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.