Joseph Hatton

“ 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. ”

“ If Asmodeus had taken you to that model farm-house, that you might have been a calm spectator of the love that had folded his wings and settled down there beside that hearth, you would have been happier for the sight. For it was a catching happiness, that of Phœbe and Arthur; an epidemic of joy and bliss and peace. You could not possibly have come within a yard of its influence without feeling a certain delight. If you happened to be a young fellow, a slight touch of envy might, perhaps, have struggled into your heart and embittered the sight ”

“ Arthur was altogether at a loss to understand Mrs. Somerton; but he boded ill from all this apparent mystery, and yet a voice seemed to whisper hope all through it.
“You are in love with Miss Phœbe,” said Mrs. Somerton at length, and with singular abruptness; “I know it. I have not watched and watched with a mother’s eye for nothing, and I think the young lady loves you in return—if there is such a thing as love—and I begin to think there may be, or something better than love, something better than love.” ”

“ He had dreamed of all sorts of contingencies which might bring Phœbe nearer to him, and his only hope was in the production of some great work that should open up a golden vista which the merchant might comprehend; for Arthur had always regarded Mr. Tallant as the wealthy commoner who gauged men and things by money, and this had disheartened him even more than the thoughts of his own shortcomings and the beauty of her whom he had been rash enough to go on loving without daring even to hint at his passion. ”

“ He travelled over it again in the firelight. He saw himself a studious boy without playmates, without companions; he saw himself verging into manhood with a strangely awakened love of art and nature, and with only a poor broken-down painter taking any interest in the mysterious signs which his genius would make in spite of himself. He saw his humble home and his toiling parent; a mother without one gleam of sympathy in common with his aspirations, and who only bore querulously with his odd ways, and a father whose besetting sin was the bottle, which was his ruin. ”

“ Arthur had too much regard for his old friend even now to hint that Lionel thought Amy was influenced by mere worldly motives.
“And you think he really loves Amy now?” said Phœbe, half-aloud, half to herself.
“Not as I love you,” said Arthur; “but our love, dearest, is a love apart from any other love; it seems to me that nobody in the whole world is blessed like I am with a love so generous, so noble. What have I done that I should deserve so much happiness?” ”

“ Lord Verner had called at Barton Hall twice since that memorable meeting, and had on the second occasion evinced marked admiration of Amy, such as could not be mistaken, notwithstanding that he knew her position, for he had signified as much.
If even her lowly birth and her poverty had not scared Earl Verner away, she knew well enough that her wealth would only enhance her beauty and attractions.
What delicious revenge to marry Lionel’s brother, and to make the chance of a coronet for him all the more remote! ”

“ Somerton as well as he could for what she had said, and he began to look out into the future with hope.
We never know how unexpectedly Hope may pay us a gorgeous visit; how often she comes when we least expect her. With death barring his way, and funeral plumes crossing his path, Arthur Phillips could hardly have expected Hope to come by his side and whisper so confidently of happiness almost beyond his most sanguine thoughts. ”

“ When he exclaimed, O that cursed marriage! Chrissy held down her head and sighed and wept and murmured out some pathetic words of Thomas Moore’s about forgiveness. She had rehearsed this point before Mrs. Dibble’s glass, and had committed the words to memory for the purpose a week previously. She knew that Paul could not marry her because she was Crawley’s wife; she knew that a divorce was a serious business, and that it might lead to the exposure of her real history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Alike in every other season you saw all the special beauties of the time in the neighbourhood of Barton Hall. Standing near the summer-house (where Richard Tallant played the eaves-dropper to that naïve conversation, of which he reminded his sister so recently) , Arthur and Phœbe may well [Pg 205] feel that their lines have been cast in pleasant places; that Heaven is dealing tenderly with them; that the future will be a blessed time like this. The sky above them is full of blue and white,—great silver mountains piled upon each other in an azure sea. ”

“ You were happy, whatever you may say to the contrary, you know you were—ten times happier when she smiled and returned the pressure of your hand than you are now at the prosperous state of markets and the thrift of your firm. You may deny it; but the old times come back in the firelight, old friend, do they not, when the heart confesses its own bitterness? Don’t deny it, and don’t look ashamed [Pg 198] at your own shadow in the glass, when you unfold that poor little curl.
The happiness of Arthur and Phœbe was something to look upon and be happy at. ”

“ And these were the happy days of the courtship of Phœbe and Arthur. They came with the spring blossoms, opening up a bright new future to both.
Yes, happy days, perfectly happy. Philosophy says there is no perfect happiness. Mr. Williamson would smile with quiet amazement at your simplicity if you held that anybody had been perfectly happy, even for an hour. But then, you know, he had been hit in his early days, and the remembrance of his own transient approach to a sense of happiness may have embittered his later existence. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The housekeeper, the valet, the cook, the chaplain, even the vicar at Brazencrook, close by, were jealous of the coming queen. The Castle had been undergoing all sorts of alterations during the last few months. Painters and decorators, and upholsterers, and cabinet-makers, had swarmed in every part of it, and his lordship had looked into every nook and corner of the place himself. The gardeners had been compelled to seek assistance, and strange men from London, calling themselves florists, had been down, and planted all manner of strange-looking plants and shrubs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We need not take the trouble to convince the Pyrotechnic that Phœbe Somerton is drawn to the life, if the Pyrotechnic thinks otherwise; but let us tell you, friendly reader, who has accompanied [Pg 200] us, paper-knife in hand, that Phœbe Somerton was all we have described her in beauty and in gentleness and truth. And no wonder that she had been attracted by Arthur Phillips, with his big, black, melancholy eyes, and his fine intellectual face. One good nature speedily detects its counterpart in another, and it was a testimonial of high and noble character to be loved by a woman like Phœbe. ”

“ What were capital and interest, and shares at par or premium or discount to thee, except so far as money might concern her happiness? You have not seen that curl of hair, wrapped in faded paper, and put away in the dark corner of that old desk, for years. Take it out, old friend; there is nothing unmanly in thy tears, for it is manly to have loved, and it is better even “to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” It is something to have the memory of those happy times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You are surprised at my talk: you will not be so before the night is over.”
“Surely nothing has happened that does not appear to me. Poor Mr. Tallant is dead, and you have been ill; is there anything else?” Arthur asked as calmly as he could.
“I won’t torture you,—I know your secret, sir. Miss Phœbe is well, though, poor soul, she is sadly cut up; but misery is no respecter of persons. Ambition and pride are the ruin of most people. You would hardly think I had been an ambitious, scheming woman, with plans far above the station I hold?” ”

“ Jefferson Crawley, having run away with the young woman, wished to set aside the ceremony of marriage which Christabel, the mysterious lady, had punctiliously insisted upon. What a wedding it was! What a honeymoon! Yet not stranger than ten thousand other weddings and honeymoons. Truth stranger than fiction! If that strange little fellow on two sticks who appeared so mysteriously to Don Cleofas, would come and take you for an evening’s ramble, you would see in half an hour how far fiction falls short of the realities of life ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not easy to close any page which has spring sunshine in it. We have all of us so many dear, treasured associations with it, bringing us back to the spring-time of life when the world looked so hopeful and charming—when there were flowers of love and friendship in our paths, and we knew nothing of the thorns that lurked beneath them. ”

“ It is questionable whether Byron really knew in his soul much about the true and pure love of woman, though he has described its dangerous and passionate phases so well. It is a lovely and a dangerous thing, undescribable and unfathomable. “All that has been written in song, or told in story, of love and its effects, falls far short of its [Pg 174] reality. Its evils and its blessings, its impotence and its power, its sin and its holiness, its weakness and its strength, will continue the theme of nature and of art, until the great pulse of the universe is stilled.” ”

“ Phœbe hesitated, and looked inquiringly at her friend.
“I shall think you do not love me at all, if you decline; his lordship shall ask you himself if you will not say yes to my request.”
“But you are soaring so far above me,” said Phœbe, in her quiet gentle way. “I shall feel out of place amongst such great people.”
“Nonsense! beauty shall rank with the highest of them that day,” said Amy, proudly. “Nay, do not blush; you know I would not flatter you.”
“You are so changed,” said Phœbe, thoughtfully. “I seem to remember you as one belonging to the past, Amy ”

“ 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. ”