Joseph Hatton

“ LORD AND LADY VERNER.
A delightful September morning inaugurated the second day of the return home to Montem Castle. The sun shone upon the grand old towers which stood out in clear outline against the sky; and upon the old ruin with its moss-grown walls and whispering ivy, a grey old token of the past, with a long line of green turf stretching forth to the more modern castle which had been built in presence of the ancient ruin. The modern establishment had been built as closely as possible after the old model, and furnished too in antique style, but with all modern comforts. ”

“ Mrs. Phillips and the Countess sat together at Montem watching the leaves whirl hither and thither; those leaves,—so wild, so weird, so beautiful, so sad, so eloquent to Amy—they flew along the terrace like flocks of birds, away over the green turf, until they lighted on the distant lake, and sailed about wherever the wind willed. And Amy told her dear friend how the leaves had whirled round those carriage-wheels on that autumn day, when she first saw her husband. They always recalled that day, these autumn leaves—always brought it back to Amy’s mind. ”

“ Free from all the ordinary cares of the world, with faculties cultivated and imagination influenced and softened by the loving study of art, blessed in the love of the one woman who had been the dream of his life, as husband and father, Arthur Phillips had realised far more than all his dearest hopes.
And Phœbe,—that frank, confiding girl who had loved him all along, and told him so when he had been courageous enough to ask the question,—her life was as near an approach to the perfect happiness of which we spoke in some preceding pages as it is possible for mortal existence to be. ”

“ This was his only real grievance, the only bit of martyrdom in his career. If he could have felt that he had been injured by Amy; if the grievance had been on his side, he might have been more content. It is better to be wronged than to wrong; it is more comfortable to receive an injury than to commit an injustice. All Lionel Hammerton’s troubles had been of his own creation, and family pride was at the bottom of them all. ”

“ Lionel bowed his head before this storm of womanly indignation.
“Never talk of love again, Lionel, unless you can believe that woman’s love has nothing of self in it; that it is above the world almost as much as the angels are; that it is self-sacrificing, meek, lowly—content to be trodden upon by the living idol which it sets up for worship. This is true woman’s love: in my love for you there was, indeed, the worldly leaven of pride; the inborn spirit of my race, I suppose. But for this I should have sunk under your neglect and withered and died. With pride came the desire for revenge ”

“ There are fevers of passion which in the young heart soon burn out and leave nothing behind but a vague and harmless memory, without one pang of sorrow or regret. Happily for Paul Somerton, his wild and wretched passion for that poor abandoned dupe of Shuffleton Gibbs partook of this fiery yet transient character. When his better [Pg 273] nature had time to assert itself, and the temptress was no longer in his sight, her image gradually faded out, to be replaced by one worthy in every way to be treasured in the heart, of an honest and honourable man. ”

“ They were ringing, these Lincolnshire bells, in celebration of the marriage of Arthur Phillips and Phœbe Somerton, who had walked arm in arm to church to be married, unattended save by Luke Somerton and Paul, and their own true love. It was Arthur’s wish that it should be so; and nobody but those most intimately concerned knew of the marriage until the bells, big with the secret, burst their iron bonds, and gave birth to that joyous melody. ”

“ Hunger, as Zimmermann says, is the mother of impatience and anger, and never had mother a more worthy son than Shuffleton Gibbs. It was hunger which had driven him to make that third application to his friend; hunger and thirst; hunger for money as much as hunger for food. He had neither money nor credit, even in the stews, where he had exhausted both, when he made this last appeal to Richard Tallant. But he got money somehow that night, and he swore an awful oath that he would wreak a terrible revenge on the head of this vile scoundrel. ”

“ A crowd of idlers and gossips, men from the corners of Brazencrook streets, and boys and girls and hulking farm-labourers, lounged about the house, watching every movement of the police, and the coroner and the jury, with a dull but observant curiosity. When the jurymen went to view the body of the deceased man, and the spot where he was found, the little crowd followed at a respectful distance, and then came back again, after a walk of nearly three miles, to stare in at the window where the inquest was held, or drink beer in the tap-room. ”

“ She has reached the highest point of her ambition, and in the foremost rank of the first society in Europe; her husband has made a great speech in the House of Lords; she is still declared to be the most beautiful woman of this gorgeous London season. Their West End house is filled with all the leading people of the time; the Verners are the rage,—the Countess is the one bright particular star in the aristocratic atmosphere of the period. ”

“ What a fool he had been, he thought, to doubt her, and to come away without seeing her. What a miserable lonely life it was out there in India without a soul you cared for. How happy to have a wife there! No fellow ought to go out to India without one. And what did it matter about a woman’s origin in India, so that she was a lady in manners, and the wife of an officer of rank in his own right? ”

“ And here we leave her looking her best; heightened are all those charms which once attracted Lionel Hammerton, and will live in his memory, like the sound of falling water to the traveller who has sunk down maimed and athirst, unable to taste the cooling stream which goes rippling and smiling on, and chattering over the rocks as if it mocked him. We leave Lord Verner, supremely happy in his married life, blissfully ignorant of the [Pg 270] narrow escape which that happiness has had of shipwreck ”

“ Anything else I can do, sir?”
“No, thank you, Morris,” said Lionel, taking no notice of the servitor’s remark about his brown face, but wondering how Arthur Phillips had taken his disappointment. “Somehow I never thought the poor fellow had the slightest chance of marrying Phœbe. Poor Arthur! Such a sentimental fellow, too, he was; it would almost break his heart I should think; I will hunt him up to-morrow. Fancy George, Earl Verner, my whimsical, apathetic, luxurious, moping brother, falling in love with that pretty face at Barton, and marrying it! Wonders will never cease! ”

“ He was like a man paralysed by a sudden blow of misfortune, against which he struggled ineffectually. To fall from the sunniest height of anticipated bliss into a Stygian gulf of misery like this, was enough to unnerve a [Pg 83] stronger man than Lionel Hammerton. Pride, self-love, hope, fortune, happiness—all were struck down when most they should have flourished. It had flashed upon him, at first sight of Amy, that her friend, the Countess, had confessed all with regard to his (Lionel’s) love, and that his generous brother had concocted a delightful plot to surprise him. ”

“ We leave our Countess in the full light of fashion’s splendours, and still bent on the performance of her duty in the high station to which she has been exalted. If we were writing a mere book of fiction, and not a true story of life, Lord Verner would probably have died conveniently towards the end of the story, that Lionel Hammerton might, in defiance of law and order and everything else, have married his widow, the twain ending their days by some lake of Como, where the perfumed light steals through the mist of alabaster lamps, and the law is not too stringent anent matrimonial license ”

“ From a Stock Exchange bear to a money-lender’s cad; from an advertising sharper to a begging-letter writer; from haunting clubs to frequenting hotels; from hotels to taverns; from taverns to gin-shops; from gin-shops to the lowest night-houses, Shuffleton Gibbs had become a mean, shabby, out-of-elbows, unshaven outcast of society, who had twice been within a gaol, and seemed likely to die in the gutter.
There is no exaggeration in this rapid downward career—it is a common occurrence. ”

“ In the room above the portico, looking down the drive and commanding the full range of those Berne Hills, we find Arthur Phillips in his new studio. Far different to that work-a-day room in the cathedral close, wealth has stepped in here to make art luxurious. This studio is a painting-room, drawing-room, library, all in one, as if the whole house had been ransacked for contributions to the master’s pet room. ”

“ Setting this aside, her honour as a wife, her gratitude towards Lord Verner, and a strong sense of duty (kept in constant excitement by Mrs. Arthur Phillips) , would have saved her from any further exhibition of strong feeling. It is not in human nature to maintain a full control over the passions, and particularly over that love between man and woman which God has planted in the human heart for His own wise and beneficent purposes. When that great instinct of nature, which, secretly and unseen, draws two souls together, is set at nought, certain sorrow is the result. ”

“ We are not romancing, we are not sermonising, we do not believe in the Maine Law, we have no sympathy with trumpet-and-drum teetotal demagogues; but we are none the less sure in our belief that the first step aside from the straight path, unless at once retraced, will lead to misery if not to ruin, and that the man or woman who descends to “neat gin” is beyond human redemption. There is hope in beer, [Pg 103] in wine, even in brandy; but the gin-drinker swallows a devilish elixir that destroys him body and soul. ”

“ Hammerton, if you ever loved Amy Somerton, respect her as your brother’s wife; and if you value his happiness or mine, guard as a sacred secret the memory of that love which you once professed for her. Now is the time to prove the sincerity of a passion which [Pg 82] you once professed, and which was the joy of that poor girl, until neglect and indifference stepped between her and hope, and gave her hand to another. ”

“ The sublime and the ridiculous are often to be seen in very close proximity. The Countess could not fail to notice some of the laughable incidents of the Brazencrook display, but she felt to the full the earnestness of the scene, the manliness of the civic address, the outspoken, independent allegiance of the great body of her husband’s tenants, represented by a fine old man, who talked of the ancient days of Brazencrook, and how the retainers of the House of Verner had fought, under previous earls, the battles of their king and country. ”

“ It is the height of the London season, and all the great town is filled with the pomp and glitter of high [Pg 266] life. Everything looks bright, even poverty has a smile. The beggar is in clover, and the wretched are at least warm. There are no snowstorms, no cold cutting winds to torture the body and make cheerless hearths still more dismal. London wears her fairest smiles; the sun with one broad depth of light clasps the great world in a fond embrace. The great town is a whirl of life. Royalty, nobility, commonalty, roll along the glowing thoroughfares in glitter of gold and silver. ”

“ Does anything ever alter the social aspect of London, the busy, bustling, gorgeous, golden, seething aspect of the streets?
Despite the commercial storm, in face of all those wonderful contrivances of bridge and rail to ease the traffic, London was as full of life and gaiety and pomp and glitter and show, this third London season of the Countess of Verner, as ever it had been before. We shall leave her ladyship in the midst of the whirl of pomp and pleasure, one of the [Pg 269] queens of beauty. She has been kissed by our gracious Queen; she has excited the envy of many a titled dame. ”

“ We leave the Countess of Verner amidst the splendid pleasures of the London season, and, [Pg 271] with the hope that an occasional expression of weariness which shadows those brilliant eyes may indicate a surfeit of pleasure, rather than any lack of real happiness, we turn to that great flat country of Lincolnshire with its green fields of wheat, its long dreamy-looking river, and its rich pastures. We stop at Oldhall Farm, and there, with the windows wide open, we find Luke Somerton telling some neighbours, who have come in to tea, all about that model farm in Severnshire. ”

“ She was beset with fear and alarm; fear lest her husband should discover the love that had once existed [Pg 86] between herself and his brother; fear arising from her own conscience, burthened with the knowledge of the revenge she had sought and obtained; alarm lest she should fall in the estimation of her husband. This was the greatest fear of all; the idea of losing one jot of that love and admiration which he had lavished upon her, was torture. Her own fidelity and truth were safe; she never for a moment doubted her strength to maintain her own self-respect as Earl Verner’s wife ”

“ The bells of Brazencrook and Avonworth which rung out so merrily at Amy’s marriage, and tolled so solemnly at the burial of Richard Tallant, have rung out joyously in celebration of the birth of an heir to the noble house of Verner, and with that event we approach the concluding scenes of this drama of love and money, of Fortune and Finance.
You will not sit patiently wondering what the end is to be, like you sat when that new drama was produced at the London theatre, where all the mystery and grandeur of the play was concentrated in the last act. Already you have guessed how things will end ”