THE
TALLANTS OF BARTON.

A Tale of Fortune and Finance.

BY

JOSEPH HATTON,

Author of “Bitter Sweets: a Love Story;” “Against the Stream,” etc., etc.

“The wheel of Fortune turns incessantly round, and who can say within himself,
I shall to-day be uppermost?”—Confucius.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1867.

[The Right of Translation is reserved.]

LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
ENTER THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF VERNER.

So swiftly did one incident of change crowd upon another at this period of the lives which we fear we are but faintly sketching, that it seemed as if Fortune had arranged all the concomitant circumstances that were culminating in these few eventful days of autumn.

Fortune, “the great commandress of the world,” had already played strange pranks with those two charming girls at Barton. Until lately their destinies had flowed on smoothly and in peace. They had grown up side by side,—one the mistress, the other the companion and friend,—and until now there had been no jealousy on either hand—until now Amy Somerton had been content with her lot. She had brooded over her lowly birth, in those hours when she had loved and dreamed about her love for Mr. Hammerton, but she had only seemed to look up the higher to her love. She had seen him as miners see the sky, far above her, and with hardly a beam of hope animating the thought that some day he might take her hand and raise her up, as the king selected the beggar maid in the poem.

In those sunny days of doubt and hope and maiden admiration, she had been happy in her own quiet, dreamy fashion, contented with Lionel’s kind words and delicate attentions. He had never, perhaps, told her in so many words that he loved her, but there was that in his voice and manner, when he addressed her, which led her to believe that he took delight in her own undisguised admiration. He had signified his pleasure in her society in a thousand different ways, and for the time being this was enough to satisfy the heart-craving of Amy; but content to be humble, her pride nevertheless rose up against attack, with all the fierceness of injury. On that morning when she learnt that Lionel had left the country without one word at parting, she knew as if by instinct that her love was cast off. He must have known some time before he left that he was going, and yet he had not even deigned to say so. She knew how weak she had been; she knew how little she had striven to hide her love. Lionel Hammerton knew that she had loved him with all her heart and soul. She had not cared to disguise her feelings. She would have given up all the world for him, even like Goethe’s Marguerite. There was no sacrifice she would not have made, if sacrifice had been needed, at the feet of Lionel Hammerton; yet he had treated herself and her love with contempt and indifference.

You have seen how her spirit rebelled against the slight which she imagined was the assertion of rank and fortune over lowly birth. Her whole nature seemed to have undergone a change—a change in which pride took such full possession of her heart, that there was no more room left for love. She who had sat and simpered over Tennyson like a love-sick, romantic girl, dreaming of Cophetua, and Camelot, and A. H. H., now thought of nothing but schemes of revenge and ambition. If she were only in Phœbe Tallant’s place, what would she not do to assert the rights of lowly birth and beauty! She envied her friend at the moment with a hot and a bitter envy, and hated her own more lowly origin.

It was the morning after her return from London. She sat at her bedroom window at the farm, commanding a long reach of the carriage-drive to Barton Hall. The park trees were standing in golden circles of leaves; the great elms were shaking down their last autumnal tributes to mother earth; the old roots were wrapped in soft carpet-like coverings of red and brown and gold; the long carriage-drive was fringed with the same remnants of the dying year, and anon a gust of wind would sweep along the road and carry the leaves high up into the air, like flocks of birds sporting in the sunshine.

But Amy saw only desolation in the scene; she saw all her best and holiest aspirations tossed about the world like the fallen leaves. Whilst she sat there musing and fretting by the window, there entered the drive a carriage drawn by four horses; as it gradually approached, she saw that there were footmen behind, and that the equipage was splendid.

“As there are no fairies and magicians in these days,” she said to herself, “that is not Cinderella’s coach, and I am not Cinderella. Why, it must be Earl Verner’s carriage: his brother is going to call at Barton Hall. I will go there too.”

And as she said so, the carriage swept along, with the leaves flying about the horses’ heads and sporting round the carriage wheels.

Amy was right. This was Earl Verner’s carriage, and his lordship was on his way to pay Mr. Tallant a personal visit. Once, and only once, previously had he honoured Barton Hall with his presence. He was of a quiet, retiring nature; a luxurious and learned nobleman, who cared more for rare books and works of art and old pottery than for anything else.

He was scarcely fifty years of age,—a lithe, supple man, with brown, curly hair, and evidently a quiet, luxurious fellow, who liked to have his own way and take things easily. He had never been married, and never would marry, he said, because it would bore him. It would be impossible, he had often said, for any woman to be happy with him; she would be jealous of his pictures and pottery in less than a month. And then the going into society, and fulfilling those duties of property which people talked about, and laying yourself out for being everybody’s friend but your own:—no, he could not marry; he would leave that, he said, to his brother Lionel.

It was through this brother Lionel that the Earl Verner called at Barton Hall this second time. Mr. Hammerton had, it appeared, not only invested largely himself in some of the bubble concerns of the day, but he had induced his lordship to divert considerable sums of money into the same channel; and now that his lordship’s steward had large demands upon him for calls, Earl Verner said to himself, “I will go over and see Tallant—pay him a visit of condolence, and kill two birds with one stone.”

So his lordship sent in his card, and followed it into Mr. Tallant’s library, where he found the merchant engaged at his desk.

“Ah, Mr. Tallant, how do you do?” said his lordship, advancing with opening hand.

“I hope your lordship is well?” said Mr. Tallant. “May I offer you a chair?”

Earl Verner seated himself, and rubbed his hands familiarly before the fire.

“Mine is rather a selfish visit, Tallant,” he said. “I fear you must have thought me an unneighbourly fellow; but, you see, I am fond of quiet, and I rarely pay visits. Perhaps I take too little interest in the county. However, you will believe me when I say that I was grieved to hear of your domestic trouble—deeply grieved; for I knew you had set your heart upon making that young fellow a sort of intellectual Crœsus, and——”

Here his lordship hesitated, seeing that the subject was painful to Mr. Tallant.

“We will not talk about it, Mr. Tallant, but pray accept my sympathy; and if there is anything I can do for the young fellow—I have some little influence, I am told, with the Government——”

“Thank your lordship. Let us act upon your former suggestion, and not talk about it. Richard Tallant is no longer my son.”

There was something so calm and determined in the merchant’s manner, that Lord Verner did not attempt to say any more on the subject.

“‘A fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind,’ you know,” he said by-and-by. “My brother Lionel Hammerton, like everybody else, has been drawn into considerable speculations, and, what is more, he has led me into the popular folly. Finance is a splendid game for those who understand it, no doubt; but it is worse than the turf to a novice. My steward informs me that I have five hundred shares in the Oriental Bank, one hundred in the Mardike Mines, and five hundred in the Bank of Finance. There are calls due upon the whole of them, and two are to be wound up in Chancery. What shall I do in the matter?”

“Pay the calls, and be prepared to pay up the whole of the Finance and Mining shares, and expect no return,” said Mr. Tallant. “The Orientals may come right, and will come right if the shareholders and directors do not succumb to the bears on the Stock Exchange.”

“Hammerton holds similar shares: the same advice will apply with regard to those?”

“Yes, your lordship; you have nothing to do but pay.”

“Thank you. I knew I should get clear and straightforward advice from you, Mr. Tallant. I have already occupied your time too long, and I see you are busy. I will shake hands with Miss Tallant, and take my leave.”

Mr. Tallant made no reply, but rose, and conducting his lordship to the drawing-room, bade him good-morning.

In the drawing-room Earl Verner found Miss Tallant and Miss Somerton. The former he had seen once before, the latter he now saw for the first time. Phœbe was attired in her ordinary morning style, and looked fresh and blooming as a rose, but with just a trace of languor in her manner which did not usually characterise it. Amy had astonished her friend immensely, only ten minutes previously, by suddenly entering the room in a favourite delicate white merino, and with unusual signs of care manifested in her toilette. Her appearance was worthy of that of a duchess. She looked like a queen in her own right. Her head never looked nobler; the graceful curves about her mouth and chin seemed to be full of sunshine and happiness; her eyes sparkled with unwonted brilliancy, and when Lord Verner entered he found it difficult to remove his eyes from the lady’s face.

“Pray, present me to your friend,” he said, after he had shaken hands with Miss Tallant, and without waiting to give Phœbe the voluntary opportunity of doing so.

Miss Tallant presented Amy accordingly, and his lordship was not displeased to see how sensibly his rank affected her. His rank? Might not his appearance have something to do with that faint blush and unmistakable embarrassment? The thought flashed through his lordship’s mind in an instant, and it flattered him. He grew quite affable, and insisted, in his grand way, upon sitting down and having a little chat.

“I am sorry,” he said to Miss Tallant, “to see your father so sensibly affected by late events; it really grieves me to the heart—such a fine business gentleman as he was, so full of energy and resource. I must call again and see him. I fear he is moping. You must cheer him up, Miss Somerton, you must bring your high spirits to bear upon the poor gentleman; he is quite downcast.”

“I fear we had best not interfere with him just now, your lordship; there are troubles which are better nursed and thought over. I hope Mr. Tallant will soon be well again,” said Amy, sweetly.

“Trouble ought to be quickly dispersed with such companionship as Mr. Tallant has in his daughter and yourself,” said Lord Verner, bent on paying Amy a compliment in return for her gracious looks.

“I fear me we scarcely understand all Mr. Tallant’s troubles just now, and perhaps he does not understand our sympathy and desire to console him. Your lordship is pleased to be complimentary; but there is little of woman’s society at Montem Castle, I have always heard, or you would understand how easy it may be to tire of it.”

“Ah, there you hit me, Miss Somerton; now really that is cruel. Because I am deserted by the ladies, because I am a mopish, cross-grained, old bachelor, you think I am a fitting target for your sarcasm. Well, well, be it so. At least I have not to bear any woman’s taunts and jests at my own hearth. Ha! ha!—there, there—I think that is one to me. Don’t you think so, Miss Tallant?” and his lordship laughed merrily at his own jocularity.

Phœbe smiled a little sadly, and with a puzzled look at Amy, who gave her no opportunity to reply, but raising her hand slightly to give point to her words, she said:—

“No, and your lordship has no woman’s sweet smiles at your fireside either, no chatty sympathising companion in pretty dresses to walk by your side, and talk to you about all manner of things in which you are interested; no cheery, pleasant womanly face at the head of your table making everything brighter about you. There—is not that one to me, as your lordship puts it?”

Amy smiled so coquettishly, and looked so much all that she had described, that his lordship soon found himself in an exuberance of spirits.

“Ah, I am no match for you; it is easy to see that you have lived in the world, Miss Somerton. Your Belgravian guns are too many for our poor little pop-guns in the country, eh, Miss Tallant?” said his lordship.

“Miss Somerton has lived in the country all her life,” said Phœbe.

“You surprise me,” said the Earl.

“And should never desire, I think, to live anywhere else,” said Amy. “On the whole I think a country life by far the happiest, and the most independent.”

“Indeed, I think so too,” said his lordship. “There is a certain amount of solitude in a comparatively retired country life, which allows the greatest scope for freedom of thought, and for manners and opinions.”

“In what is called society, you sacrifice your liberty, you lose your own individuality,” said Amy, taking up the theme in a manner that she knew would be highly pleasing to Lord Verner, for she had an ample knowledge of his whims and peculiarities, and she was bent upon playing her new part in the most effective manner possible.

“Hear, hear!—admirably well illustrated!” said Earl Verner. “In the country one is not bored with all the trumpery little gossip of town. The news gets fairly sifted before it reaches us, as Gibbon, I think, somewhere says. We are the lookers-on, and we can rest or give up when we cease to be interested. In society, as you say, we are mixed up in the throng, we are part of all that is going on, we must be interested in all the frivolous nonsense. O, no, nothing like the country, and especially when you can occupy the mind.”

From this topic, in which Phœbe took great interest, the Earl glided into more lively subjects, and talked of pictures and new books; and he was surprised at the smartness and learning evinced in some of Miss Somerton’s replies. She seemed to know a little of everything, and to express herself with such charming deference to his lordship’s greater wisdom, that Earl Verner was quite delighted. He was not bored a bit; he had never before been in the society of women, who knew anything about books, without being bored; he hated women who were at all clever as a rule; but there was an unaffected modesty, a charming naïveté about this lady’s manner, which left its fascinating spirit upon Lord Verner long after he had left Barton Hall. Who could she be, this splendid specimen of common sense and beauty?

When he had fairly left the house, Miss Somerton made a curtsey to herself in a mirror, and said, “Très bonne, Mademoiselle, your acting is really most natural.”

Then turning round upon Phœbe, who was gazing at her friend with an expression of the most profound astonishment, she said:—

“Pray forgive me, Miss Tallant; you won’t cast me off for trying to outshine you this morning? You will not show me the door because I am only a bailiff’s daughter, and not rich?”

Amy’s sarcasm astonished Phœbe more than her previously extraordinary manner had done, and she could only think that poor Amy was not quite right in her mind.

“You surely cannot be in your right senses, Amy?” said Miss Tallant.

“Oh yes I am, dear. I was a poor foolish creature once; but I am going to appear in a new character in future. I will tell you all about it, like a dutiful companion and bailiff’s daughter, if you will not denounce me.”

“I fail to understand you, Amy,” said Phœbe, a little piqued at this undeserved reference to their relative positions.

Any further explanation on Amy’s part was prevented at that time by an unexpected message from the farm. Mrs. Somerton was seriously ill, and Luke had sent for his daughter, who went hurriedly to the bedroom which was set apart for her at the Hall, changed her dress, and obeyed her father’s summons.

Mrs. Somerton had been ailing for several days. The shock which she had sustained by the news of her son’s imprisonment had been but little relieved by the intelligence of his release. She had persisted in thinking that his life was ruined. The taint of dishonesty, though it had only attached to him in imagination, was upon him. He could not hope, she thought, to make a name after that. Everything, she said, went wrong with them, and she was well punished. This had been the substance of her talk half the night when she should have been asleep, and in the morning, whilst Amy was acting her new part before Lord Verner, she had fallen from her chair, and her husband had carried her to bed.

When Amy appeared at her bedside, the mother turned her head away sobbing and weeping.

“I’m very ill, Amy,” she said, by-and-by, “very ill. The longest day will come to an end at last. I hope the doctor will be here soon.”

“Dear mother, you must not give way so,” Amy said, kissing her forehead. “What shall I get for you?”

“Nothing, nothing. There’s no salve for sores of the mind, my girl,” replied the sick woman. “Let me have a doctor soon,” and then she closed her eyes.

It happened that Luke’s messenger to Avonworth met the doctor at the cross roads, returning from Berne; and he came therefore soon after Amy entered the room. Her mother looked at him eagerly as the doctor felt her pulse.

“Is there any danger, doctor?” she asked earnestly; “shall I die? pray do not deceive me. I am not a young woman, and don’t expect to live longer than my time; but do tell me if it has come?”

“There is no danger, I assure you,” said the doctor. “You have been excited lately, by some trouble perhaps—that affair of your son’s, which has come all right, I am glad to hear. Your greatest want is quiet and repose. You must not alarm or excite yourself: you will soon be better.”

Amy and her father followed the doctor down-stairs to obtain a verification of this statement; and as they left her, Mrs. Somerton repeated slowly to herself, “quiet and repose.”

CHAPTER II.
CONTAINS IMPORTANT REVELATIONS, AND TERMINATES FATALLY.

The next day Mrs. Somerton grew worse, and in the afternoon she insisted that she was dying. The doctor, on the contrary, insisted that she was not doing anything of the sort.

In the afternoon she expressed a strong desire to see Mr. Christopher Tallant.

“I must see him, Luke. There is something which he should know before I die—something of the greatest importance to others besides himself. Do, pray, send for him. It does not matter what yon senseless doctor says; I can feel I am dying, and I durst not die without seeing Mr. Tallant.”

So Luke communicated this strange intelligence to Mr. Tallant, and that gentleman proceeded at once to the farm.

“Oh, how ill you look, sir; how much you are changed,” said the sick woman, when Mr. Tallant appeared.

Mr. Tallant paid no heed to the remark, but sat down upon the nearest chair, and asked what she had to say to him.

“I am dying, sir, I am dying,” said Mrs. Somerton.

“I hope not,” said Mr. Tallant; “you look ill and excited, but not like dying.”

“They all say that,” she replied; “but sometimes the patient knows more than the doctors. Luke and Amy, will you leave me with Mr. Tallant; I have something to say to him. You will know of it hereafter, but don’t stand by and hear me confess my own wickedness. I am going to confess in time for a great wrong to be remedied—that is something in the way of atonement.”

Mr. Somerton and his daughter exchanged looks of blank astonishment, and left the room.

“Yes, yes, that is some comfort. There’s little good exposing a wrong when it cannot be remedied,” the sick woman went on, as if communing with herself. “The very thought does me good; I shall feel easier when the load is off my mind.”

“What is this secret, Sarah?” Mr. Tallant asked, and his thoughts wandered back to the time when she acted as his housekeeper; the sound of her Christian name coming from his own mouth seemed like the revival of an old memory.

“Are they gone?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the merchant; “do not delay; I have business letters of importance to write for post.”

“You would not think I was a very ambitious woman, Mr. Tallant; it is true, nevertheless. I was vain and full of being great when I was a girl, and all my life long I seem to have been going backwards instead of onwards. Nothing has come about as I expected.”

“We have all our disappointments,” said Mr. Tallant, dryly; “I hope you are not going to recount all yours.”

“How hard you are, sir; how little you seem moved by my wretched position. Have you no fears concerning this confession I am about to make?”

“None,” said the merchant; “my troubles are about over. You can’t hit me any harder than I have been hit already, whatever you may have to tell.”

“You remember your second wife,” went on the woman, half raising herself in bed; “you remember her dark eyes, and her graceful, ladylike form. You remember how she wore her dark hair, and how musical her voice was?”

The merchant did remember. The loss of this woman had been the saddest episode in his life.

“Have you never seen any one like her?” the sick woman asked, looking steadfastly at him.

“Never,” he replied; “but why all this mystery?—go straight to the point, my dear woman, at once, or I must leave you.”

“I have not much more to say. I thought your own fatherly instinct would have assisted me. Do you remember that you left me in charge of your child after Mrs. Tallant’s death? You were so stricken with grief that you never saw the child but once; and when the poor lady was buried you travelled on the Continent for more than six months. I had an infant two months old when your child was born. You left your house and child in my care. I was to do everything that was right and proper under the circumstances. Do you remember?”

The woman grew very much excited, and would not be content with Mr. Tallant’s solemn nod in the affirmative.

“Do you remember?” she repeated.

“I do,” he said.

“Do you remember, when you returned home, that you came of your own accord and asked to see the child, and how you called it Phœbe, after its mother—do you remember?”

“Yes, most assuredly,” said the merchant.

“That child was my own child. I changed them before you had been gone a month.”

Here she paused to see what effect the revelation had upon her hearer. But she could glean nothing from Mr. Tallant’s solemn, passive face.

“Amy Somerton is your daughter, and the young lady called Phœbe Tallant is mine.”

She went on—“And now I can die in peace. It was all ambition. I thought to be somebody through the means of my child; it was not all for her own sake that I did it. I thought of it night and day before I did it—night and day, and day and night, and I changed my mind many a time, until at last Luke, my husband, became accustomed to the new face, and then I could not go back from my purpose. And yet all my plans fail, everything goes wrong, and this secret has burnt into my life like a red-hot coal, until I am dying of it—dying of it.”

Then she sank back exhausted, and the merchant sat by with his eyes fixed upon her face, but without making the slightest effort to give her any assistance. He was a good deal stunned by the woman’s revelation; but if all other things had been well, he could have borne it without scarcely a pang either of indignation or regret, for both girls had been well cared for. They had lived like sisters, now for a long time past, and Amy had picked up an education almost equal to Phœbe’s.

“What proof have you of this base and ungrateful fraud?” he asked, when the woman opened her eyes again.

“Look at the picture of your wife—the one which hangs in the library—and then tell me how it is that you have not found out the deception long ago. Amy grows more like the lady who is gone every day, and Phœbe has not a feature in her face to remind you of her.”

Mr. Tallant saw the justice of the remark in an instant, and it seemed like a rebuke when he remembered how dearly the wife was beloved. With the picture and the familiar face of the assumed Amy Somerton in his mind for a moment, his whole nature cried out in proof of the woman’s story; and now he bethought himself of the strange interest he had always taken in the girl, and how indifferent he had been in comparison to Phœbe, lovable as she undoubtedly was, beautiful as everybody must confess her to be.

It seemed for a moment as if a new link of interest between himself and the world had been forged by this confession.

“You will wait until I am dead, sir—pray do—before you repeat my story: do, do wait; I should not like to lose Luke’s respect in my last moments.”

“I will not divulge what you have confessed, at present at least,” said the merchant; “but justice must be done.”

“Yes, yes, that is right; but I am not long for this world—there is no hurry now.”

The merchant promised to keep her secret for the present, but she could get no other promise from him.

She asked his forgiveness, and he forgave her.

When he left her she seemed to be considerably better. Exhausted by the excitement of her confession, she lay motionless when Amy and her father returned. She had been slightly feverish all day; towards night brain fever set in, and then the doctor confessed there was danger.

Meanwhile Mr. Tallant had sent for his London lawyer, who remained closeted with him all the next day. In the afternoon a clerk came down with parchment and other materials for engrossing, and Mr. Christopher Tallant made a new and final will, little thinking how soon it would come to be read aloud for the benefit of the parties interested therein.

He had taken every means for verifying the rumours which had reached him concerning his son; for many days past he had had a private detective upon his track, who had laid before him unmistakable proofs of his son’s commercial dishonesty. The detective had even hunted out the card scandal at the Ashford Club, in which Mr. Richard Tallant had not altogether escaped suspicion. He laid before the father shares recently transferred by Richard Tallant in the Meter Iron Works Company, whose stock had begun to fall in the market. The managing director had sold shares at par which had been at ten premium, and there was evidently a scheme on foot to run them down to a discount, and then Mr. Richard Tallant would buy up all he could get, for there was not a better concern in all England than the Meter Works.

It was a sore home-thrust this dealing with the Meter shares; but not the worst blow of all. Certain bill transactions, in which something very nearly akin to forgery had been committed, were disclosed, and Richard Tallant appeared to be a designing sharper of the first class,—one of the leading Stock Exchange conspirators, through whose arts so many concerns had been brought to ruin, and from which disasters the conspirators had reaped great golden harvests.

The merchant was a just man, and he would have every possible proof of his son’s dishonour before he wiped him out for ever. He had ample proof, and he wiped him out accordingly.

On the second night after Mrs. Somerton’s confession the lawyer and his clerk returned to London, and the merchant, having sent to inquire after the bailiff’s wife, who continued dangerously ill, took a light supper, retired to his bedroom, and dismissed his man for the night.

He took with him the vignette of which Mrs. Somerton had spoken; he pulled an arm-chair towards the fire, and sat gazing at the picture long after everybody was a-bed.

He sat there when the last embers in the grate had faded out, and he sat there when the sun rose the next morning—sat there with the picture at his feet—sat there with the red sunlight streaming through the blind, and through apertures in the door of the adjoining room; he sat there with his head upon his breast, his hands hanging down, and with his eyes wide open; but he had been dead for several hours when daylight looked in upon his corpse.

The sunshine was streaming in upon him, we say, and it was so; for on that morning the sun had risen with unusual splendour.

The east was all ablaze with crimson and golden hues, and from its gorgeous throne the sun shone forth as if with a burning glowing sense of its own grandeur. Troops of radiant beams, bearing commissions from the mighty king of day, gleamed above “the high-raised clouds,” dispersed “the morning fogs,” flung wreaths of sunny beauty upon the mantling hills, and glimmered in golden glittering sheen upon the windows of Barton Hall.

Not upon the windows only did the sunbeams fall, we say, but they penetrated the darkened rooms and fell upon the dead man; and here they played softly upon his whitened hair, and stole about the room as if they sought for somebody whom he loved that they might bring them to his side. Through every cleft and crevice the morning sunbeams streamed; a thousand motes sprang up and danced in the columns of light, as if they mocked the grave; and a reflection from the merchant’s watch-seals trembled like an active eye upon the wall.

Still the merchant slept on in his long, long sleep, until at length the sun rose higher and higher, paling with his growing radiance the gaudy colours of his throne, and sending forth streams of purer and brighter light. By-and-by a door was opened in the quiet room, followed by an expression of horror and amazement, and then hurried footsteps came and went, additional doors were opened and shut, and in a few minutes the household was astir, heavily laden with the morning’s sad discovery.

CHAPTER III.
“ARCADES AMBO,” BUT FLOURISHING NEVERTHELESS.

All this time Richard Tallant had remained in London; not only remained in London, but had regularly and assiduously attended to his duties at the offices of the Meter Iron Works Company.

There had been numerous board meetings, and a half-hearted kind of effort had been made to induce the chairman’s son to retire. Mr. Christopher Tallant had given notice of his resignation; but the board could not agree upon the question of his successor. Mr. Richard Tallant attended every meeting, and had increased his holding of the company’s stock to a large and important extent.

In his father’s absence he had made himself of value to the company; the run upon their shares had been of brief duration; they had not only speedily recovered, but had gone up to a heavy premium. Richard Tallant held his own in the company with a tenacity that surprised everybody connected with it. Unabashed by the disclosures at the Oriental Bank, undaunted by newspaper attacks, since that notorious meeting when his father left the chair of the Banking Company, he had been almost ubiquitous. He had commenced actions against two newspapers for libel, and had threatened others. Some of his former friends cut him dead in the Stock Exchange and in the Park; but he defied them all, and was to be seen as usual at the Corner, on ’Change, and at Westminster.

He had written a long letter full of excuses, and promises, and regrets, and justification to his father; but the proud old merchant did not even acknowledge it. His disgrace was not so much as a nine days’ wonder in the City, and his continued success was considered, by many, to be a sufficient justification of his conduct.

Amidst so many failures, with such numerous instances of sharping, and in the presence of a panic so severe, Richard Tallant’s name soon ceased to be canvassed: he paid every call that was made upon him, and he maintained his reputation for wealth. It was known that he had made enormous sums of money in recent speculations, and that he was financially independent. So many men were shaking in their commercial shoes, that few thought themselves able to afford to go out of their way to interfere with a rich man.

“What have I done?” Mr. Richard Tallant asked at one of the Meter Board Meetings, when he was attacked by an old friend of his father. “What have I done more than others have done, and are doing daily?”

“You have circulated false reports to damage the credit of good concerns, in order that you might make money by clever manipulations of shares,” said his opponent.

“That is a mere assertion,” was Mr. Richard Tallant’s reply. “Prove it,—prove it, sir; and take this as a caution if you cannot prove it; there is an offence called slander, which is actionable at law; rely upon it, I will not allow these things to be said with impunity. If I have made a few hundred thousand pounds by speculation on the Stock Exchange, by carefully watching favourable opportunities for buying and selling, it is not my fault that others have lost, and I defy you or any other man to prove that I have done anything without the pale of legitimate speculation.”

“Did you not lend your shares in the Oriental Bank, of which you were a director, to persons who were bearing the market? Did you not throw shares upon the market, and did not timid shareholders sell, in consequence, at a heavy depreciation, and did you not afterwards buy all you could get?”

“Suppose I say yes? Had I not a right to deal as I pleased with my own shares? If I did depreciate the property of the concern—which I deny—was I not depreciating my own?”

“Why were you absent from that meeting?”

“I had unexpected business elsewhere.”

“Why have you not answered the attack which was made upon you?”

“I will answer it in a court of justice, sir,” said Mr. Richard Tallant, striking his fist upon the table. “Do you think I shall permit the thing to pass over? You shall see how I will put my detractors down. Do you think I will permit the name of Tallant to be sullied by pettifogging brokers in the City?—by twopenny-halfpenny newspapers? Do you think a man with a balance of two hundred thousand pounds at his bankers in these times is to be put down by reports and rumours, and So-and-so says, and bosh of that character? If you do, you do not know Richard Tallant. And with regard to the Meter Iron Works, how many are there who have a larger stake in the prosperity of the concern than I have myself? Who charges me with neglect of duty?”

Mr. Christopher Tallant—poor man—might almost have been proud of the way in which his clever, unscrupulous son asserted himself. One or two of the old men at the board applauded and backed him up. There were many things in which he had been useful during his father’s absence, and it was chiefly through his influence with a certain railway company that a recent extensive order for girders had come in from India. Above all, the young fellow had been successful, and there was a manliness in his stand-up fight against all opponents that seemed to carry everything before him.

The truth is, on that day when his course of knavery was exposed, he had sent a trusty messenger to the meeting to report what took place, and when he learnt the result, he quietly shut himself up in his rooms at the West End, and debated with himself upon his line of conduct. “Shall I make a bolt of it?” or “Shall I fight it out?” These were the two momentous questions which he put and argued out in a dozen different ways.

He knew that his father would never forgive him, and, despite all his ill conduct, this gave him, a pang or two of regret and sorrow. It was not until midnight was long past, that he settled his plans: the ashes of many cigars lay upon the table, and numerous sheets of paper, covered with figures, were torn up and scattered about the hearth, before the final resolve was made.

“I’ll fight it out; I’ll go through with it,” he said at last. “The world bows down before success, no matter how it is obtained: money opens all doors, whoever knocks. I’ll go in for money—reputation be hanged. Who has got a reputation worth a button in these times? We are in the midst of a panic that will sweep away hundreds of reputations. What is the reputation of an honest bankrupt worth? Where is the flyblown reputation that money, and success, and bounce, and swagger will not cover?”

So Mr. Richard Tallant began to “fight it out” next day. He served two persons with notices of action for slander, and commenced actions for libel against two newspapers; he obtained insertion of a paragraph to this effect in a monetary journal; he attended to his duties at the Meter Works with an assiduity that astonished everybody; he wrote that letter to his father, and he fought that battle at the Meter Board which we have briefly indicated; he plunged deeper and deeper into speculations, and he was successful in almost every monetary operation in which he was engaged.

Meanwhile things were not quite so pleasant with Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs. His overthrow had been completed by poor Dibble’s confession. “Whom the gods devote to destruction, they first deprive of understanding.” Mr. Gibbs ought to have had sufficient experience of life to have known that his passion for revenge was mastering his cunning; he ought to have known enough of character to have seen that Dibble would break down in the part which he had assigned to him; but Fortune had permitted Gibbs to have his day, as she lets every other dog have his; and she selected her time and instruments accordingly for bringing his day to an end.

With justice upon his heels, he had been compelled figuratively to blot himself out; he could not only not sign his name to anything, but he could not put in a personal appearance anywhere as Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs; he had ventured to do a little business in his semi-clerical capacity, but failure was the result. The transfer of the shares which he had induced Dibble to take had never been completed, and when Gibbs benevolently took them back again they were improving; but two days after Dibble ran away, they went down to a heavy discount. Other things in which he was interested went wrong, the purse that the police held he could not hope to obtain, and he soon found himself reduced to his last fifty pounds.

He invested this sum characteristically.

Assuming his semi-clerical disguise, he took lodgings in a quiet respectable street off the Strand, purchased a Newspaper Press Directory, and wrote out the following attractive advertisements:—

“Loans.—Sums of money, varying from 2l. to 2000l., may be had for short or long periods, on personal security, on application to the undersigned. Secrecy observed in all transactions. Interest at the rate of 5 per cent. Apply (enclosing stamp for reply) to James Marfleeting, Esq., Accountant, 3, Great Charlton-street, Strand, London.”

“To Widows and Ladies in Needy Circumstances.—The advertiser has patented a new invention, which opens up employment for ladies in their own homes, whereby they can make from 1l. to 2l. a week with ease. Send 5s. in stamps for materials and instructions to the inventor and proprietor, Henry Cavendish, Esq., No. 6, Burkit-street, City, London.”

Having penned these enticing announcements, Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs called upon an engraver and ordered a couple of very business-like headings to be printed upon unimpeachable letter paper.

These he obtained in the course of the next day, and meanwhile he studied the Press Directory. This valuable work contained an elaborate index to the newspapers of the United Kingdom, giving their titles in full, the names and addresses of the publishers, with a brief description of the towns in which they were published, and the dates of their first publication. It also contained the publishers’ own descriptions of their newspapers, from which it would seem that each paper was the best medium for giving publicity to announcements of all descriptions; that several journals in the same town claimed to have the largest circulation; that they were all leading papers, first-class family papers, influential papers; some were the oldest Liberal papers, some the oldest Conservative papers, many the only Penny papers in the district.

Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs made a careful list of these numerous journals, selecting largely from among the newest penny papers, carefully jotting down all the dailies, and judiciously balancing the old weeklies, in the manufacturing districts, against those claiming to be more especially county papers.

A printer in Shoreditch struck off for him a number of copies of his advertisements, and when all was prepared he commenced to write his orders for their publication. With these orders he enclosed packets of postage stamps, varying in value from sixpence to five and six shillings. Nearly one hundred and fifty went away without any stamps at all, the writer requesting a bill for the amount to be sent off when the advertisement had appeared, with a quotation for thirteen, twenty-six, and fifty-two insertions. These were chiefly posted to the penny district papers and to those most recently established.

These missives duly passed through the post-office, and were opened by newspaper publishers, clerks, proprietors, and editors, the next day, in all parts of England. Some of them were opened in bright, well-furnished counting-houses; many in dingy little back rooms; others were carried up to private houses, where proprietors and editors read their letters before business hours in the morning.

If you could have witnessed the varied treatment which these letters of Mr. Gibbs, alias Marfleeting, alias Cavendish, received, you would have been highly entertained. Some gentlemen who opened the letters smiled contemptuously, said, “Indeed,” and returned stamps and order; others who were not favoured with stamps tossed the letters into waste-paper baskets; some said, “Bah!” and tore the things up. In many cases, however, the stamps were passed to credit, and the advertisement ordered for insertion in the ordinary course of business; and amongst the new and cheap district papers, half printed in London and otherwise, the order unaccompanied by stamps was duly obeyed, and a price gravely quoted for thirteen, twenty-six, and fifty-two insertions, with discount carefully mentioned for pre-payment.

In a few days, therefore, Mr. Gibbs’ advertising baits were duly displayed in numerous journals. Several leading papers had at various times cautioned their readers against this class of announcement; still advertisements of the kind occasionally obtained insertion in the ordinary course of business. Thus the two I have mentioned had places in many newspapers, and in less than a week Mr. Gibbs found quite a heap of letters waiting for him at the little coffee-house, No. 6, Burkit-street, City, addressed to Henry Cavendish, Esq. To the first batch of these he replied, stating that applications were so numerous the materials could not be manufactured fast enough, but that they should be sent off in a few days. He had so many communications at Great Charlton-street, that he was compelled to have a printed form of reply, and in this he enclosed another form, which the applicant was requested to fill up and forward by return, with five shillings for inquiry fees and five shillings for preliminary fees, which would be returned in case the loan were not granted. “An agent will call upon you personally in the course of three or four days with the cash, Mr. Marfleeting having several agents travelling through the provinces, as he finds this mode of doing business safer, more expeditious and private, than negotiations by letter.”

Hundreds of clients responded to Mr. Marfleeting’s reply, and scores of ladies continued to address private notes to Henry Cavendish, Esq.

What pinching and starving, and need, and keeping up appearances, all these letters represented! What stories they indicated! What fears of bankruptcy, what hopes deferred, what cheerless hearths, what battles for life, what misery! Small tradesmen with bills of exchange coming due; shopkeepers pressed for rent; clerks who had overrun the constable; mechanics with extravagant wives; men of small means who had speculated, and had to meet unexpected calls upon shares which were to have made their fortune, and would prove their ruin—drowning men in the financial sea—these were they who caught at the monetary straws of Marfleeting. Widows with small allowances hardly enough to keep body and soul together, widows who lived on lodgers, widows keeping up appearances, spinsters with precarious incomes, daily governesses, eldest daughters in large families, mothers with invalid and drunken husbands—these were foremost in the crowd who sent their money to Henry Cavendish, Esq., and saw in the future competency and comfort by means of his glorious invention; and some of these poor people went down upon their knees at night and prayed that God would prosper their labours and so extend the use of this new invention, that it should be a blessing to them and to others who might be in necessity and tribulation.

CHAPTER IV.
IN WHICH RICHARD TALLANT VISITS BARTON HALL AGAIN, AND ARTHUR PHILLIPS COMPLETES A GREAT WORK.

The news of Mr. Christopher Tallant’s death brought down his son by the earliest train. He hired a fly at the Avonworth Hotel, and reached Barton in the afternoon of a cold November day.

He felt that his conduct had hurried on the sad event which brought him once again in the vale of Avonworth. The telegram which Phœbe had considered it her duty to send to him, had for a moment struck him down like a blow. But of late he had so thoroughly schooled himself to his fate, had so trampled upon conscience and feeling, that he soon recovered his former coolness.

The thought occurred to him whether any change had been made in the will which he knew had been signed in his favour. Was this fine estate his own? Were those fields and woods his? Had that property in Yorkshire, those splendid farms on the wolds, reverted to the only son of Christopher Tallant? How much had the old man left?

It occurred to him that his father might have changed his will, indeed he had every reason to believe that such had been his intention. But he would not let this more than probable contingency have a settled place in his thoughts; for the desire of possession came upon him as the country conveyance dragged slowly along through the fine well-timbered park which had been fields within his own memory—fields overgrown with hedges and elm trees, and gorse and brushwood.

The blinds were down in all parts of the house, and Chester, the late Mr. Tallant’s man, opened the hall door slowly, and took Mr. Richard’s coat and hat without a smile or a word.

“Where is my sister?” said Richard, with an air of authority and command.

“I will inquire, sir,” said the old man.

“Tell her to come to me in the library; and look here, bring me some dry sherry.”

“Yes, sir,” said Chester.

Richard Tallant had qualms of conscience as he entered the familiar hall; a sense of fear came over him; he remembered all of a sudden the thousand acts of parental kindness and liberality that had been lavished upon him. Conscience would not let him forget all this, and honour reminded him how low he had fallen; so he spoke loud and gave commands, and assumed a tone of authority.

Phœbe soon came, pale and careworn, and with the tears in her eyes, she submitted to be kissed, and she kissed Richard in return, but she said not a word.

“Have you nothing to say?” Richard asked, after a few moments; “no explanation to give?”

“Don’t ask me for explanations—Chester will tell you about it,” she replied, softly and tenderly.

“Oh, very well, as you please, as you please,” he said, assisting himself to the sherry.

“Will you come up-stairs and see him?” Phœbe asked, putting her hand upon his arm, and wondering for a moment at his changed appearance.

He could not meet the glance of those big inquiring eyes.

“See whom?” he asked loudly and filling another glass.

“See our father,” said Phœbe in a whisper.

The son paused, with the sherry partly raised to his lips, and replaced the full glass upon the table.

“Come,” said Phœbe; “come, I will go with you.”

“No,” he said at length with a great effort, and withdrawing his arm from her gentle touch, “No; by-and-by.”

He dare not look upon that cold white face; for whilst Phœbe was talking, conscience gripped him savagely and made him a coward. He could look at nothing but the floor, and there the very boards seemed to twit him with his infamy and ingratitude.

His only relief was to rush to the bell and ring for Chester, and when he came, Phœbe glided out of the room to her chamber.

It had been a particularly sad and anxious time for Phœbe, and she appeared to stand alone in her sorrow. Arthur Phillips, from whom she had been wont occasionally to ask advice upon minor things, and in whose talk about art she had been so often engrossed, had not been near the house for months; the change which had recently come over Amy, Richard Tallant’s estrangement from her father, that father’s sorrow and death, all seemed to come upon her, blow after blow, and to leave her without one sympathising soul to whom she could look for a ray of hope and comfort.

What had become of Arthur Phillips? She had wondered a hundred times. His absence had been like something gone out of her life—like some domestic affliction. Her palette and canvas had lost all interest for her now. They had reminded her too much of her deep and secret sympathy in all that concerned him. She did not confess to herself that she loved him, and, truth to tell, she hardly knew that she did love him; but his absence was a hardship. His quiet homage was something that satisfied her; his warm enthusiasm about the beautiful and the true; his stories of painters who had won their way to fame and fortune by dint of their inborn genius and industry; his judgment about books; his criticisms on poetry; his compliments when she had been more than ordinarily successful in some touch of colour: all this had been part of her existence, and with Arthur’s absence had come all the manifold troubles which had afflicted her young life, clouded her hopes, and covered her with a sorrow too deep for words.

And what had Arthur Phillips been doing all this time? Painting that grand picture which he said he would paint when last we heard him speak some months ago.

The commercial panic had sorely afflicted a special local manufacture in which a large number of men and women had been employed at Severntown. As Arthur was returning home, on the day following that evening when we saw him at work in the fields, he met a number of operatives thrown out of work, who with no chance of the factory being re-opened, had set out “on tramp.” Arthur questioned them, and found that on the next morning nearly a hundred families were going to leave by train for Liverpool on their way to Australia. Subscriptions had been entered into to promote a scheme of emigration started by the operatives themselves, and this first exodus would take place the next morning.

Few of us but will remember, at some period of life, standing in a railway station, and watching the departure of a train containing some one the taking leave of whom excited all those human sensibilities which find vent in

“The silent pressure of the hand

Which friends too well can understand.”

We have seen to the luggage, found out the best seat for our friend, advised him to keep clear of the draft, begged of him to write at an early day, and done a variety of other trivial things by way of keeping the little time occupied, and smothering as much as possible the sorrows of parting. And then, when the squeezing of the hand was over, and the engine had shrieked the signal of departure, and the train had moved off, and grown less and less until it was out of sight, we have stood gazing at the long lines of rails over which it had disappeared, with thoughts and regrets too deep for words. Let us not deny such touches of nature. The most querulous, petulant, hard-hearted of mortals have experienced these emotions, and with something of the fear that the future might sever those ties of friendship, the danger of the breaking of which Bulwer Lytton describes so forcibly when he says: “The true sadness is not in the pain of parting—it is in the when and the how you are to meet again with the face about to vanish from your view; from the passionate farewell to the woman who has your heart in her keeping, to the cordial good-bye exchanged with pleasant companions at a watering-place, a country-house, or the close of a festive day’s blithe and careless excursion—a chord, stronger or weaker, is snapped asunder in every parting, and Time’s busy fingers are not practised in re-splicing broken ties. Meet again you may: will it be in the same way? with the same sympathies? with the same sentiments? Will the souls, hurrying on in diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream? Rarely, rarely.”

Here was Arthur’s inspiration; he read the simple thoughts and the attendant quotation in a newspaper. The parting with Lionel Hammerton had prepared him for it, and all of a sudden he said to himself, “This shall be my great picture, and I will call it ‘Seeking New Homes.’”

He was at the railway station with the dawn of the next day, busily engaged sketching various points.

By-and-by, as the emigrants began to arrive, he made hurried sketches of faces and costumes, and in the course of an hour or two he stood there, fully realising all the inspiration which had come upon him in the highway: his broad elastic sympathies had been excited to the full, and he stood watching the train that had gone, almost with tears in his eyes—stood amidst numerous little affecting groups of men and women, and shared their sorrows.

The train which had gone was gaily decorated with ribbons, and had quite a holiday appearance; the passengers had been singing some well-known ballad; and the friends left behind had cheered them. People must do something to keep down that choking sensation which the strongest have felt at parting, and songs and cheering were capital resources for “driving dull care away,” on the occasion of a hundred poor families seeking the means of existence in a distant land.

Great battles have no more moving incidents than those social catastrophes which fall now and then upon manufacturing districts, bringing all the ills of poverty and starvation, and forced idleness upon poor, uneducated, improvident people. At these times instances enough of self-sacrifice and love crop up amongst them to make up for all the stories of selfishness and brutality that come out in their prosperity.

Arthur Phillips did not fail to take in the whole of that scene at the railway station: he did not forget those men and women with the blanched cheeks and tearful eyes. To them the parting could not be otherwise than painfully significant. It was a separation more fruitful of grief and apprehension than the common parting of friends. It was a forced exile, which those left behind might soon be compelled to follow—a flying from one ill to another, between which those left behind stood wavering, with little ones around them looking up for comfort and finding none.

The artist bent himself to his work from that very day. At night he completed his various sketches and studied his subject, and in the day he painted from early morn to evening—painted for very life—painted for love, and money, and fame, and sympathy. It was striking out in a new line, but he had no fear of the result. In less than a month the picture began to assume form and character; never had artist worked with more rapidity and with more earnestness of purpose. The work had never flagged—it had gone on day by day without interruption or change of plan. The subject was so thoroughly mapped out in the artist’s mind, that time alone stood between him and its completion. The figures were few but full of character, and the last touch was given to the whole on that morning when Mr. Tallant died.

The story was wonderfully told: the picture was a poem on canvas—full of human nature, brimming over with sympathy. As a work of art—for conception, drawing, perspective colour, it was truly a grand picture; and Arthur felt his success as he sat before it that morning, when the sun was shining upon the dead man at Barton Hall.

On the next day, before the picture could hardly be said to be dry, Arthur had it packed, and he posted with it to London, where he had arranged for it to be hung at a winter exhibition. Josephs the dealer, who had previously purchased everything Mr. Phillips chose to let him have, had heard some whisper about it, and had visited Arthur the week before; but the artist could not be prevailed upon to show the picture to anybody but his old housekeeper who had nursed him when he was a boy, and she had sat before it and cried and sobbed over it almost heart-broken: then Arthur felt that he had painted a great picture, and he knew it when he unveiled it again in that long room in Suffolk-street, Pall Mall, before a small critical company.

In a few hours “Seeking New Homes” was talked of in artistic and literary society all over London, and when everybody was asking everybody else if they had seen the new picture, Arthur Phillips drove down to Paddington and took a ticket for Avonworth.

CHAPTER V.
THE TWO TEMPLES.

The success of Christabel, “the mysterious lady,” in some new business at the Severntown races, together with the high appreciation which the working classes exhibited of the tricks of “Momus” and his master, induced the showman to make a considerable stay at Severntown.

Mr. Henry Bilks, “the only living skeleton extant,” had also made overtures to Mr. Martin to join him in a permanent winter exhibition, and, so strangely does one thing influence another, that the advertisement of Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs played its part in the scheme.

The Temple of Magic had already been removed to the Blue Post’s Yard, where “the riders” and other companies of public entertainers usually took their stand; the public had already been addressed in grandiloquent terms, in very grey ink, on very thin paper; and Mr. Dibble had solemnly done duty “on the outside” for many nights, when Mr. Bilks drove to the side-door, (“private entrance, ladies and gentlemen, at the side, price three pence!”), and without further ado went behind the magic curtain, and offered to join the wizard for the winter season, if the wizard would take a shop in some public street, advertise the exhibition, and conduct it upon something like high-class principles.

The “living skeleton” had left with the showman copies of various testimonials, and a copy of the Slumkey Guardian. It was in this latter journal that Martin had spelled out the Loan Office advertisement, whereupon he dictated to Dibble the terms of a letter which should be sent to James Marfleeting, Esq.

It was a strangely quaint and ungrammatical letter this, penned by Thomas Dibble. It set forth, in big straggling letters, that the writer was the proprietor of an exhibition of considerable fame in the provinces; that he was anxious to add thereto additional attractions, and make it a permanent thing for the winter at the important city of Severntown, where it had recently attained to a pitch of great celebrity.

The writer required a loan of one hundred pounds for six months, re-payable by instalments, and he was prepared to give his bond for the amount, together with security upon his properties.

“Indeed,” said Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, who was just preparing to remove his quarters from the street off the Strand. “Indeed! Thomas Dibble, by all that is wonderful! I never forget handwriting, and I shall never forget Master Dibble’s above everybody else’s. Surely he has not turned showman? No; he is the exhibitor’s fag, his man-of-all-work, and he has written this letter from dictation. I will reply by-and-by. Meanwhile, I must see what there is to be made out of this with Mrs. Dibble. I fancy the old girl would give something to know where her faithless Tommy is.”

Thus soliloquised Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, whilst he packed up sundry letters and papers, and prepared to change his residence.

Some of his correspondents were beginning to be tiresome; they had commenced to require explanations of the continued delay; and the women who had written to the Coffee House in the City, were appealing in heart-breaking terms for the promised materials, or the return of their money.

“It is getting hot,” the ex-swell went on. “I can’t stand these pathetic epistles; they hurt my feelings. Poor creatures! They would surely be satisfied if they knew that they were contributing to maintain the faded splendours—ah! of a buck out of luck. That’s rhyme—’gad, bless my soul! who would have thought that I should burst out into rhyme? I am very sorry, ladies, that I cannot afford to forward the materials in question, nor the trifling sums which you have—haw—entrusted to my care. And, messieurs, les pauvres gentilhommes, and you, ye wretched traders, who get into debt beyond your means of payment, I will make further inquiries into your cases. Meanwhile I am much obliged to you for the fees which you have forwarded so promptly.”

The next day a detective officer inquired at No. 3, Great Charlton Street, Strand, for James Marfleeting, Esq.; but that gentleman had left the house without giving the landlady warning, or paying for the last week’s rent.

Shortly afterwards, in the garb of a “Mossoo” of the Leech cut, and with a heavy black moustache, Mr. Gibbs called at Mrs. Dibble’s. He found that lady in a very melancholy state of mind, and considerably thinner than when we last saw her.

With a strong French accent he asked Mrs. Dibble if her husband had run away, and if his name was Thomas.

“Yeth, thir,” was Mrs. Dibble’s reply. “It ith with feelings of thorrow and shame—though why I should have such feelings, ith not my fault or deserth—it ith, however, with these feelings that I thay yeth to you, and having had a boarding-school education ath a girl, and been brought up in the highest spear of society, it ith a degradation which I feel to the core.”

“Ah, madame, dat is bad, dat is very bad; for it is goot to have education,—and why shall your husband leave you?”

Mr. Gibbs shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands as he spoke, and Mrs. Dibble sighed and shook her little stumpy curls sympathetically.

“It ith a long story, which I am not inclined to go into unnecessarily,” said Mrs. Dibble, “and there are griefs which are not improved by being talked about. Ath a busineth woman, and one who wath the daughter of a builder that erected hundreds of houses and public inthitutions, the specifications of which I have written out many a time,—ath a busineth woman, I would athk what your busineth ith with me? and then we can go on.”

Mrs. Dibble sat down, smoothed her apron, and looked Monsieur full in the face.

“If I shall pring you to vere your husband shall be, is he of—ah! vat sall I say?—is he of dat value to you for vich you sall pay mine fees, vich is out of mine pocket?”

Mrs. Dibble did not reply, but proceeded to fasten her dress behind, which required a considerable effort.

“You vill be surprised at vat I ask, but dat vill disappear ven I tell you I am attached to a Private Inquiry Office, vich is on de French plan, and dat I am in de detective line à la Française, and I can restore to your arm de husband of your heart.”

“You can?” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble. “Prove that to me, and I will pay your fees.”

“Is dat his writing?” he asked, showing her part of the showman’s letter.

“It ith!” Mrs. Dibble exclaimed. “I should know it in ten thousand.”

“Vell—fifteen pounds is my fees for his direction, vere you sall find him,” said Gibbs.

Mrs. Dibble demurred to this for some time, and argued the point in a dozen ways; but Mr. Gibbs was not to be moved. Finally Mrs. Dibble gave him three five-pound notes, and in return received his address at “The Temple of Magic, Blue Posts Inn yard, Severntown.”

It was rather a courageous thing on the part of Mr. Gibbs to visit Mrs. Dibble; but he no doubt felt perfectly secure in his disguise.

He visited her at a time when he calculated that her lodgers would be away at their several places of business; for Paul Somerton might have been more penetrating than Mrs. Dibble.

Paul still lodged with Mrs. Dibble, and was rapidly making his way to a respectable position through the kind introductions of his patron, Mr. Williamson.

His unsophisticated manners, his honesty, his thoroughly English characteristics, his manliness, and his intelligent face had quite won Mr. Williamson’s heart, and he frequently invited Paul to sup with him at his chambers in the Temple.

A quiet cozy little room, up several narrow flights of stairs—a snug little room, though slightly fusty—with two sides occupied by law books bound in calf. There were sundry maps and old engravings hung here and there; a bust of a Chancery judge, a ditto of Shakspeare; a coal-box, a couple of easy chairs, a table littered with papers, and a mantel-piece covered with visiting and invitation cards.

When the sombre curtains were drawn, and that mysterious old woman, who turned up from some dark corner outside the door, was permitted to retire for the night, and Mr. Williamson produced the sugar and lemons and whisky—when the kettle was singing on the fire—then indeed was that little room snug, and cosy, and everything else that is comfortable.

“It is pleasant to talk to a simple-hearted young fellow like you,” said Mr. Williamson upon one of those evenings prior to the sudden death of Mr. Tallant.

Paul smiled and sipped the whisky.

“And so you think, notwithstanding all your troubles, that it is a good thing to have been born?”

“I do,” said Paul, modestly.

“You think an all-wise Providence conferred a great boon upon you when He called you into existence, and all that sort of thing?”

“Of course,” said Paul.

“You would not, could you now select, be blotted out for ever, and have all your chances or hopes of a future annihilated?”

“Oh, no!” said Paul.

“Happy youth,” said Mr. Williamson, smoking and blowing the smoke up amongst his books bound in calf.

“Well, not particularly happy that I know of,” said Paul; “but still, with all respect to you, I thank God I am happier than some people.”

“And you don’t think the Bible is Hebrew mythology? In fact, you are a virtuous, good boy. You think it’s a good thing, too, to have been born an Englishman, and that we are better and braver than other people, and all that stuff?”

“All this I steadfastly believe,” said Paul, remembering a passage in the Prayer-book.

“Very well; I shall not try to influence your orthodox views, and I will endeavour to promote your temporal prosperity. You like the Pyrotechnic office, and you think you will get on?”

“Yes, thank you, I do,” said Paul.

“I suppose, like most fellows connected with newspapers in any way, you would rather be on the literary staff? You would like to be giving forth your own opinions, and see them printed in long columns of leaded type?” said the barrister, who was evidently highly amused with Paul, whom he seemed to regard as an agreeable study.

“I sometimes think I should be glad if I could write,” said Paul.

“There’s nothing in it, my boy—nothing at all. At first there is a kind of satisfaction about the thing; but it all arises from conceit: it is all vanity and vexation of spirit, as the Preacher says. It is all very well if you can obtain one or two comfortable engagements, with permission to write pretty well what you please; and when you can combine literature, as I do, with another distinguished profession.”

Mr. Williamson smiled at this bit of quiet waggery of his own, seeing that he had never yet had more than a single client.

“If one has not many clients, however,” he went on, as if answering his own protest against that small boast about combining two professions, “the law is a distinguished profession after all: makes one a gentleman by Act of Parliament, you know, Paul.”

And then the barrister smiled again; he was evidently entertaining himself as well as Paul.

“There is an offshoot of the legal profession, a sort of Jackall-byeway, along which a large quantity of grist comes to the legal mill—I mean the police. The higher branches of that craft present many features of interest—the detective feature in particular,” the barrister went on. “I have been studying it a little lately, in the interest of your friend Gibbs; the police seem to have given the fellow up altogether.”

As they were talking, two literary friends dropped in, and the conversation was changed to a gossip about books, and plays, and pictures—“Seeking New Homes” was a leading topic. One of the strangers said the town was mad about it, and after all it was just simply a sensational thing—a dramatic bit that would engrave well and be popular in country districts. His companion did not agree with this criticism, but spoke of the picture as a work of really high art—a poem on canvas, wonderfully well painted.

And so the time wore on, and by degrees the barrister’s room was filled with smoke, and Paul at length bade his friend and patron good-night, shook hands with the visitors, and departed.

“You are a queer fellow, Williamson,” said one of the new comers as Paul left the room and commenced blundering his way down-stairs.

“Oh, this is Williamson’s protégé, is it?” said the other.

“Yes, that is the young fellow,” said the barrister; “he is quite a study of English innocence and honesty, and I am going to be useful to him. His sister is a splendid creature; but, somehow or other, he tells me now that it is discovered she is not his sister, but the daughter of a very wealthy gentleman. There is something exceedingly interesting in the whole family: his only brother went to sea at fifteen, and has never since been heard of.”

“Williamson’s going to write a sensation romance,” said one friend to the other, in a loud ironical aside; “and here are his materials.”

“I am certainly studying the young fellow,” said Williamson, quietly. “A bit of genuine honesty of thought and feeling and expression, though it be not coupled with the highest order of education, is very refreshing to contemplate in these times, and especially when one is connected with professional critics.”

Williamson smiled quietly at the gentleman who had spoken adversely of “Seeking New Homes,” and the critic laughed good-humouredly in return, tapped his hand upon the table, and said:—

“Ah, well! wait until your sensation novel appears, Williamson, and I’ll take it out of you, my friend.”

And then they all laughed; for who that knew Williamson’s lazy habit would ever expect him to write a story of eight or nine hundred pages? And if he did, who amongst his personal friends, that were critics, would have said an unkind word of him or his work?

He was a big-hearted, generous pet amongst all the men, this same journalistic barrister, and known amongst them all as “The Philanthropist.” It was a happy thing for Paul that the barrister was on a mission of benevolence at the Police Court on that memorable morning when he stood at the dock, and equally unlucky for Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs.

CHAPTER VI.
MRS. DIBBLE AND PAUL SOMERTON JOURNEY TO SEVERNTOWN.

It did not need much persuasion to induce Paul to accompany Mrs. Dibble on her projected journey to Severntown. He easily obtained permission to leave the Pyrotechnic for a couple of days, and on a miserable December morning they arrived at the famous city of Severntown—famous in the present day for many things: for its noble cathedral, as we have already intimated; for its grand old river, its clean broad streets and its narrow dirty ones, through which a king was chased by Cromwellian troops.

A city to be proud of this same Severntown—to be proud of for its historical associations, its eminent men and women, ancient and modern; a city surrounded by a beautiful country, studded with the seats of noblemen, whose four-in-hands are still oftentimes seen rattling over the white road-ways; a city that was wont, in ancient days, to have unusually fierce election contests, and which is now settling down into moderate opinions, and throwing its latent political fire into commercial enterprise. It manufactures all kinds of things which have a strange sound when mentioned together, such as steam-engines and porcelain, pickles and horse-hair, carriages and sauce, fire-grates and shirt-studs, gin and boots, and other machines, condiments, ornaments, spirits, and wearing apparel. It has quarrels about sewers, the price of gas, and the state of the streets, like all other provincial towns, and a long dirty road to the railway station.

There was a row of six cabs and an antique sort of bus at the railway station, and several ragged youngsters who offered to carry the travellers’ carpet-bags.

Close by the station Paul detected a comfortable-looking inn, into which inn he and Mrs. Dibble directed their steps—not that Mrs. Dibble approved of inns, for she did not, as she told Paul over and over again, although in the course of business her father had been called upon to build several establishments of the kind, and the specifications had gone through her hands; but no doubt they were necessary sometimes, and she thought they were justified in taking up their abode at one, and having something hot and some tea at this inn in particular, and on the shortest possible notice; so Paul ordered the refreshment whilst Mrs. Dibble, struggling under a load of shawls and comforters and rugs, was shown to her room.

If Mrs. Dibble had had the smallest compunction about entering the railway tavern, she had no hesitation about the chops and the tea and the muffins and watercress, which she was liberal enough to commend, giving very practical illustrations of her approval of the fare, and all the time talking of her poor appetite, and telling Paul how seriously Mr. Dibble’s conduct had injured her health. She became so confidential upon this point, and at length felt herself so much at home that she permitted the hooks-and-eyes nearest her chin to disengage themselves, and insisted upon Paul joining her in just sixpenny-worth of spirits-and-water before they ventured out in the cold to discover the yard by the Blue Posts Inn.

The spirits-and-water made them both very warm and comfortable, and Paul at length offered his arm to his companion, and away they started towards the point indicated.

It was a damp, drizzling night, and there were treacherous holes here and there in the path which Mrs. Dibble assured Paul were in the highest degree uncomfortable. She was sure her stockings would be that splashed that they would not be fit to be seen.

Severntown did not look at all inviting in the hazy light of the December gas; but Paul knew the place, and redeemed its character to some extent by telling Mrs. Dibble that they were in the back slums, which she said she could readily understand.

Through dirty streets, with one or two bridges over black, murky water; past lazy carts and rumbling cabs splashing through the mud; by narrow footways, which were sometimes no footways at all; it was certainly no pleasant route to the Blue Posts. At length, however, they came to a fine, open, well-lit street, and after walking a short distance in this brighter locality, they turned sharply round into a narrow passage, and then emerged into an open, muddy square.

Here was situated Digby Martin’s Temple of Magic, and Mrs. Dibble and Paul stopped to study the scene before them.

About two hundred persons of all ages were crowded in front of a show of the old-fashioned traditional stamp. A small platform, which was ascended by broad wooden steps, was surmounted with a very florid painting of a character that evidently proved highly attractive to the audience. A lady in a low dress, with a wonderful necklace round her neck, and very dazzling bracelets upon her arms, was represented in the attitude of pointing at a box, from which two pigeons were flying, in the direction of an auditory consisting of a king and numerous officers in the army. Several rabbits were quietly peeping out of a saucepan placed upon a fire, a shower of cards and fruit and watches was falling from an inverted hat, and in the background were sundry mystic signs beneath a blazing sun.

The companion picture was, if possible, of a higher order of merit, though of a simpler character. It represented the young lady in the low dress crouching beneath a capacious basket, and it also represented the same basket being raised by a man with black moustachios, who significantly pointed to the vacant space beneath; underneath was written in big letters, “The Famous Basket Trick.”

Hung at various points in frames of various character, was represented a tremendous dog going through an exciting and varied performance. Here he stood upon his head, there he fired off a pistol; in another place he was engaged in a sort of pugilistic encounter with a professional bruiser, and around the frames which contained these pictorial attractions was printed, “The celebrated dog ‘Momus’ in a round of favourite and world-renowned characters.”

The proprietor of the caravan had had a great argument with the artist who executed these latter works upon the propriety of calling Momus a “dogess,” which the showman thought would be sure to “draw;” but the artist had gravely assured him that such a title would not come within the rules of strict art, however grammatical it might be, and this settled the question at once.

Upon the platform a young lady, in pink muslin and spangles and fleshings, with a crown upon her head, and many rows of curious beads around her neck, was marching solemnly to and fro, to an old ballad melody which a fellow in a bowler hat was twisting out of an organ, and to which he was keeping time on a very hard drum.

Strutting backwards and forwards also, sometimes before the young lady in muslin and sometimes behind her, was a gaunt, greyish-looking dog, dressed up in military costume, and occasionally stopping to go through little bits of military exercise.

Three flaming and spluttering naphtha lamps cast a flickering uncertain light upon the singular scene, making the surrounding darkness all the darker.

By-and-by the man at the organ laid down his drum-stick, and, taking up a long whip, came to the top of the ladder, and after cracking the whip in a grave, solemn sort of fashion, he struck the spangled lady in the picture, and said in a loud voice,—

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, be in time, be in time! there be no time to lose! we be just a-goin’ to commence! The mysterious Lady of the North and the hemmernent Wizard—the greatest wonder in Europe! The wonderful basket trick, or the mysterious secret, is pronounced by all who ’ave seen it to be the greatest feat——”

There is no knowing how much more the speaker would have said concerning the marvels of this famous exhibition had he not been interrupted by three terrible screams, one following the other in rapid and startling succession, and uttered by a stout woman in the crowd, who was looking up at Dibble and fighting the air above her head with two very short arms in a most alarming manner.

“Oh, here’s a lark—the old woman’s drunk,” said a boy, throwing his hat up into the drizzly, mizzly air.

“Pat her on the back,” said an excited woman with a baby in her arms.

“Let me alone—let me alone!” at length Mrs. Dibble exclaimed, beating her way through the crowd, and mounting the Temple steps amidst roars of laughter and shouts of applause.

The gentleman with the whip became suddenly very much agitated, and when he saw the woman approaching the platform, he fairly turned round and bolted into the Temple.

Seeing this, a crowd rushed up after the old lady; but “Christabel,” the showman’s daughter, seized the whip which Dibble had dropped, called “Father” lustily, and began to defend the pass.