INTRODUCES THE READER TO THE MERCHANT’S
SON AND DAUGHTER.
Do you know Dicksee’s picture of “Miranda?” It was exhibited at the
Royal Academy a few years ago. There are copies of it in the Strand and
Regent Street picture-shops.
It is a fair, sweet, _spirituel_ face, full of inquiring love and
innocence--a frank, open face, set off with a heavy wealth of bright
brown hair--a sunny face, with red, parted lips, and all the pure soul
of woman in the deep blue eyes.
When first we saw that picture, we could not, “for the life of us,”
think where we had seen the earthly model of it. It haunted us for
days; we dreamt about it; we bought the best copy we could procure; and
at length, with the picture lying beside us, carefully packed, on the
seat of a Great Western Railway carriage, a London purchase for our
country library, we remembered Phœbe Tallant.
It hangs before us whilst we write, with all the story of the life of
her whom it so much resembles mapped out in our mind.
Perhaps Phœbe Tallant was not quite so pretty as Mr. Dicksee’s picture,
but she was as near an approach to it as one is likely to meet with
once in a dozen years.
Occasional visitors at Barton Hall from London were in raptures with
the bright, fair girl; and one or two young fellows had gone home
desperately in love with her; but none of them dared hardly to think of
their love in presence of Mr. Tallant: not that the merchant said much
about Phœbe, not that she seemed to be on such affectionate terms with
him as might have been expected; but he was proud of her beauty, proud
of her accomplishments. And, moreover, it was shrewdly anticipated
that Miss Tallant would not have anything like the dowry which the
daughter of so wealthy a father ought to have; for the merchant was all
engrossed in his heir.
Richard Tallant, who was destined by the old man for such a store of
riches, was a dark, dashing young fellow, of five or six and twenty,
when we first make his acquaintance--some half-a-dozen years older than
his half-sister Phœbe.
He had been an Eton boy, had graduated at Oxford, and travelled through
Europe and Asia.
He had already spent enough money recklessly, foolishly, ay, and
wickedly, to have produced an annuity of at least a thousand a year. He
was professedly one of the managing directors of the Meter Works, and
resided in London to take the metropolitan and continental business of
the company.
When his father complained of his enormous expenditure (which was very
seldom, by the way), Richard Tallant alluded to his position in the
world, his education, and his habits.
At Oxford he had been a don, not of learning, but of fashion; kept
his hunters and his mail phaeton, and made many a scion of the old
aristocracy envy the mushroom son of iron and railway debentures.
“You have given me every indulgence; you have bred me up in the hot-bed
of luxury; I am just fresh from a European tour, where I travelled like
a prince, to finish my college education, and now you expect me to
pull in,” Richard would say, sitting astride one of the heavy mahogany
chairs in the Westminster managerial room, and looking over the back of
it at his father.
“I should not care, Dick, if you would only do the work of your office,
as well as draw the salary,” Mr. Tallant would remark.
“Come, now, my dear governor, have you not told me you have enough
invested to enable me to live like a prince all my life?”
“I may have been weak enough to say so; but I calculated upon your
doing something towards keeping the money coming in.”
“You didn’t want me, you said, to be waiting, like some heirs, for
your death, and then reckoning upon living in style; you would rather
I had my fill of life, and see me enjoy it in your own days. Come
now, father, you know you have said so,” said Richard, twirling his
moustache, and tapping his patent-leather boot with a riding-whip.
“I fear I had not my usual foresight about me when I did say so,” said
Mr. Tallant.
And he said truly; but having risen by hard work himself, and sprung
from a comparatively humble position, Mr. Tallant was one of those men
who like to see their children in the other extreme, and who, never
having been within the pale of college and aristocratic life, believe,
and truly, that, to be a leader therein, a merchant’s son must let his
money fly freely, and like a prince indeed.
He had given his son a free rein. When first Richard went to Oxford, he
had been snubbed by a young lord, and an epigram had been levelled at
him, the point of which turned upon his name and origin; he was called
the produce of fifty talents of silver invested in iron.
When Richard told his father this, the great merchant snapped his
fingers, and said he could buy up all the Oxford lords in a heap,
and, turning cleverly round upon their lordships, in reply to the
epigrammatic hit at his son’s origin, he said,
“Never mind them, Dick; there’s as good blood in your veins as there is
in any of theirs; it may not come from a swell who plundered the Saxons
at the time of the Norman Conquest, or mixed in the vices of licentious
courts; there is no dishonour in it, and it has to be proved yet
whether to spring from merchant princes of England is not the highest
of all descent.”
“Bravo,” said Mr. Richard Tallant; “why, father, you speak like an
orator. That hit about the merchant princes would drive half-a-dozen
hustings mad.”
Mr. Tallant had warmed up, and was angry; he paid no attention to his
son’s comment; he only saw before him some “stuck up” aristocrat
sneering at his name and origin.
“Look here, Dick,” he continued, producing a blank cheque, “fill that
up in the presence of these aristocratic snobs, and show them what the
Tallants can do.”
This was surely putting too much of power and revenge into the hands
of a young man naturally frivolous and overbearing, and it no doubt
influenced, in a great measure, his future career.
One would have given Mr. Christopher Tallant credit for more real
worldly wisdom than this; he could, perhaps, have borne “the proud
man’s contumely” himself; he might have shrugged his shoulders, and
sneered at it, with a consoling thought about his wealth; he might
have said to himself, “Ah, never mind, I could buy you up, stick and
stone” (for he was weak, you see, on this point); but he would not have
protested and been demonstrative: contempt would have been his answer,
and, in the midst of his commercial cares, he would have speedily
forgotten the inane taunt. To have his son treated with indifference,
to see him taunted with his origin, by men who had nothing but their
ancestors to boast about; this was a different thing altogether, and he
chafed at it, and was angry indeed.
His pride was shocked. The feeling that he could buy everything was
shaken. He was not accustomed to crosses, except such as his wealth or
his energy could overcome; and his sense of injured honour, too, was
touched.
“I would not have you do anything that is mean, Dick; there is nothing
mean in being generous and open-handed; and there are two powers, it
appears, at Oxford,--money and blood; don’t be afraid to hold your own;
you have no reason to be ashamed of your birth, and you can make them
ashamed of their poverty, the sneaks! Don’t spare them one jot, Dick;
punish them, and show them what talents of silver invested in iron can
do--the miserable sneaks!”
Thus all the merchant’s practical wisdom and his just pride were thrown
to the winds; but he is not the only man of his class who, chafing at
the arrogance of “gentle blood,” has sought revenge on Society at the
shrine of Mammon, and obtained nothing in return but “a crown of golden
sorrow.”