OF CERTAIN REPORTS IN THE NEWSPAPERS.
O, those hard and bitter histories, the newspapers! Hard as the metal
in which they are printed. Stern matter-of-fact histories of the great
world. They go straight to the subject; they do not prepare the reader
by any quiet preliminary caution that the man who has been found
murdered is his father; there is nothing roundabout in that long list
of deaths. You have no time to think before the awful truth is in your
mind. That railway accident,--is your dear friend unhurt?--whilst you
are wondering, there stands his name in the list of dead. That little
indiscretion of your son’s;--here it is, blazoned forth to the world
in the police reports: he was only anxious to save his friend, and his
zeal overcame his discretion; he is fined for obstructing a policeman
in the execution of his duty, and here stands the record, to be turned
against him any day.
O, hard and bitter histories! They told the story on that second
day. They told the two stories. They came to Barton Hall, wrapped up
carefully and smug as of yore. They were carried to the kitchen fire
and dried. John scanned them, and saw nothing of importance. Mary
noticed a frightful murder stuck down in one corner, almost out of
sight. Peter the groom took note of the latest betting; but none of
them saw what the people at the town found out later in the day; and
none of them saw what Phœbe Tallant and Amy Somerton saw.
Mr. Tallant had been engaged until late with his country lawyer,
and had kept his room on that second day. Phœbe was sure there was
something seriously the matter with her father; for he had pressed her
hand, and kissed her, and made the tears come into her eyes.
This was something very unusual for Mr. Tallant. Proud as he
undoubtedly was of Phœbe’s beauty, hers was a sort of negative
existence in his mind. Richard, her brother, had engrossed nearly all
his thoughts. Phœbe was like a simple flower adorning the name of
Tallant;--but Richard, he would build up the house and perpetuate the
name, and be the grand, educated successor of his father.
Once or twice, however, within the few previous months, grave doubts
as to the propriety of his son’s conduct had crossed the merchant’s
mind; but these had been to a great extent dispelled by a few words
of conversation with his son. Of course, the young fellow had been
educated at Oxford, and had thoughts, and feelings, and aspirations
altogether different to his father’s. The old man understood this to a
certain extent, but “honour, Dick; remember, that does not come with
college education, my boy,” Mr. Tallant would say; “don’t let Latin,
and Greek, and mythology, and grand acquaintances shake plain old
Saxon notions of honour and honesty, and paying your way, and owing no
man, and all those old-fashioned things which have made the name of
Tallant foremost in the city of London.”
But Richard Tallant was in the whirlpool of fast life, of speculation,
of financial scheming, of gambling; and at length he reached the
vortex, with all the good lessons and examples of his father upon his
head.
So these newspapers, as we have said, were dried, and whilst a
couple were sent up-stairs to Mr. Tallant, two were taken into the
drawing-room to Miss Tallant and her friend, Miss Somerton.
Never did papers contain so much to startle and interest two girls
before. The Eastern Bank meeting, and the exposure of Richard Tallant;
the charge of robbery against Paul Somerton; and a paragraph recording
the departure of the troop-ship _Atlas_ for India, with Captain the
Hon. Lionel Hammerton on board.
They mastered it all at last, and clung to each other in terror and
amazement. It seemed almost as if the world had suddenly come to an
end. Phœbe looked round, as if to assure herself that she was at home.
There was no mistaking this. The familiar chairs and cabinets, and
pictures and statuettes, all seemed to look reassuringly at her.
Amy took things in a more demonstrative fashion. She pressed her hand
to her head, and then broke forth into a low wail of pain.
“And I did not know that he even intended to leave the country,” said
Amy, by-and-by, all her thoughts concentrated upon Lionel Hammerton.
Phœbe, with her brother’s disgrace, her father’s misery, and Paul
Somerton’s troubles, each agitating her mind in turns, had scarcely
thought for a moment of the sudden and unexplained departure of Lionel
Hammerton. Arthur Phillips might have told her of it, but the artist
had not been near Barton Hall for more than a month. He had written a
note of apology, and explaining that his absence was necessary for the
completion of some important work upon which he was engaged.
“Not even to say good-bye,” Amy exclaimed, rocking herself to and fro.
It quite shocked Phœbe to see how Amy dwelt upon this departure of
Hammerton; to see how it overshadowed all the other bitter news. Amy
had not even uttered one expression of pity for the brother whom she
loved so well.
This secret love of Lionel Hammerton had burned itself into her very
nature. However much she might have doubted her powers to bring him
to her side, and however much she may have despaired of the return of
her love, on the ground of their great disparity of position, she had
long since been convinced that Lionel cared a little for her. She had
brooded over his acts of kindness and courtesy; she had bound up his
image in all her ways of life, and Phœbe knew how much she loved him.
His leaving without explanation, and without a word at parting, was
not only a blow to the girl’s soft and tender dreams of love returned,
but it struck at her pride, and brought her down to the abject thing at
which she had seemed to rate herself in her thoughts of the greatness
and glory of Lionel Hammerton.
There might have been something like the aping of humility in this
girl’s love; in her own estimation she had been as nothing compared
with him, to whom she had given up her secret soul; but, trodden upon
and slighted, she rose up, conscious of her own beauty, and with a
sense of her own deserts, burning with wounded pride.
“He treats me with contempt and indifference, Phœbe,” she said, casting
the newspaper upon the floor, and trampling upon it. “Let him; he
shall have scorn for scorn, contempt for contempt. Does he think that
a woman’s heart is to be trampled upon because of lowly birth? Does he
think true love and English chivalry have exclusive inheritance amongst
the titled and the wealthy? Does he think I am a poor silly country
girl, with a weak, pliable nature, that will bend and adapt itself to
whatever may turn up in a jog-trot country life? He shall see; he shall
see.”
With this Amy Somerton swept out of the room like an enraged queen, who
counted her subjects by millions.
“Poor Amy, she has read too much poetry of late, and thought it all
true,” said Phœbe, the big tears rolling down her fair cheek. “Whatever
will become of us all! I am sure my head swims with the thought of all
the dreadful things that have taken place. My poor dear father!” then
she exclaimed, and the next minute she had burst into his room, and
flung herself upon his neck.
“Dear, dear father,” she said, “do bear up; perhaps it is not true;
perhaps he has repented, and all may come right again,” said Phœbe,
smoothing the merchant’s grey hair; but she felt how hopeless was
Richard’s case notwithstanding.
Mr. Tallant submitted to his daughter’s caresses, and his mind was
suddenly carried back to the days of his second wife. In the midst of
great trouble and distress of mind the thoughts will often ramble to
times and things altogether apart from the immediate cause of your
mental anxiety. Mr. Tallant thought of the wife whom he had loved so
dearly, and then wondered that no likeness remained of her in his child.
“You are not quite ruined, perhaps, father,” said the girl, by-and-by;
“we can go and live in some quiet little place, where we shall be
unknown.”
“Ruined, my love,” said the merchant, with a faint smile, “what made
you think of that?”
“That great sum of money which you paid, father--so nobly, so like your
true self,” said the girl, with a look of admiration shining through
her tears.
“I could do that several times over, and be far from ruined then,” said
the merchant, with just a touch of pride in his manner; “it is our
name that is ruined, our name that is blemished; _his_ name--he who
was to be the pride of the land.”
“But the paper says the name of Tallant has risen higher than ever with
your magnanimous and noble revenge,” said Phœbe, timidly, for she had
never in all her life before spoken to her father of money and things
appertaining to trade and commerce.
“The papers!” repeated the merchant, bitterly. “What can they say or
do? Who cares for the papers in times like these, when the greatest
houses in the country are tottering to their very foundation. The name
of Tallant would have risen like a rock of gold in this panic, and
been impressed for all time in the history of finance, but for this
wretched, this miserable deception.”
“But your own name, father; your own honour,” said the girl.
“What do I care for myself,” said the merchant, interrupting her; “it
was for him that I worked, and saved, and hoarded. Did I grudge him?
No; he was his own master; he had the run of my own bank. But there,
there, Phœbe, say no more upon the subject. We will try to talk of
other things.”
“The Somertons, too, will be in great distress,” said Phœbe, “about
their son.”
“Why?” asked the merchant.
“Did you not read it in the paper?”
“I have read nothing in the paper,” was the reply.
“In prison, and charged with robbery,” said Phœbe, softly; “but a
counsel appeared for him and said it was a conspiracy.”
“That is easily said,” the merchant answered. “Robbery! whom has _he_
robbed?”
Phœbe shuddered at the emphasis in the latter sentence, which convinced
her that her father’s opinion of Richard was sealed and settled.
“His prosecutor is a person named Gibbs--Shuffleton Gibbs,” said Phœbe.
“The greatest scoundrel in London,” said the merchant. “Better to
have such a man against you than for you; he is the intimate and bosom
friend of your brother. Give me the paper, love, and leave me to read
it.”
Phœbe opened out the paper which lay upon the table, kissed her
father’s forehead, and went to comfort the Somertons.
She looked the very impersonation of comfort and consolation, this
gentle, confiding, Miranda-like being, as she quietly glided across the
park towards the farm. An old shepherd dog came bounding up to her, and
leaping for joy, in its half-blind, shambling fashion; a little group
of deer trotted off before her, but turned round to look, and said as
plainly as could be, “We should not have moved, had it not been for
that villainous dog;” ducks, and hens, and chickens, all came round
about her as she entered the farm enclosure; a great furry cat came
and purred beside her; and Mr. Somerton’s blackbird, which hung by the
window in a wicker cage, began to sing so merrily that you could hardly
hear the whirr and rattle of the threshing-machine, which was hard at
work in the adjacent stack-yard.
Whilst Amy Somerton was pacing to and fro in her chamber at the Hall,
Phœbe Tallant fulfilled her office at the Hall Farm, and endeavoured
in a hundred gentle, gracious ways to console the bailiff and his
wife. So far as Luke was concerned, she was not unsuccessful, but Mrs.
Somerton gave way to her feelings without the slightest regard to Amy’s
consolatory observations.
The farmer’s wife seemed to arraign all humanity as if it were in a
conspiracy against her, and she was almost rude to Miss Tallant, so
much so that Luke interposed in an authoritative manner, and Phœbe
looked hurt and concerned.
This only changed the manner of Mrs. Somerton’s complainings. She was
satisfied that Paul was guilty. He must have stolen the purse; it
didn’t often happen, she went on, that people got charged with offences
of that kind unless they deserved it. All her children went wrong;
none of them cared for her; none of them made any return to her for
all her care.
Nobody knew her trials, nobody could understand her troubles; all she
hoped was, that the time would come soon, when they would be ended for
ever.
Luke Somerton rated his wife in a quiet, manly fashion for her
injustice towards Paul, and her unkind return for the generous
attention of Miss Tallant; and by-and-by Mrs. Somerton began to cry,
and that was a sufficient apology to the rich merchant’s daughter, who
sat beside the bailiff’s wife and said all sorts of comforting things,
whilst Mr. Somerton set about packing up a carpet-bag for the purpose
of going to London; and eventually Miss Somerton presented herself, and
requested that she might be permitted to accompany her father.