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.