The winter slipped swiftly away, without making many important changes in the positions of the people in our story.
Important events were in course of consummation, but no special incident cropped up to mark the gradual development of the various circumstances calling for anything more than simple narration.
Earl Verner had taken several opportunities to renew his acquaintance with Amy, and we must do his lordship the justice to say that her sudden and unexpected advancement in fortune had little or no influence upon his course of wooing, for he was hit at that first interview, hit irredeemably. There was something in Amy besides her good looks which had fairly fascinated the earl. The idea of a thoroughly companionable and intellectual woman had never presented itself to him before. Hitherto women had represented to him trouble, bother, putting yourself out of the way, and everything that was not being easy and lazy and lolling about, and grubbing amongst old books, and fadding with ancient china, and being constantly delighted with pictures. Woman engrossed all this in herself. She wanted to be old china and books and pictures and antiquities and everything all in one; and this notion did not suit Earl Verner; but in Amy he felt that there would not be this autocracy. She was evidently as much interested in these things as he was himself, and, considering how much his condescension in marrying her would elevate her in the social scale, he would have an influence over her that he could not hope to have over a woman in his own walk of life.
The more he saw of Amy Tallant the more enraptured he became, and well he might, for Amy spared no pains to make herself charming and agreeable in his eyes; indeed, Amy had vowed to herself that she would marry him. She would show Lionel Hammerton what a mistake he had made when he sported with the deep feelings of a girl like her.
And so in due course his lordship proposed for Amy’s hand, and was accepted.
Meanwhile, Phœbe Somerton had insisted upon staying at the Hall Farm. Her obstinacy upon this point had appeared at first to give Amy a good deal of pain; but Phœbe explained that she had marked out a line of conduct for herself as the line of duty under the circumstances, and, whatever she might do in the future, at present she would certainly live with her father and mother. Amy soon saw that there was no pique in this, that it meant no ill feeling towards herself, and the two girls understood each other well. Amy was too much engrossed in her own scheme to let anything else trouble her.
She had written to Paul Somerton a warm, affectionate letter, in which she had charged herself with his advancement in life; she had asked him to select his career, and insisted upon bearing all the cost of his studies and promotion. Paul had consulted his friend Mr. Williamson, and had discussed the question with him in a hundred different ways. He had for some time almost resolved upon declining this proffered aid, but he knew that this would be hurtful in the extreme to Amy’s feelings, and Mr. Williamson argued the case so well, from a sisterly point of view, in favour of its acceptance that Paul becomingly thanked his sometime sister, and left the point open for further consideration.
Finally, Amy requested him to come to the Hall, and there she introduced him to Earl Verner, and told his lordship the brief story of the lad’s life; and the end was, with the consent of Mrs. Somerton and Luke, that a commission in the army was purchased for Paul, and he commenced his military career as an ensign in the gallant Ninety-fifth, with fair prospects of rapid promotion.
Mr. Williamson received a magnificent memento of his kindness to Paul in the shape of a watch exquisitely set with jewels, and a courteous intimation that if Miss Tallant could at any time render Mr. Williamson any service she would esteem it a delightful privilege to show her high appreciation of his conduct.
The barrister treasured her sweet-scented little note quite as much as he did the valuable jewelled watch, and he sighed and rubbed his hands over the smouldering fire at his rooms when he heard of her forthcoming marriage.
“She is such a splendid woman,” he would say. “I had almost persuaded myself that I was in love with her that first and only time when I saw her in town; and now that she is going to be married, by Jove, I begin to think I really am in love with her.”
But the truth is, Mr. Williamson had been hit in early life. There was a mysterious, vague sort of story, which a few of his old friends sometimes told each other, concerning a romantic love affair,—a wedding, a separation and death, under very sad circumstances. Whatever the story was, nobody ever alluded to it in presence of Williamson; but they knew who knew him that there was no likelihood of his falling in love again, or any nonsense of that sort, as others would put it. And the barrister had only sighed at the mention of Amy’s marriage because a thought of his own love-dream and its terrible termination occurred to him at the moment.
Phœbe Somerton and Arthur Phillips were constantly together at the Hall Farm, and before the winter ended Arthur had summoned sufficient courage to discharge his heart’s load of love by a full and ample confession; and Phœbe had looked into his great dark eyes, and responded to his vows with all the frankness and innocent truth of Miranda herself.
Thus Arthur was in the sunny path of his existence at last, and he seemed to become a new being under the influence of his happiness.
Luke Somerton and his wife were calm spectators of all these changes, and meanwhile they had their own little schemes for the future. There was a certain farm in the Lincolnshire fens which Mrs. Somerton had known as a girl, and which, from inquiries that Luke had made, was likely to be “To Let.” There were no more fertile pastures than those which surrounded it in all the fen country, not a pleasanter house and garden, no better shooting than was to be had close by, and with the advantage of being near an important town, and not far from a railway station.
Luke and his wife had calculated the prospects of settling down in their own native county, and the bailiff was full of plans and schemes, which were an everlasting source of pleasant, hopeful talk.
All this time Richard Tallant was up to his neck in the great game of financial speculation, and rumour had over and over again predicted his downfall. The Eastern Bank, notwithstanding his father’s noble contribution towards its shaken capital, had failed. The Indian branches had suffered serious losses, and the retirement of Mr. Tallant from the directory had led to other resignations, and Stock Exchange rumours had eventually shaken the confidence of depositors and others, and the Bank went to the wall. The Meter Iron Works continued to flourish, but with diminished dividends and gradually falling stock.
Mr. Tallant had been mixed up with some of the greatest failures of the day, and people said that by-and-by, when he really came to understand his own position, he would find himself insolvent; but people said this about dozens of others whose possessions had not even been shaken in the panic, and who could show a bonâ fide income of many thousands a year from real property.
What did Richard Tallant care for all this? Nothing, so far as the world could judge; but it made him irritable and ill-tempered in his own house. His valet could have told you a good deal about this, and so could the servants; but to the outside world, whatever else he might be, he was a straightforward, independent, good-tempered fellow. There were those who said this was all “put on,” and that he was a designing sneak; but his high-stepping horses and his splendid dinners soon silenced these doubtful ones, whom the great man entertained for that purpose only, cursing them in his heart whilst he smiled upon them and called them friends.
Mr. and Mrs. Dibble had returned together to London, to their little lodging-house at Pimlico, but by no means to live a happy life; for Dibble had been persuaded to lend the showman fifty pounds the morning after that introduction at Severntown, and the money had been lost irretrievably; for within a fortnight afterwards Digby Martin had presented himself at their house a ruined, ragged, dissipated fellow.
His daughter had eloped with some vagabond, and left him; business had waned from that moment until it dwindled away almost to nothing. The skeleton had declined to enter into the proposed contract, and his “traps” had been sold to pay the rent of the ground at the “Blue Posts.” He had walked all the way to London, friendless and a beggar, his only means of subsistence being in the money earned by Momus. The dawg, he said, had behaved like a Christian to him, and he was sure his friend Dibble would do no less, considering how Dibble had been treated in the palmy days of the Temple.
This was all very well, and Mrs. Dibble would perhaps not have complained had the showman taken his departure after the first visit, and not presented himself for renewed charity; but he came again and again, and Mrs. Dibble and her husband had serious disagreements about it. The lodgers were scandalised at the visits of this low person and his dawg, and one of them had given up his rooms at a day’s notice because he had seen this friend of Dibble’s going through a performance with his dog, and begging coppers, in a back street.
Dibble had appealed to the showman to leave the neighbourhood, and had bribed him too. But Digby Martin, alias Digger, alias Smith, knew a trick worth two of that. He only spent the bribe in drink, and came back to Still Street and abused Mrs. Dibble for being proud and stuck up.
To think that she should come to this, with her boarding-school education and her semi-architectural contracting father; it was a blow which Mrs. Dibble could not possibly have dreamed of, and she upbraided herself for her weakness in following Dibble and releasing him from his degraded position.
“He never asked you, marm,” said the showman, with a drunken leer. “It wash not our wish you should come and sheek ush out—you old catamaran!”
“Catamaran!” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble, dashing the tears from her eyes. “Catamaran!—Dibble, if you don’t punch that breuth head I will—so there!”
“Then I must do it, I suppose,” said Dibble. “Now, look’e ’ere, friend,” said Dibble; “I baint goin’ to stand any more o’ this; so clear out.”
“Dy’e hear that, Momush?” said the showman; “we’re to clear out,” and thereupon the drunken magician prepared for the coming engagement.
There was the shank-end of a leg of mutton on the table. Dibble, nodding to his wife to make her comprehend his plan, took up the bone and held it to the “dawg’s” nose. Momus immediately stood upon her hind-legs and followed Dibble to the back kitchen, where she was speedily locked in with her supper.
The showman, hardly comprehending this scheme for removing the protector, by whose side he was so valiant, darted towards the door before Dibble had time to turn round; but not before Mrs. Dibble had time to insert her arm between the drunkard and Dibble, the result of which was that the magician rolled over, and Dibble was saved the pain and trouble of knocking his old friend down himself.
It was an easy matter to put the showman into the street after this, and when a policeman came up Momus was let out, to walk on her hind-legs, by the side of the man in blue.
A facetious reporter at the police court the next day made a funny paragraph out of the showman’s appearance, the magistrate having requested the “dawg” to be brought into court. Momus made a bow to the bench, and stood upon her hind-legs; which put the magistrate in such a good humour, that he let off the showman with a caution.
The incident was anything but a funny one to the Dibbles, for they lost their lodgers, and Mrs. Dibble lost her respectability and her control of the street; so she gave vent to her feelings by upbraiding Thomas, and the end was that they were exceedingly miserable, and Mrs. Dibble talked of a “judicious separation,” which was a thing that her “wortht dreamth had never brought to her mind; and oh! if her poor father could only rithe and thee her!” Poor Dibble, he could think of nothing but getting into the Thames, or thrusting his head into the water-butt. He thought better of this by-and-by, however; but not until he had looked at the Thames by gas-light and dipped his head a little way into the water-butt. If the water had not been so cold, we believe Dibble would have put his head deeper into it; but, oh, it was so very cold!
Meanwhile Mr. Jefferson Crawley, alias Shuffleton Gibbs, and the showman’s daughter, were spending their honeymoon, and the ex-swell was educating the young lady, and introducing her into a new world.