THE METER IRON WORKS COMPANY.
The offices of Mr. Tallant and the Meter Works were at Westminster, in
a magnificent newly erected block of buildings not far from the Houses
of Parliament. They comprised the whole suite of apartments on the
ground-floor, with a board-room above.
On the heavy swinging mahogany doors at the entrance were two thick
brass plates, on one of which was engraven “Meter Iron Works Company,”
and on the other “Christopher Tallant.”
The establishment was fitted up in the best possible style, with
mahogany desks; the counting-house was very much like a bank, the whole
of the monetary business of the great company, as well as that of Mr.
Tallant, being conducted in town. Behind the counting-house was Mr.
Christopher Tallant’s room, and that of his son Richard.
Mr. Tallant’s room was plainly but well furnished, and was only
occupied once a week; but Mr. Richard’s room was fitted up in the
highest style of office magnificence, like a gentleman’s library.
There was a thick velvet-pile carpet upon the floor, a massive carved
mahogany table in the centre of the room; several ponderous chairs with
morocco seats; a quaint arm-chair stood before a writing-pad near the
table. Where there were no book-shelves there were pictures of engines,
and iron bridges, and curious girders, and wheels, in ponderous frames;
and thick cloth curtains draped the two windows which looked into the
street.
The offices were famous amongst men in the iron trade, and once or
twice Mr. Tallant began to think they were getting a name politically;
for several deputations had waited upon him there soliciting him to
come forward for various boroughs at general elections.
But Mr. Christopher Tallant always said his ambition did not lie that
way. Some day perhaps his son Dick might like to go into the House, and
if he did, why go he should of course; but there was plenty of time
to think about that; and so the deputations retired, wishing, in most
cases, that there were not plenty of time to think about that, for
there was gold indeed at the back of Christopher Tallant.
“By gad, you amuse me,” said Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, a college
acquaintance of Mr. Richard Tallant’s, looking at the pictorial
treasures of the room through an eye-glass. “To think of your going in
for engines and machines, with idiotic cranks, and all that sort of
thing. ’Pon my soul, it’s too funny.”
And Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs turned round, showed Mr. Richard Tallant his
teeth, and said “haw, haw.” That was the way Mr. Gibbs laughed: that
was how he laughed at Oxford, when a broken-hearted girl appealed to
his sense of honour; that was how he laughed when he won two thousand
pounds at Loo from a college friend, who said he was ruined, and
threatened to throw himself into the Isis; that was how he laughed
under all circumstances.
“One must put a sign of some sort up,” said Mr. Richard Tallant,
twirling his moustache, and stretching his legs under the big library
table. “What will you take, Shuff?”
“Anything you intend taking yourself, old boy; you are a pretty good
judge; I’ll trust to your sense of what a fellow’s morning draught
should be,” said Mr. Gibbs, grinning again, and saying “haw, haw” as
before.
Mr. Tallant, junior, struck a gong upon the table, and a sober-looking
old man in a dark livery obeyed the summons.
“Sherry, Thomas,” said Mr. Richard.
Thomas taking up a bunch of keys from the table, unlocked a cupboard by
the fireplace, and carefully uncorked a dusty, black looking bottle,
and set it before Mr. Tallant’s only son, with a couple of richly cut
glasses.
Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs took a seat by the window, commended the wine as
he drank it, and criticised any woman who chanced to pass on the other
side of the street. He was not a beauty himself that he should be so
critical of the looks of others. He had weak eyes, and shaky legs, a
short cough, and a narrow chest. His enemies said he wore stays, and
slept in gloves, to improve his figure and whiten his hands, which were
naturally red, like his face, that was powdered after the manner of
women. He was a man of fashion nevertheless, and had sprung of a noble
stock; but the race flickered its last in him, and the estates had been
divided by Jews in his grandfather’s time.
It was considered a daring thing to be hand and glove with Gibbs at
Oxford, a dangerous and a delightful thing; for he was known to be
the fastest man of his college, and he had been the ring-leader in
everything wicked for years. He made himself Mr. Tallant’s champion
when that gentleman was epigrammatically assailed, and ever afterwards
constituted himself boon companion to the iron prince.
There was a rumour that Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs was compelled to leave
college when he did on account of some offence committed against the
regulations of the establishment; whether this was true or not, he
left Oxford suddenly, and with no other honour than that of being the
fastest man who had ever led a gown and town row, or hunted down a
citizen’s daughter.
“You’ll be at the club to-night, of course,” Mr. Gibbs said, swinging
his eye-glass round, and admiring the perfect fit of a pair of new
boots.
“Yes,” said Mr. Richard, “shan’t be able to come before dinner; going
to dine with a friend at seven.”
Mr. Gibbs showed his teeth, and said “haw, haw.”
“Will join you by ten,” Mr. Richard continued, smiling, and holding
his empty glass between himself and the light to catch its diamond-like
sparkles in the sun.
“What’s _your_ little game to-night, then,” inquired Mr. Tallant,
junior.
“Nothing, nothing; a bit of quiet Loo and a cigar. Young Hammerton is
to join us by-and-by.”
“What, Earl Verner’s brother?” Mr. Richard inquired, with more than
ordinary interest.
“The same--the paternal seat is near Barton Hall, you know.”
“Rather,” said Mr. Richard. “He’ll be deuced rich when the earl hops
the twig; he is considerably older than Lionel and very shaky, they
say; he often rides over to the Berne district. The governor says he
likes to talk farming to the bailiff at the Hall Farm.”
“Gad bless me!” exclaimed Mr. Gibbs. “Are there any gals about?”
“There is one, old fellow, and a remarkably fine girl, too; but her
mother’s a she-wolf, and her father!--why, Shuffy, he’d double you
up with one hand and throw you into the road, if you put your nose
into his place; he’d smell you out in no time;” and Mr. Richard
Tallant laughed aloud at his lively picture of Mr. Gibbs’s imaginary
discomfiture.
Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs bit his lip before he grinned and said “haw, haw”
this time; and it was a little while before he had time to say, “Haw,
what an infernally powerful savage he must be.”
Mr. Richard Tallant was, and had been for some time, of great
pecuniary value to Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, who not only sponged upon
the iron prince, but fleeced him at cards, and assisted at all his
extravagances. Had it been otherwise, he would have resented the tone
and manner of Mr. Tallant’s description of his perfect helplessness in
the hands of Luke Somerton.
“You may laugh, Shuff, but by Jove it’s true; so take timely warning,
and if ever you should go down to Barton Hall mind how you look at Amy
Somerton.”
Mr. Tallant, senior, it would seem, had no liking for Mr. Shuffleton
Gibbs, and he had privately intimated to his son that he would rather
that gentleman were not amongst the friends whom he introduced to
Barton Hall.
“If ever I go to Barton Hall!” said Mr. Gibbs. “I begin to think I
shall never have the opportunity; my distinguished and most hospitable
friend, Richard Tallant, Esq., has not yet honoured me with an
invitation, even to a shooting-party, on the estate which calls him
heir.”
“Why, to tell you the truth,” replied Mr. Tallant, junior, with an air
of great candour; “I can’t, you see; I’ve often thought I would make a
clean breast of it, and tell you. The governor objects to you somehow
or other; doesn’t like you; wishes me not to ask you to Barton.”
“That’s candid, begad,” said Mr. Gibbs, becoming a little redder in the
face than usual. “Objects to me!”
“Stupid prejudice, but so it is; he doesn’t understand bucks of fashion
like you, Shuff; and he’s heard about one or two of what you call your
little affairs. And I am not very sorry either, Shuff; for I think the
less he sees of you the better for me.”
“You’re devilish cool this morning, Dick Tallant, and--”
“And what?” said Mr. Tallant, hastily interrupting his friend, who
showed unmistakable signs of anger. “Why, you know you’re an infernal
rascal, Shuff, and that I’m not much better myself; so let’s have no
brag about insults and all that sort of thing; I’m in with you for a
short life and a merry one, so never mind the governor. _Il ne faut pas
éveiller le chat qui dort_, as they say in France, vide Macdonnel.”
Mr. Shuffleton exhibited his teeth, and haw-hawed several times, and
Mr. Tallant, junior, slapped him on the back.
“You’re a trump, Dick, ’pon my soul you are,” said Mr. Shuffleton
Gibbs, in an affected burst of magnanimity; “I was inclined to be
savage just now, but I see the frankness of your disclosure in the true
light, after your explanation.”
“All right, old fellow,” said Mr. Tallant, “give me your hand upon it,
and we are Siamese twins again; but let us finish the sherry.”
The two friends fell to with a will after this, and chatted quite
genially together about a hundred trivial things, until Big Ben tolled
four o’clock, when Mr. Richard Tallant mounted a splendid mare, and,
followed by a sprightly groom on an animal of almost equal value,
ambled towards the Park; whilst Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs betook himself
quietly to his lodgings in Kensington Park Gardens, prior to keeping an
engagement, he said, at the Corner, before dinner.
“The infernal impudent humbug,” said Mr. Gibbs to himself, as he walked
smartly homewards; “the twopenny-halfpenny mushroom, sprung from a
northern dunghill--never mind, I’ll be even with him some day. Fifty
talents of silver invested in iron! Of late the fellow has assumed
an air of superiority, and a bullying manner, which is devilish hard
to bear. Wait a little, wait a little, _très bon ami_; you’ll find
yourself in the mire one of these days.”
It _was_ hard to bear, no doubt, but Richard Tallant was a very
profitable investment to Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, and he could afford to
bottle up his Brummagem resentment; for such a fellow as Shuffleton
Gibbs could hardly be said to have any honourable feelings of
resentment. He was bankrupt, not only in purse, but in reputation; he
might have got over the former in time, but he could never whitewash
the latter.
Mr. Christopher Tallant had been proud of his son the first time he had
seen him, prancing and capering in the Lady’s Mile, as he pranced and
capered soon after Mr. Gibbs left him. Mr. Tallant had gone down to the
Park quietly on foot, and, unobserved, had seen his son a leading man
of fashion, on the best horse amongst the most magnificent of all the
splendid animals there. He had seen him acknowledged by many a dashing
rider, and had watched him turn out into the carriage-drive, to ride
beside a gorgeous yellow brougham, with beautiful women in it. Somehow
the merchant could not help feeling annoyed with himself for harbouring
such a pride as this; but he had not forgotten the Oxford epigram,
and he liked to see a Tallant riding about amongst the big men, the
greatest swell of the lot.