BRINGS US TO THE HALL FARM, WHERE THE
READER MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF
THE SOMERTONS AND A CERTAIN LANDSCAPE
PAINTER.
It lay on the western border of the park, and comprised about eight
hundred acres of arable and pasture land.
The buildings were red brick, with white dressed corner stones and
facings. There were model cow-houses, cattle-sheds, piggeries, barns,
corn-lofts, and poultry pens, that would have satisfied even Mr.
Mechi’s critical eye. An agricultural writer of considerable repute
had, in truth, written an essay upon these model buildings, and it had
been printed in an important agricultural and scientific review; for
there were no better arranged buildings in the country.
Mr. Tallant, you know, would have the best of everything, and his
bailiff encouraged him in having all the best things at his farm. There
were carts from Crosskill, ploughs from Ransomes, threshing-machines
from Clayton and Shuttleworth, reapers from America, clod-crushers,
drills, rakes, hoes, harrows, and other implements from Banbury,
Lincoln, Beverley, Worcester, Yorkshire, and Bristol.
Mr. Tallant had built these model farm-buildings himself. The Hall Farm
had been an especial feature of the estate when he purchased it, but
the buildings did not come up to his notions, and the result is before
us.
Mr. Tallant brought all his commercial experience to bear upon the
cultivation and management of the land. His bailiff, Mr. Luke Somerton,
had been a Lincolnshire lord’s right hand in the management of a great
farm on the Wolds, and he was the very man of all others to enter into
Mr. Tallant’s idea of looking upon a farm in the same light as he would
a manufactory.
The merchant maintained that good land would, in a very few years,
amply repay a man for all he put into it; and Mr. Somerton was a
thoroughgoing disciple of high cultivation. He had studied agricultural
chemistry under a professor, and Mr. Tallant often said it was quite
a treat to chat with him about Liebig’s theories, the value of
agricultural statistics, tenant right, and leases. Richard Tallant did
not agree with his father, and thought Luke Somerton’s talk a good deal
of it “rot:” not that the bailiff cared for Mr. Richard’s opinion, or
feared his father’s.
Luke Somerton was quite a gentleman in his way. He was a younger son
of a Lincolnshire squire, and had been brought up to agriculture as a
profession. He came to the Barton Hall Farm with Mr. Tallant, and he
was likely to remain there as long as Mr. Tallant lived; for he was not
only a scientific farmer, but he farmed profitably, and Mr. Tallant
said that was what few amateur gentlemen farmers could say for their
bailiffs in that district.
The farm-house was a substantial, handsome residence, surrounded with
a prettily laid out garden, with shrubs and trees all scrupulously
dwarfed and pruned. Hard by, and adjacent to the farm-buildings, was
the stack-yard, and beyond were fields, mostly grass, with low fences
and white gates.
Mr. Somerton was married, and had three children,--two sons and a
daughter. His firstborn had left home when he was fifteen as an
apprentice on board a merchant ship, which sailed from London for
Bombay. The vessel had been spoken once, and had never been heard of
afterwards; so Frank had long been mourned as lost, and there remained
the bailiff, his daughter Amy, a girl about the age of Miss Tallant,
and a son, Paul, three years younger.
Luke Somerton’s married life had not been a happy one. His wife
had accepted his hand mainly out of spite, after she had angled
unsuccessfully for his eldest brother. She was a proud disappointed
woman; but a good housewife nevertheless, and Luke, by dint of
perseverance, had successfully combated her overbearing disposition; so
that though they could not be said to live happily and affectionately,
as man and wife should do, they never had noisy open brawls and
quarrels, as some couples have. If they sneered at each other and
maintained opposite opinions on almost any given subject, they very
rarely had loud disputes, and never passed a day without speaking to
each other. They were opposed on principle; but Mrs. Somerton always
managed to conclude her bickerings with something like overtures of
reconciliation, which Luke accepted for what they were worth, and
“tided over with,” until the next fencing bout came on.
Mrs. Somerton had been a handsome woman--a blonde--and might have
continued handsome had she cultivated kindness of heart as well as
her husband cultivated wheat. Hers was a nice face spoiled by a nasty
temper. She was a fine woman, above the middle height, and there
were little streaks of red upon her cheeks such as you see on the
sunny side of a winter apple. There were lines about her mouth which
disappointment and pride had placed there, during eighteen years
of sourness and vexation of spirit. She was well mated so far as
appearances went.
Her husband looked a thorough son of the soil, a tall, well-built,
florid, intelligent, business-like Lincolnshire farmer, such as you
will meet in the capacity of judge at country agricultural shows.
Their son Paul was at a boarding-school, and when this story begins,
just about commencing life as a clerk in Mr. Tallant’s London offices.
His sister Amy was at home, and spent half her time at the Hall with
Miss Tallant, who treated her very much as a sister.
Amy was not at all like the picture of Miranda. She was several shades
darker than Miss Tallant, and neither a brunette nor a blonde; but
she had a large black piercing eye, which looked at you from beneath
gracefully-arched eyebrows. She was not so round as Phœbe; but her
figure was supple, and well defined. Her mouth and chin were full of
graceful curves, and her hair was bound closely to her head, setting
off a pair of small white ears that gave a high character to the face.
She was a well-bred, high-spirited girl, and accomplished too; for she
had not only been fairly educated at her father’s expense, but she had
had the benefit of much of the tuition which Miss Tallant had received,
not only from a clever resident governess but from professors who came
at intervals to Barton Hall.
Amongst the latter was one Mr. Arthur Phillips, who taught Miss Tallant
drawing, and as he will figure rather prominently in this romance,
we will introduce him at once, and tell you what he was like and all
about him. He was a rising young artist who resided in the county town,
though he might have made a successful position in London.
“I wonder you don’t go to town,” many persons would say to him; and his
reply would be in effect,
“Why should I? I don’t care for London, and I like the country. I
can go to town whenever I think proper, and the dealers will buy my
pictures whether I go or not. What I get for them, and the few pupils I
have in the county, give me enough for all my requirements, and enable
me to study quietly and leisurely.”
But there was another reason why Arthur Phillips preferred the country,
and that was a reason, which you may guess, for constant visits to the
vale of Berne, beyond his desire to study the foliage of the district,
and the lights and shadows of the Berne Hills, and the beautiful skies
above.
It is true that many of his best sketches were transcriptions of the
varied bits of landscape in this district; and he said he had never
thoroughly understood Cuyp, Both and Ruysdael, Salvator Rosa, Wilson
and Gainsborough, until he knew Berne valley in storm and sunshine, in
spring and summer. He was never tired of painting Berne trees and Berne
mosses, and the dealers bought these little sketchy bits almost as
readily as they would now buy similar things by Birket Foster.
Mr. Phillips was an earnest lover of art; if he had not been a painter
he would have been a poet. There was poetry in all his works, the true
poetry of nature; and he was as well up in the principles and beauties
of poetry as he was in chiaroscuro and perspective.
Nature had given him a mind worthy of the most perfect exterior, but
she had denied him many of those charms of person which mostly delight
the eye and captivate the heart of woman. He was under the ordinary
height, a thin figure, with long black hair, and dark eyes set deeply
in a face notable for sharply cut features. The expression was that of
a thinker, and his manner nervous and retiring.
Mrs. Somerton had a great objection to Mr. Phillips.
“I don’t think his continually lurking about here bodes any good to
those girls,” she said to her husband, over tea, as Mr. Phillips passed
by with his sketch book under his arm.
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Somerton, laughing. “You don’t think either of
the girls will fall in love with an undersized whipper-snapper like Mr.
Phillips?”
“There’s no knowing what poor silly women will fall in love with,” said
Mrs. Somerton, with a sneer.
“No, nor men either, for the matter of that, dame, if you want to argue
the point,” Luke replied, defiantly.
Mrs. Somerton, thus challenged, declined to pick up the gauntlet which
she had so often before accepted. She was bent upon talking about Mr.
Arthur Phillips.
“I don’t think Amy would be fool enough to be led away by his poetry
and pictures, and fine speeches and things; but Miss Tallant’s
soft enough for anything, and I wonder Mr. Tallant has that fellow
continually about the place.”
“God bless us!” said Mr. Somerton, his honest face lighting up with a
genial smile of amusement; “why, do you think Miss Tallant, with her
beautiful face, and her equally beautiful dowry, is going to throw
herself away upon poor little Phillips?”
“Why not? He writes poetry, and paints all sorts of nonsense, and talks
like lackadaisical lovers talk in books; and I’m sure that’s the sort
of thing that Miss Tallant’s flashy education has taught her to admire.
Why didn’t her father let her go into London society? Why doesn’t she
go to town for the season, and be a reigning beauty, as she might be?
That’s the sort of education she should have had, and then she might
have married a duke,” Mrs. Somerton said, with warmth.
“Why, you’re quite excited about it,” said Mr. Somerton; “I’ve not seen
your eyes sparkle so since I don’t know when.”
“I hate to see such namby-pambyism,” went on Mrs. Somerton. “When a
girl’s got a pretty face, a graceful manner, and plenty of money, she
ought to take her place and marry a gentleman, not be buried alive in
a stucco palace, with a half-gentleman, half-farmer, half-ironfounder
father, a sneaking governess, and an ugly, romantic little painter.”
“Well, well, wife, it is no business of ours, and if it was, I don’t
think there’s any foundation for alarm. Besides, your ambition ought
to be satisfied if young Hammerton, as you say pays more delicate
attentions to Amy than he does to Miss Tallant. But Master Hammerton
must mind his eye; I’d break every bone in his body if he offered an
insult to Amy.”
“Young Hammerton!” said Mrs. Somerton, with an affected sneer. “Do you
think I’m vain and silly enough to think the daughter of a farm-bailiff
has any chance of catching the next heir to an earldom, for her
husband?”
“A farm-bailiff! Why such emphasis on farm-bailiff, Mistress Somerton?
There may be as good blood in the veins of a farm-bailiff as there is
in a Hammerton.”
Mrs. Somerton’s lip curled with a pitying, patronising expression, that
put her husband into a towering passion; a most unusual circumstance.
“Damn it!” he exclaimed, rising from his seat, “a Somerton is as
independent a man any day; there was never one of the race that didn’t
always pay twenty shillings in the pound, and but wouldn’t fell a lord
if he spoke a light word of any of their women: and, by heaven, I
consider myself as good a man as any Hammerton, dead or living.”
“There, there, Luke; now don’t get into a passion,” said Mrs. Somerton,
trying to speak soothingly, and like an injured woman, who had not
given the slightest cause for passion to anybody in all her life.
“What’s the meaning of all this, Sarah? There’s something at the bottom
of it.”
“Only a friendly gossip between man and wife; but that’s such a novelty
in this house, is it not?”
“I have had enough experience to tell me that a friendly gossip like
this is not meant for nothing, Sarah,” said Luke, thrusting his hands
into his pockets, and pacing about the room.
Whether there was anything “at the bottom of it,” or not, did not
further transpire at that moment, by reason of the Hon. Lionel
Hammerton himself dismounting from his horse at the gate beyond the
garden, and walking up to Mr. Somerton’s door.