CHAPTER XIX.
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.