
them; perhaps they would be sold now, and he might be a buyer. Several
Stock Exchange men had called, partly out of curiosity, and partly in
the hope that there might be some one at the house to tell them that
those little claims of theirs for “carrying over” would be honourably
settled; but not a soul called out of respect to the man, or from any
deep-feeling of sorrow at his violent taking off. Certain tuft-hunters
made inquiries, chiefly on account of the fellow being murdered in such
aristocratic quarters, and a few “diners out” called to gossip with
Tallant’s man about his affairs--how he would cut up--if it was true
he had died not worth a penny, &c. &c. But there was speedily an end
to all this. The servants had not received their wages for the past
few months, and when they began to feel that there was no chance of
legacies, and little hope even of their wages being paid, they began
to disappear, and with them disappeared sundry articles of plate and
wearing apparel, ornaments, jewels, china, and other miscellaneous
things. If certain officers of the law had not been speedily placed in
possession of the establishment, even the pictures, in which the Jews
had exhibited such a lively interest, would soon have followed plate
and jewellery.
After thundering at the great door (where Richard Tallant had stepped
out into his carriage only a few mornings before) for a long time, it
was opened by a lively-looking little man, with a woollen comforter
round his neck, and a bowler hat upon his head. Mr. Bales understood
his man immediately, and followed him into the kitchen, where he found
another person of the bailiff profession, smoking a short black pipe
and shuffling a pack of cards. They soon explained to Mr. Bales that
they had nothing else to amuse them but cards. They had looked at
everything in the house--at the pictures on the walls, the pictures in
the books, and all the curious things up-stairs and down-stairs. They
had searched every nook and corner to see if any money had been left
about; but the servants had been before them in their investigations,
and so they were unsuccessful.
The great house had a gloomy, melancholy appearance; blinds down,
furniture in disorder, rooms dusty and unswept. After a brief
conversation with the bailiff’s men, the detective hurried away
to Westminster. The great brass plate was there as of old; the
well-furnished offices; all that air of wealth and power which had been
so attractive to the electioneering deputations in the late Christopher
Tallant’s days. But with the managing director’s death, and the forced
sale of his shares, the stock had fallen considerably in the market;
and Mr. Bales found the directors discussing certain fraudulent bill
transactions, which, through the managing director, involved the
scheme in enormous liabilities. It was urged by the solicitor that
the transactions were founded in fraud, and that the credit of the
company was in no way compromised by them; but the board of directors
were divided upon this, and the state of the concern, as the detective
saw it, was all sixes and sevens. A rumour got abroad that it was to
be wound up, and forthwith commenced all those intrigues which go on
amongst a certain section of the city lawyers, who have recently made
such heaps of money by winding-up shaky companies.
The most satisfactory part of the detective’s business in town, was the
fulfilment of Lady Verner’s commission concerning Mrs. Dibble. He was
instructed to give that lady a fifty-pound note and bring her back to
Montem Castle.
He found Mrs. Dibble in the little house to which she had removed under
the auspices of Lieutenant Somerton; but she was evidently in very low
water. She had heard nothing of her husband’s crime.
“I have been exthpecting to have a letter from him for several days,”
she said, “and it was my hope that I should have got the charge of a
set of chambers, with Thomas for porter; but they say the panic has
done away with all that; and me and Mrs. Robinson, we have been into
the city together for days, and to see the beautiful places as is to
let, it do make one’s heart ache, though there must have been swindling
to build such grand houses and then to fail; and I often think it is
a mercy my dear pa is not alive, for he would to a certainty have lost
his money in building some of those palaces.”
“How long has your husband lived in Brazencrook?” Mr. Bales asked.
“Well, six months now, come December, though the family hath moved
about a good deal, firtht from London, in Pall Mall, where one of the
directors of the Meter Works first got him the situation, and then they
went to Bath, and after to Brazencrook: it wath not my wish that Thomas
should return to the menial employment of his bachelor days, but losing
my money was a sore affliction, and Dibble, he thaith, ‘Maria, I shall
soon save money, and when the family is once settled in a place, which
they expect soon to be, you can come and live in that town, wherever it
is, and have your own little house, and I will sleep at home,’ which,
Mr. Bales, was all the recompense he could make for the mithfortunes
which have come upon us, and the change in that position of society in
which my poor dear pa brought me up, being, as I dare thay I have told
you, a builder, and having large contracts, he could do.”
“Then you have not heard of Mr. Dibble’s recent efforts to restore
a few hundred pounds of the lost money?” said the detective calmly,
disregarding the injunctions of his prisoner.
“A few hundred pounds!” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble, bursting a hook-and-eye
and making no effort to remedy the accident. “Hath he rethcued that
thum from the fire? Well, so he ought; for what with one thing and
another he thertainly hath been my ruin, for we should never have been
in the panic at all but for him, though how that bank came to fail ith
a mythtery to me which will never be cleared up.”
“He has not exactly rescued the money as you say; but if you will pay
attention to me for a few minutes, I will explain the case.”
“Thertainly, I will pay attention with great pleathure, and more
particularly as you theem to have thome good news, you do nurse it so
carefully, for if it was bad you would have out with it at wonth.”
“No, it is not good news: it is bad news and good news together.”
“Well, so that the good ith uppermotht, I can put up with a little
bad,” said Mrs. Dibble, proceeding to readjust one of the little jaunty
curls that ornamented each side of her fair fat face.
She had not lost all those red and white and chubby charms which had
attracted poor old Dibble in those early days of his London situation;
but she was not so rosy nor so fat, nor so well dressed as she was
when we saw her strumming out the “Old Hundredth” at that little
square piano in Still Street; neither was she so demonstrative, nor
yet quite so overbearing in her manner. But she still presumed upon
her boarding-school education, and the high position of her pa as a
builder, and the matrimonial offers she had had before she condescended
to marry Thomas Dibble.
“Your husband, Mrs. Dibble, edged on by your taunts about your losses,
and his own affection for you, has appropriated three hundred pounds.”
“Appropriated,” said Mrs. Dibble; “a fine word, thir, and one as I
remember well to have written over and over again at boarding-school,
but I am not quite clear about the exact meaning of it.”
“Prepare to hear the very worst news possible, Mrs. Dibble, and then I
will tell you what it means.”
“Don’t, thir; O don’t, thir!” said Mrs. Dibble. “I know now, I know;
Thomas is a thief, I know. Yeth, yeth; I thee it all!”
“Don’t agitate yourself,” said the detective; “pray be calm. I have
good news to come as well,--very good news.”
But Mrs. Dibble would agitate herself; Mrs. Dibble would not be calm;
Mrs. Dibble would insist upon moaning and crying and rocking herself to
and fro, and bursting her hooks-and-eyes, and undoing her cap-strings
and letting her curls come down. Mrs. Dibble was, indeed, most
perverse.
“The money has been restored to its owner, and Dibble will, no doubt,
get off with a month or two,” said the detective.
“Get off with a month or two, thir; what do you mean? A month or two of
what?”
“Imprisonment, of course,” said Bales.
“O dear! O dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble, the tears really coming into
her eyes now, and her cap-strings too, blinding her with pink ribbon
and “round saline globules,” as that smart reporter friend of ours
would say,--“What will become of me! I shall descend with grey hairs to
the grave! and to think that I wath once at a boarding-school, the envy
of them all, and the daughter of a gentleman, thir; yeth, a gentleman,
though I thay it. O dear! O dear! Thomath, Thomath, what have you done!”
“I have told you what Thomas has done,” said Bales, in his calm,
imperturbable way; “and now I will tell you the good news I have for
you, if you will only be quiet. The Right Honourable the Countess of
Verner sends you this,--it is a fifty-pound note; and she requests you
to pack up your things and come down to Montem Castle with me.”
Mrs. Dibble glanced at the note and listened to the detective’s words,
but continued to moan and cry. She did not know what else to do; for
she was not quite sure that Bales was not deceiving her.
“The lady, it appears, was once in your house: she is Lieutenant
Somerton’s sister: if I told you that much, she said, you would
understand.”
“Lieutenant Thomerton! O yeth, yeth,” said Mrs. Dibble, seizing the
note; “I understand.”
“It seems so,” said Bales.
“She married a lord, O yeth. Me and Chrissy (poor lost dear!)--me and
Chrissy went to see the wedding at Hanover Square, and grand it was to
be sure, though I have heard my pa say that when he was married to my
ma,--it is a good many yearth ago now,--that they walked on flowers and
carpets for a quarter of a mile.”
Then suddenly remembering that she had serious cause for grief, Mrs.
Dibble put her apron to her eyes and began to cry afresh.
“Oh, you know all about it then; when will you be ready?”
“Thath hard to say. I shall have a great deal to do to get ready, and I
thent a few things to the wash, which it hath not been my custom to do
of late, and I am sure----”
“Can you be ready in an hour?” asked Bales, interrupting her.
“An hour! Abthurd: you mutht be mad to think of thutch a thing, thir. I
wath thinking of a week at leatht before I could be ready to appear in
noble society at a castle, though when I wath a girl----”
“Never mind when you were a girl, Mrs. Dibble, just think of your
husband; he is in prison, and perhaps you can help him; Montem Castle
is close to Brazencrook.”
“O dear! what a hard-hearted man you mutht be to be thure, to remind me
of that again just ath I wath a trying to think that all your newth
wath not bad newth.”
And then Mrs. Dibble began to cry once more for decency’s sake.
“Will you be ready in the morning?--however you must; so there’s an
end. Lady Verner wished that you would come to-day. You don’t suppose
you are going to sit in the drawing-room, and all that sort of thing,
with an earl and countess, eh? You will be the housekeeper’s visitor.
Come, no more nonsense; say you will be ready in the morning.”
“If it ith for the thake of my poor forlorn mithguided husband,” said
Mrs. Dibble, sighing, “I mutht, of course. I will, I will, thir.”
“Then I shall call in a cab for you to-morrow morning at ten o’clock,”
said Bales, taking up his hat and leaving the poor little house without
further ceremony. He was by no means in a good humour the next morning
when he found Mrs. Dibble prepared with luggage enough to have made
a voyage round the globe. Boxes, bundles, parcels, carpet bags,
umbrellas, shawls and mufflers, the old lady filled the cab inside and
out, and she created quite a sensation at Paddington whilst Bales was
taking tickets. She had lost an umbrella, and left a parcel in the cab;
she had fallen over a luggage-truck, and quarrelled with a porter:
so that when Bales came upon the platform, he found his companion
the centre of interest and attraction, and the target for a series
of lively jokes and witticisms from the “paper boys,” who pressed
the _Times_, _Standard_, and _Telegraph_ upon her attention, much to
her annoyance. She was telling an old gentleman who had come to her
assistance, that she had had a boarding-school education, and that her
father, who was a builder, had erected several stations and a railway
bridge; and she did think that if there was civility to be got she
ought to have it, let alone the fact of her losing money in the panic.
Mr. Bales, however, speedily induced Mrs. Dibble to take a seat in a
first-class carriage, and the old gentleman smiled benevolently upon
her. He could easily see that it was not a dangerous case, he said to
Mr. Bales. To what asylum was he conveying her?
“You had better ask her,” said Bales. “You will be amused at her reply.”
“Indeed!” said the gentleman.
“Yes,” said Bales, “she rather likes to be asked the question.”
“Then I will certainly put it,” said the traveller, and he walked with
Bales to the carriage.
The detective took his seat, and began to read the _Times_ with great
attention.
“Athylum, thir!” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble after a few moments, in reply to
a bland question. “What do you mean, thir? How dare you, thir!”
“Really, madam, I did not intend to offend, but----”
“But--don’t but me, thir!”
“No, certainly not,” said the traveller, “certainly not; it was not my
intention.”
“Athylum indeed! If you are inquisitive, thir, let me tell you that my
destination is Montem Castle. Did you think I was mad, or a matron,
thir.”
“Oh, neither, neither; but a philanthropic lady who----”
“Rubbish! you think you are making game of me, but you can’t do it,
thir; and I am surprithed,--a man of your years.”
“My years! what do you mean?”
“Yes, your years. Will her ladyship send a carriage for us, did you
say?” Mrs. Dibble inquired of Bales, with the full intention of
crushing her persecutor at once by the grandeur of her connections.
“Certainly,” said Bales, with a bow of deference and a quiet wink at
the stranger, who, at first inclined to be angry at Mrs. Dibble’s
remark about his age, now laughed heartily.
“Very good! Ha, ha, ha!” he exclaimed. “Very good. Her ladyship’s
carriage!”
The old gentleman’s hilarity attracted quite a little crowd round the
window, and Mrs. Dibble was excited into such a terrible rage, that
she flung her reticule at him and knocked his hat off, to the immense
delight of the bystanders.
Bales roared with laughter, as Mrs. Dibble screamed and vociferated at
the humorous gentleman upon whom she had turned the laugh so vigorously.
“Here, none of this,--none of this,” said the guard, pitching the
reticule back into the carriage and giving the signal for departure.
Screech went the whistle of the engine, and the train moved off amidst
roars of laughter at the gentleman whose wig had fallen off with his
hat. The passengers were looking out all along the train, and Mrs.
Dibble suddenly seeing the humour of the whole thing, and the old man’s
difficulty with his false hair, began to laugh too; and Mr. Bales
telling the story afterwards, said he certainly never laughed so much
in his life.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the remains of Richard Tallant were being buried; buried in
the same tomb where the father lay in that old church near Barton.
Earl Verner had desired that the obsequies might be performed with all
decency and respect, seeing that whatever the dead man might have been,
he was his wife’s brother. So Lionel Hammerton and Arthur Phillips had
attended with the Earl, and the body was buried with due solemnity.
What a termination to the ambition of Christopher Tallant! What an end
to all that pride of wealth!--all those years of hard work, of toil and
anxiety in the father’s younger days; all those lessons of thrift, of
energy, of industry, learnt in the north countrie; all that heaping up
of riches: here was the final scene. Father and son lay together, the
one a broken-hearted man, the other a bankrupt in purse and reputation,
with a murderer’s bullet in his brain!--the son of that London wife
whom Christopher Tallant had taken down to Avon-side in those days of
his early manhood. Here they lay together--the proud dead father and
his disinherited son: here they lay with their dead hopes, tenants of
a dishonoured grave! They who should have been living in honour and
high repute, assisting to govern the destinies of a nation. A fine,
generous, hospitable, manly fellow that proud merchant had been, hating
anything and everything that was dishonourable in a monetary sense, yet
gauging everything by a simple golden standard; he had carried his just
anger at his son’s misconduct into the grave, but there lay the son
by his side, quiet enough now. It had been a subject of considerable
discussion at Montem Castle before the funeral, whether Richard Tallant
should be buried in the family vault, and Lord Verner had overruled all
objections with his arguments in favour of this interment. He was the
last male representative of the race, and it was not for them to carry
further that awful retribution which had befallen him; and so, as we
have said, the merchant’s son was buried in the family vault.
Arthur Phillips remembered the other funeral; that gloomy cortége,
which had arrested his steps on that misty autumn day, when, assured
of the success of his picture, he had come down to Barton Hall to see
Phœbe. It was Autumn again at this second funeral, but the sun was
shining brightly now, sending glints of coloured light from the oriel
windows down the chancel of the old church, and glimmering upon the
ceiling with a trembling reflection from the adjacent lake. The old
church was full of people, not mourners, but lookers on: men and women
come to see the murdered man’s funeral, just as many of them would go
to see the man hanged who had killed him, if they had an opportunity.
The old trees that had loomed forth dim and shadowy in the adjacent
park, now stood forth in all their autumnal grandeur, and some of
them cast long shadows in at the open doorway, upon the monumental
pavements. The October wind moaned now and then round the old tower,
and rustled the ivy, making it tap upon the windows in the midst of the
parson’s solemn funereal words. And now and then a few brown leaves
came rushing into the chancel, as if they sought sanctuary against the
persecutions of the wind. When the sexton crumbled the dust upon the
coffin-lid, these stray leaves shambled in also,--sad emblems of death
and decay, but not without an eloquent suggestion to the thoughtful
mind, of our reasonable faith in the resurrection of the dead; for
autumn and winter are but the harbingers of spring. Arthur Phillips
uttered a prayer that they whose sins brought their own punishment in
this world, might thereby find forgiveness in the next for these same
misdeeds.
Mrs. Phillips and the Countess sat together at Montem watching the
leaves whirl hither and thither; those leaves,--so wild, so weird, so
beautiful, so sad, so eloquent to Amy--they flew along the terrace like
flocks of birds, away over the green turf, until they lighted on the
distant lake, and sailed about wherever the wind willed. And Amy told
her dear friend how the leaves had whirled round those carriage-wheels
on that autumn day, when she first saw her husband. They always
recalled that day, these autumn leaves--always brought it back to Amy’s
mind. These were her dead hopes, the leaves of her young love that
had been nipped by the frost of neglect. She had watered them with her
tears, and then bade them go whither they listed.
Poor Amy! What a relief it was to open all her heart to Phœbe now, to
repeat to her all those acts of deceit which she had practised. Mrs.
Phillips shuddered at her friend’s description of her interviews with
Richard Tallant, and Amy painted her own miserable acts of dissembling
in more sombre colours than they deserved. Yet all this had increased
her gratitude to the Earl, who had believed in her despite everything,
who had loved her from the beginning with the same earnest affection,
who had never once doubted her, and whom she vowed again and again she
would love at last.
Yet the dead leaves whirled about in the wind, and faint sounds of the
minute-bell came wandering over the lake, like the knell of departed
hopes and joys. Even Phœbe’s soft sweet voice and tender words did not
altogether neutralise the melancholy effect of these dead leaves and
that distant bell. But Amy felt that there was peace in this solemn
autumn-time, nevertheless; and that all danger of losing Earl Verner’s
love was at an end. Remembering the peril through which she had
passed, there was happiness in this; looking back for a moment to the
black clouds which had hovered over Montem within the last few days,
she could bear to look upon the dead leaves now without a pang, and
with the soft, tender, soothing words of her dear, dear friend Phœbe
nestling in her heart, there was peace and hope even in the murmurs of
that funeral bell.
CHAPTER XIX.
IN WHICH SEVERAL PERSONS QUIT THE STAGE
FOR EVER.
No great amount of persuasion was required to induce Lord Verner to
give up his intention of prosecuting the superintendent of police at
Brazencrook. The Watch Committee of the old borough had intimated to
the officer that it would be necessary he should resign his situation,
and he had done so. They were very obsequious to Lord Verner, and this
was the most practical way of showing the town’s allegiance to his
lordship. But the chief contended, as fairly he might, that there were
grounds of suspicion against Captain Hammerton, and that although he
might have been hasty, he had not exceeded his duty in apprehending
that gentleman. The subject was taken up warmly by the local Press,
and a smart London paper had a powerfully sarcastic and biting article
calling the Brazencrook Watch Committee a set of snobs, and upholding
the officer of police. On all hands, however, testimony was borne to
the complete exculpation of Lionel Hammerton.
Seeing that the guilt of Shuffleton Gibbs was established most clearly
in the first examination before the Brazencrook magistrates, it was
certainly due to Lionel that he should be regarded as an injured man in
that unfortunate apprehension by the Brazencrook chief. All his trouble
and sorrow had arisen out of his own pride and want of confidence in
the woman whom he professed to love. If he had been content to accept
the warning of Paul Somerton that night in London, near the steps of
the Ashford Club, what a world of misery he might have been spared; a
manly faith in that high-spirited girl at Barton would have saved him.
No one saw all this now more clearly than Lionel Hammerton, and what
was more, he knew that he had been rightly punished. The only real bit
of consolation in the whole business was the prison episode. This was
his only real grievance, the only bit of martyrdom in his career. If he
could have felt that he had been injured by Amy; if the grievance had
been on his side, he might have been more content. It is better to be
wronged than to wrong; it is more comfortable to receive an injury than
to commit an injustice. All Lionel Hammerton’s troubles had been of
his own creation, and family pride was at the bottom of them all. His
incarceration was the only injury done to him which he had not courted,
which his pride and injustice had not brought upon himself; but it was
a source of gratification to him that Amy felt he had undergone this
indignity on her account.
It was hard work to part from Amy; to leave the two girls whom he had
known in those happy days at Barton Hall; to erase the past, and look
forward into a future in which there were no familiar faces; but this
was his penance, and he was willing now to abide by it. If that most
unkind suspicion of mercenary motives (which Lionel had not strength
of mind enough to keep back in the personal explanations) set forth in
a previous chapter, had not rankled in the mind of the Countess, the
parting would have been no small trial on her part. She would not have
given any outward sign of her feelings had her heart been breaking;
but Lionel’s unmanly suspicion had almost entirely removed the last
fragment of her romantic love for him. Setting this aside, her honour
as a wife, her gratitude towards Lord Verner, and a strong sense of
duty (kept in constant excitement by Mrs. Arthur Phillips), would
have saved her from any further exhibition of strong feeling. It is
not in human nature to maintain a full control over the passions, and
particularly over that love between man and woman which God has planted
in the human heart for His own wise and beneficent purposes. When that
great instinct of nature, which, secretly and unseen, draws two souls
together, is set at nought, certain sorrow is the result. Happiness may
come in time to each of those who have broken this first instinctive
contract of nature; but it is a very limited happiness compared with
that perfect bliss which true lovers feel.
The Countess of Verner was as happy as a woman can be who had loved and
lost, and married for revenge and ambition. Regard and respect ripened
by degrees into what may be called sincere matrimonial friendship, and
this was still further enhanced by the discovery of her old lover’s
unworthy suspicion about the sincerity of her love. She vowed to Mrs.
Phillips, that had she been free to accept Lionel Hammerton, and he had
sued at her feet with ten times the honeyed sweetness of his eloquence
in the Barton gardens, the knowledge of his unworthy doubt of her true
faith would have made her refuse him, had he been twenty times Lionel
Hammerton and her first love.
So when they parted, Lionel Hammerton’s brotherly kiss sent no thrill
to Amy’s heart, though she knew it was his intention never to return.
Lord Verner shook his brother warmly by the hand, begging him to come
home as soon as he liked and as often. Mrs. Arthur Phillips kissed
him for “Auld Lang Syne;” and her husband, the artist, exchanged a
sympathetic glance with the friend of his early days, which deeply
affected the voluntary exile. Mrs. Dibble, who was living in the
housekeeper’s room until Thomas should be released, begged to be
allowed to shake hands with the Captain, and she told the servants
afterwards that it did not need a boarding-school education to see
that the Earl’s brother was born nobility, and that you need not be a
builder’s daughter and copy specifications to know that Mr. Bales was
a policeman in disguise, as he stood by all the time without the least
emotion, for all the world as if a trial had just come to an end and
the prisoner was going to be hanged, and he had the job of taking him
back to gaol prior to the sentence being carried out.
Mr. Bales travelled as far as London with the Captain, and almost the
first person he met, after seeing Lionel off, was Mr. Williamson, the
barrister, walking into the Temple. The two recognised each other
immediately.
“Ah, Mr. Williamson, sir! how do you do? I thought you were lost,” said
the detective.
“No, not lost, Bales,” said the barrister, extending his hand. “Come
with me.”
It was evening, and the detective followed his friend up the dark
staircase.
When they reached the barrister’s room, Williamson produced a latch
key, and opened the door; the old woman who attended to this part of
the chambers came blundering after them, full of exclamations of joy at
seeing the barrister again.
“Light a fire,” said the barrister.
“Lor, sir, the room is as damp as can be; it ain’t fit to sit in after
all these months; they wanted to break the door open, but I paid the
rent regular out of the money you sent me, and I knowed, of course, as
you would come back some day,” said the woman.
“I never expected to do so, or only for a day, to settle my affairs
here and give up the chambers properly,” said the barrister,
addressing Bales, in reply to the woman.
“Lor, sir!” said the old woman, bustling about and lighting the fire
and putting the table to rights.
“We can keep the damp out,” said the barrister, “if there is any whisky
left.”
“O yes, sir, plenty!” said the woman.
“Very well,” said the barrister, producing his cigar case, and in
a very short time Mr. Bales sat listening to those portions of Mr.
Williamson’s story with which he was not already acquainted.
The barrister’s manner was far more quiet and subdued than it was
when we first made his acquaintance. All that cynicism and apparent
infidelity had dropped bodily as it were out of his conversation. He
was evidently quietly resigned to his lot, calmly resolved to live out
the end of his days uncomplainingly. He had succeeded to a certain
extent in his somewhat romantic and almost hopeless resolves to reform
his miserable daughter. He did not tell Bales how and by what degrees
he had worked upon her darkened mind; he said nothing of the days of
patient and unflagging effort to instruct her, to excite her higher
sensibilities, to animate her with a true love for the beautiful and
sublime, and through the medium of nature and art to bring her to a
knowledge of the divine blessings of the Christian faith and hope. It
was a plain unvarnished story which the barrister told his friend the
detective. Whatever may have been the result of the father’s endeavour
to change the perverted nature of his singularly-discovered child, her
career was at an end--she died of a fever in a French convent, where
the barrister had placed her, by her own desire; and Mr. Williamson had
left France only the day before the detective met him after the burial
of his daughter, upon whose tomb he had inscribed those words of the
second commandment, which he had written down in that memorable epistle
to Paul Somerton.
The detective told Williamson all about the stirring occurrences which
had taken place during his absence, and the barrister resolved that
he would convert what stock and property he had into money, and join
Lieutenant Somerton in the Cape, at any rate for a time.
“I shall travel about the world and occupy myself with the manners and
customs of other lands,” said the barrister, “and write sketches of
travel for some of my publishing friends in town. If I could put my own
trials into a book, and make capital out of my own troubles, I might
perpetrate a novel, Bales.”
“It would be very taking,” said Bales; “I have been asked, sir, by
a gentleman that writes for the _Pyrotechnic_, to let him do my
autobiography, with all the cases I have been mixed up in; but I don’t
think I shall.”
They chatted together for some hours in the familiar room, and we
leave them enveloped in clouds of smoke through which the candles burn
as dimly as the barrister’s future hopes; we leave them to carry our
readers to the Brazencrook county gaol, where there are three prisoners
in whom we have an interest.
Shuffleton Gibbs had been examined before the magistrates, and
committed for trial on the clearest evidence, as we have intimated; so
that the prediction of the showman, that he would not leave his bed
again, was not fully verified: only a very few weeks elapsed, however,
before the criminal gradually sank, and at last died as much from want
of gin as through disease. He died a miserable death, uninfluenced
altogether by the ministrations of the chaplain who, by a strange
coincidence, had been a member of that very college where Gibbs and
Richard Tallant had first become acquainted; but before he died, when
he felt quite satisfied that he was in no danger of being hung, he
admitted the truth of the showman’s evidence, and not only confessed
his own guilt, but boasted of it, gloated over it, and described the
murder in fearfully graphic terms, until the prison officials sickened
at the details, and shrunk back from the awful skeleton-like figure
that grinned and raved in those last death agonies.
Confronted with the chief witness against him, Gibbs put out his
skinny hand, which the showman took timidly in his, and with that
professional feeling which never deserted the owner of the famous dog
Momus, Digby Martin, _alias_ Smith, thought to himself what a rival
Gibbs would have been just then to that living skeleton, who had
treated him so shamefully at Severntown!
It is neither necessary nor desirable that we should dwell upon this
wretched scene in the prison, where the last of the race to which
Gibbs belonged ended his miserable career. Let it suffice that he died
and was buried; and that the showman was released, and afterwards
brought quite a small fortune to the proprietor of the tavern near the
Brazencrook Music Hall, by relating the true particulars of the murder
in the ruined castle of Montem, exhibiting the clothes of the murderer,
and the pistol with which the deed was done. Momus took her share in
these performances, and afterwards went round with the hat,--being
faithful to her rough master to the last, and never wearying in her
obedience to his behests.
Thomas Dibble was found guilty; but in consideration of the excellent
character which he received from several witnesses, and the whole of
the circumstances under which the robbery was committed, he was only
sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. During the whole of this time,
Mrs. Dibble remained at Montem Castle with the housekeeper, except when
she went, once a month, to see Thomas, for a few minutes, at the gaol,
upon which occasions she made a show of forgiveness and sympathy; but
she could never resist telling the turnkey, in Dibble’s presence, of
her boarding-school education, the proposals of marriage which she had
received when she lived at home with her pa, and other biographical
reminiscences with which the reader is already too familiar.
When Thomas was released he was conducted from the gaol by an agent of
Lord Verner to a comfortable cottage near Avonworth, a few miles from
Barton Hall, in which cottage Mrs. Dibble was already living. She would
have met her husband at the end of his confinement; but Lady Verner
had made the arrangements of the time, and the agent carried them out.
When he had driven Dibble to the cottage he told him that this was his
future home, and that he would receive from Lady Verner, a quarterly
allowance sufficient to enable his wife and himself to live comfortably
all their days. Poor Dibble’s surprise and gratitude knew no bounds;
he cried and laughed by turns; and he was quite content to believe
ever afterwards what Mrs. Dibble told him, that all this had been done
because of her boarding-school education, and on account of her pa
being a gentleman. With all this good fortune following so soon upon a
series of miseries, and coming to him at the gloomiest period of his
career, Thomas Dibble’s spirits soon rose to a high pitch of buoyancy;
whilst “comfortable living” and plenty to eat and drink gave him
courage to withstand the renewal of his wife’s domineering influence.
He never succeeded in being master, and he would not have drunk of
the well of St. Keyne if he could; for Dibble’s was a humble spirit;
he had always served, and was content to do so;--in fact, he rather
preferred it than otherwise. But once in these latter days he asserted
his dignity in such a way that prevented Mrs. Dibble from drawing the
rein too tightly, and enabled them to live more happily than ever they
had lived before.
“Never you mention that roll of notes business again, Maria; it baint
that I wishes to deny that I was not an honest man, but I thinks on it
often enough myself, without your dinning it into my ears. I’se never
said I had a boarding-school education, an’ all that, Maria, and I
knows you has; but when a man’s shown a woman that he would do anything
in the world for her, even to putting his hand to thieve, it baint for
that woman to throw it in his face. Don’t do it again, Maria, or I goes
out of this house never to come back no more.”
Mrs. Dibble did not mention the subject again, and they lived all the
more happily together after this assertion of his position by Dibble.
But the builder’s daughter, with her peculiar intermittent lisp,
did not fail, whenever an opportunity arose, to proclaim her birth,
parentage, and education to the inhabitants of the district. In course
of time, by dint of household economy, Mrs. Dibble bought an old square
piano at Avonworth, and she would sit as she did in the old times of
Still Street on Sunday evenings, and thump out the “Old Hundredth”
until her hooks-and-eyes came undone, and Dibble had a fine prospect
of back and back hair which reminded him of those prosperous days when
he was porter at the famous offices of the Meter Iron Works Company.
This, however, excited feelings of regret in poor Dibble’s mind that he
was dependent upon the bounty of Lady Verner now, instead of earning
his own living; so he made application to the agent for “something to
do;” and, pleased with Dibble’s desire to make some practical return
for the kindness he received, Lady Verner recommended him to Mr. Arthur
Phillips, who gave him another cottage near Barton, and had him
instructed in the mystery of grinding colours. Dibble soon made himself
useful, and found enough to do at Barton Hall (where he had once been
in the employ of Christopher Tallant, Esq.) all day long. This made
his evenings happier; the music of the old piano no longer twitted him
with his dependency. Mrs. Dibble, as had been her wont in the happy
times, mixed every night for him a glass of gin toddy, and whilst they
sat together by the fire on the conclusion of the “Old Hundredth,” she
acknowledged that after all Thomas Dibble was worthy to be the husband
of a woman who had had a boarding-school education, with music and
extras.
CHAPTER XX.
CLOSING SCENES.
The bells of Brazencrook and Avonworth which rung out so merrily
at Amy’s marriage, and tolled so solemnly at the burial of Richard
Tallant, have rung out joyously in celebration of the birth of an
heir to the noble house of Verner, and with that event we approach
the concluding scenes of this drama of love and money, of Fortune and
Finance.
You will not sit patiently wondering what the end is to be, like you
sat when that new drama was produced at the London theatre, where all
the mystery and grandeur of the play was concentrated in the last act.
Already you have guessed how things will end; for we have not striven
to be mysterious, neither have we desired to trifle with your feelings.
Our chief aim has been to take you into our confidence, to make you
our friend, to let you know, without circumlocution, as much about
the people whose lives we are sketching as we knew at starting. You
may have been a little surprised, perhaps, and slightly confused at
that incident of the two girls at Barton Hall; but otherwise we have
not laboured to hide our knowledge for a time, that we might surprise
you further on. This may be a fault (one of many faults) in our
narration of the history of these actors in the romance of the Tallants
of Barton. If it be so, we hope that the motive which lies at the
foundation of it may in some wise be considered a laudable one.
Although we shall not surprise you like the dramatists with these
closing scenes, we have brought our chief characters together for the
finish. If you do not see them all before the foot-lights, you will
hear of them. We cannot let down the drop-scene amidst a crash of music
and blue fire; but we promise you there shall be real water in these
closing scenes, real trees and meadows, real halls and castles, real
streets, and above all, real people.
If we succeed in impressing you with this fact, we shall gladly
dispense with the blue fire and the orchestral accompaniments. Our fire
shall be the glorious sun; our music the roar of the great city, and
the murmur of the wind in the Severnshire valley.
Nearly a year has elapsed since the Brazencrook bells proclaimed the
Countess of Verner a mother; two years have gone by since Lionel
Hammerton sailed for India; and once more it is summer-time o’er all
the land,--hot, glowing, glorious summer,--and we propose to let down
the drop-scene amidst the refulgent splendours of the time.
Shining with the same genial warmth upon all men and things, Great Sol
is your only constitutional monarch. Yon magnificent sun,--nothing
influences his benign influence. The courtier wins no smile from him
that the beggar may not have. None enjoy a monopoly of his favour. He
rules over all with an equal sway. Eloquence, money, claims of long
descent, deeds of arms, gorgeous array, elicit no extra honours at his
court. See how benignantly he looks down upon yon little cottage. See
how his beams light up those lichen-covered bricks, and tremble upon
those little square panes of glass. See how yon beggar lies in the
royal presence, basking in the genial warmth. That fine mansion close
by has no grander lights upon it; that proud lord in his carriage gets
no more sunshine than the beggar.
O glorious freedom of nature! Why do we not learn the lessons thou
teachest? Why does that proud woman take up her dress lest her ragged
sister should contaminate her, when yon glorious sun takes both in his
radiant arms in acknowledged equality? Look at those streams of sunny
light that fall upon the gorgeous equipages in Hyde Park; they do not
disdain those ragged children on the footpath.
It is the height of the London season, and all the great town is filled
with the pomp and glitter of high life. Everything looks bright, even
poverty has a smile. The beggar is in clover, and the wretched are at
least warm. There are no snowstorms, no cold cutting winds to torture
the body and make cheerless hearths still more dismal. London wears her
fairest smiles; the sun with one broad depth of light clasps the great
world in a fond embrace. The great town is a whirl of life. Royalty,
nobility, commonalty, roll along the glowing thoroughfares in glitter
of gold and silver. The Thames is alive with pleasure-boats, and the
steamers go skimming along past the Houses of Parliament, where the
business of the nation is going on despite those everlasting reform
debates, and that continual stream of talk which flows from lip to
pencil, from short-hand notes to type, and stares us in the face every
morning in long columns of print that are never read from beginning to
end, except by those professional readers who corrected them in the
garish glare of the gas when we were all abed. It is the gay time of
the year entirely, for the rich more particularly, for beauty, for the
young commencing their first season; it is the gay time of the year
for those dashing gentlemen on prancing horses, for those blooming
ladies in the open carriages; those loungers in the parks; for artists
whose pictures are marked “sold” in the Exhibitions; for opera and
theatrical people in the full tide of success; for West End tradesmen
and hotel-keepers; for strolling musicians; for everybody in fact; the
hot, gay, bustling, brilliant London season.
There was a time, at this period of the year, when Richard Tallant
rode about amongst the best of those gallants at Tattenham Corner; and
when Mr. Gibbs wore the lightest of light gloves and the tightest of
fancy boots that you would see in all the park. Christopher Tallant
too, in his cut-away coat and checked trousers,--he had stood by those
railings, in the sunshine, to see his fine son pass by. The Right Hon.
Lionel Hammerton had many a time and oft been in the midst of that
glittering stream of humanity.
Surely all this pomp and pageantry cometh not so soon again after that
financial earthquake which swallowed up so many heaps of gold and
houses and horses and carriages! Does anything ever make any change
in that magnificent show of national wealth in the London season? Do
all those railways over the house-tops and under the houses, spanning
streets, and burrowing beneath the cellars--do they make any difference
to those everlasting rows of cabs and ’busses and carts and carriages,
and the blocks in Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill? Does anything ever
alter the social aspect of London, the busy, bustling, gorgeous,
golden, seething aspect of the streets?
Despite the commercial storm, in face of all those wonderful
contrivances of bridge and rail to ease the traffic, London was as full
of life and gaiety and pomp and glitter and show, this third London
season of the Countess of Verner, as ever it had been before. We shall
leave her ladyship in the midst of the whirl of pomp and pleasure, one
of the queens of beauty. She has been kissed by our gracious Queen;
she has excited the envy of many a titled dame. She has had many an
admiring eye upon her amongst crowds of smiling courtiers. She has
reached the highest point of her ambition, and in the foremost rank of
the first society in Europe; her husband has made a great speech in the
House of Lords; she is still declared to be the most beautiful woman of
this gorgeous London season. Their West End house is filled with all
the leading people of the time; the Verners are the rage,--the Countess
is the one bright particular star in the aristocratic atmosphere of
the period. And here we leave her looking her best; heightened are all
those charms which once attracted Lionel Hammerton, and will live in
his memory, like the sound of falling water to the traveller who has
sunk down maimed and athirst, unable to taste the cooling stream which
goes rippling and smiling on, and chattering over the rocks as if it
mocked him. We leave Lord Verner, supremely happy in his married life,
blissfully ignorant of the narrow escape which that happiness has had
of shipwreck; blissfully ignorant, like the mariner, of the shoals and
quicksands which have endangered his vessel in the fog and darkness. We
leave our Countess in the full light of fashion’s splendours, and still
bent on the performance of her duty in the high station to which she
has been exalted. If we were writing a mere book of fiction, and not a
true story of life, Lord Verner would probably have died conveniently
towards the end of the story, that Lionel Hammerton might, in defiance
of law and order and everything else, have married his widow, the twain
ending their days by some lake of Como, where the perfumed light steals
through the mist of alabaster lamps, and the law is not too stringent
anent matrimonial license; but, as this is a matter-of-fact history,
Lord Verner does not die for the purpose of rewarding his brother’s
stupidity with a wife and a title. Nay, more, that title has slipped
away from Lionel Hammerton for ever.
We leave the Countess of Verner amidst the splendid pleasures of the
London season, and, with the hope that an occasional expression of
weariness which shadows those brilliant eyes may indicate a surfeit
of pleasure, rather than any lack of real happiness, we turn to that
great flat country of Lincolnshire with its green fields of wheat, its
long dreamy-looking river, and its rich pastures. We stop at Oldhall
Farm, and there, with the windows wide open, we find Luke Somerton
telling some neighbours, who have come in to tea, all about that model
farm in Severnshire. He never wearies of talking about those wonderful
cow-sheds and stables and granaries, and the new yard that is hemmed
in with buildings such as those which he is erecting at Oldhall. Mrs.
Somerton, with a watchful look in her eyes, sits by plying her needle,
and now and then a telling proverb falls from her lips. She has not
quite got over that sarcastic disappointed manner which characterised
her conversation years ago, but she is quieter now and more subdued;
any one can see that she has had her troubles, but she is not an
unhappy woman nevertheless. Some people would call her a very happy
woman; but these knew nothing of that confession made to the master of
Barton Hall in those past days of her life in the Vale of Avonworth;
otherwise they would have seen cause to rejoice over certain occasional
letters from Paul Somerton, and sundry sweet little notes from Mrs.
Arthur Phillips, which cheered the latter days of the ambitious
Lincolnshire woman.
The letters of Paul Somerton reveal many circumstances of interest to
the readers of these pages. We gather from them, and the batch of Cape
newspapers which accompanies each epistle, that the Lieutenant soon
ceased to nourish his unholy attachment for the siren who, for a time,
had held him in adamantine chains. There are fevers of passion which in
the young heart soon burn out and leave nothing behind but a vague and
harmless memory, without one pang of sorrow or regret. Happily for Paul
Somerton, his wild and wretched passion for that poor abandoned dupe of
Shuffleton Gibbs partook of this fiery yet transient character. When
his better nature had time to assert itself, and the temptress was no
longer in his sight, her image gradually faded out, to be replaced by
one worthy in every way to be treasured in the heart, of an honest and
honourable man.
Going out to the Cape, Lieutenant Somerton made the acquaintance of
the daughter of a brother officer, a charming girl of his own age;
acquaintanceship rapidly grew into love, and a month after the vessel’s
arrival in Table Bay, they were married. Paul wrote home very romantic
letters about his wife, her beauty, her accomplishments, the bravery
of her father, with sundry domestic details of regimental life at
the Cape, which were highly gratifying to his father and mother. The
latter said to herself that, after all, the Somertons were people of
importance in the world. Thoughts of the boy who had gone away in early
life and never returned, thoughts of the poor unburied body tossed
about beneath the deep waters, intervened, to throw a shadow upon these
happy feelings concerning her soldier-son; and that confession started
up to mar the happy associations which now clung about the Avonworth
region of Barton; but, on the whole, Sarah Somerton was in a certain
sense a happy woman, and Luke would lash himself into ecstasies over
the letters of Phœbe and Paul.
Lieutenant Somerton had not been married many months when his old
friend Mr. Williamson called upon him, and was pleased to find him
married. The Barrister did not stay long at the Cape, but long enough
to tell Paul the conclusion of the story which he had partly related
in that big letter which struck Paul down with such severity in those
dark days of his boyish passion. Williamson derived great satisfaction
and comfort from Paul’s marriage, and Paul parted from his old friend
with tears of gratitude. Williamson had determined to go into the
interior of Africa with a band of adventurous explorers, and the last
that Paul had heard of him was from some natives, who had gone out part
of the way and returned with satisfactory news of the progress of the
expedition. After the first year of Paul’s marriage some English troops
arrived in the colony from India, one company being in the command of
the Hon. Captain Hammerton, who had at once sought out Paul, and they
speedily became bosom friends.
“We often talk,” said Paul in his last letter, “of Avonworth Valley,
Barton Hall, and the farm. My dear little wife says she gets quite
jealous of Barton Hall, and Phœbe and Amy (we never call her Countess,
I and Hammerton) and I do hope that some day I shall bring her over to
England to see you all. She is most delighted with my description of
Oldhall and the Lincolnshire country, for she was born close by, in the
north of Nottinghamshire, bless her dear little face!
“Captain Hammerton and myself once had a disagreement, which you
know something about. In the most noble way he apologised to me, and
expressed his regret for any annoyance he may have caused me, and said
it had been a load on his mind for a long time. He is a very agreeable
companion, but rather gloomy and despondent at times. I often think
that he and our Amy that used to be were rather smitten with each
other, and that he grieves about having lost her. My wife says it is
easy to see that he has been crossed in love. If being careless and
generous; sometimes in very high spirits and at others equally low;
continually with a cigar in his mouth, and sitting dreamily looking at
the smoke; talking regretfully about England, and saying he shall never
see it any more; sometimes visiting us continually, and then keeping
away altogether, as it were: if these are tokens of his being crossed
in love, as my wife calls it, then she is right no doubt. The other day
he had a brush with some Kaffir raiders, and fought like a lion. He
went after them with only some twenty men: they encountered a hundred,
killed a dozen, and brought in twenty prisoners. They say the Captain
fought like a very devil, and he talks of the business as if he liked
it. He says he should not mind if war broke out to-morrow; he would
like to have a year of exciting work. My wife says this is a further
sign that he has been crossed in love.
“For my own part, I hope things will go on peaceably. I think they
will. There is a more settled feeling here than there was. I am not a
coward, I hope; but war for its own sake is not to my liking, and the
chances are that, if all goes on comfortably for another year, I shall
be with you for a month or two, with my dear Katy, in your flat but
fertile county.
“I am glad to hear such good news from Mr. Phillips, and it is just
as it should be that Phœbe and her husband should be living at Barton
Hall: I should like to see that well-known district once again, and
sincerely hope to do so before another year is at an end.”
* * * * *
It is summer, we said, o’er all the land, and these are summer scenes,
these closing scenes of ours. The winter of fickle Fortune has been
with us in many of these pages. Our story has had more to do with storm
than sunshine; this closing scene is the greenest and sunniest spot in
our journey. We stand where we did at the opening of our story, within
the shadow of Berne Hills. You know that modern mansion in the smiling
vale of Avonworth, with its long gravelly drive, its half a mile of
velvety lawn, its splendid park; its groups of cedars, birch trees, ash
and sycamore; its ornamental lake, and those glorious bits of distant
hill and dale in the ever-changing lights of this western land. Here,
where we first saw that sweet, fair, _spirituel_ face, with the parted
lips and the flowing hair; here, where we took you, dear reader, by
the button-hole, to direct your attention to all that was picturesque
and lovely in the hills and the valleys; here, where we introduced you
to the leading people in our story; here, where we paused to mourn
over that fine old merchant, dead of his golden sorrow; here, where we
saw those love-passages between Lionel and Amy, and where we have sat
beside the artist whilst he has limned those wood-side bits of beauty,
heightened by his dreams of love; here, in this glorious summer-time,
with all the familiar associations of the place upon us: here we call
upon the prompter to whistle down that sombre-coloured scene and bring
this poor drama to an end.
In the room above the portico, looking down the drive and commanding
the full range of those Berne Hills, we find Arthur Phillips in his
new studio. Far different to that work-a-day room in the cathedral
close, wealth has stepped in here to make art luxurious. This studio
is a painting-room, drawing-room, library, all in one, as if the whole
house had been ransacked for contributions to the master’s pet room.
Cabinets, couches, statues, vases, rich curtains, a piano, curious
clocks, mirrors, books in elaborate bindings, great portfolios, and
a host of things that might in imagination have graced the room of
some grand old Venetian painter of the classic days. From one corner,
these many treasures are excluded by means of curtains of a neutral
tint, which shut in a space where the artist works with whatever
light he pleases, with the Berne Hills before him, or with nothing
but the light of day upon his canvas--so perfect and unique are his
arrangements.
Here we leave our artist at work finishing a picture which he is
painting, with a loving fidelity, worthy of the subject. A beautiful
woman like that vignette which we saw in the College Green (when Arthur
Phillips discovered that he had not a rival in Lionel Hammerton) is
sitting beside a cradle where a baby lies fast asleep, with one of its
little round arms outside the lace coverlet. By the mother’s knee is
a curly-headed boy, making his first acquaintance with picture-books.
This study from life represents the artist’s wife and children.
Whilst he is putting in the finishing touches to the accessories Mrs.
Phillips is playing a rippling, dreamy sonata on the piano close by.
In at the open window comes the warm breath of the summer wind
laden with rare perfumes, the music of birds, the faint tinkle of
sheep-bells, and full of suggestive whisperings about the summer fields
of rustling corn, and the newly gathered hay, the wild flowers in
the green and sunny lanes, the clear rippling brooks that glide by
luxurious hedge-rows, and all the multifarious rural beauties that are
known to summer winds.
Free from all the ordinary cares of the world, with faculties
cultivated and imagination influenced and softened by the loving study
of art, blessed in the love of the one woman who had been the dream of
his life, as husband and father, Arthur Phillips had realised far more
than all his dearest hopes.
And Phœbe,--that frank, confiding girl who had loved him all along,
and told him so when he had been courageous enough to ask the
question,--her life was as near an approach to the perfect happiness
of which we spoke in some preceding pages as it is possible for mortal
existence to be.
Arthur had realised to the full that touchingly simple saying of
Anderson’s, that “people had a great deal of trouble to go through, and
then they became famous.”
The only shadows which fell upon the greensward of their path in life’s
highway were those which fell from the memory of others’ sorrows; but,
like the shadows of summer clouds upon the green and flowery landscape,
these only made the way more beautiful, and heightened still further
the glory of that halo of gratitude which shone about their peaceful
lives.
THE END.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
Transcriber’s Notes
Italics are indicated as _italics_.
Apparent typographical errors have been changed.
Inconsistent word hyphenation and spelling have been regularized.
Page 21: “moral home iufluences” was changed to “moral home influences”.
Page 75: “and he joked the old” was changed to “and he joked with the
old”.
Page 84: “ethereal colums” was changed to “ethereal columns”.
Page 178: “ent home until after the murder” was changed to “sent home
until after the murder”.
Page 221: “the room were the dead one lay” was changed to “the room
where the dead one lay”.
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