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”.