Bales roared with laughter, as Mrs. Dibble screamed and vociferated at the humorous gentleman upon whom she had turned the laugh so vigorously.
“Here, none of this,—none of this,” said the guard, pitching the reticule back into the carriage and giving the signal for departure.
Screech went the whistle of the engine, and the train moved off amidst roars of laughter at the gentleman whose wig had fallen off with his hat. The passengers were looking out all along the train, and Mrs. Dibble suddenly seeing the humour of the whole thing, and the old man’s difficulty with his false hair, began to laugh too; and Mr. Bales telling the story afterwards, said he certainly never laughed so much in his life.
Meanwhile the remains of Richard Tallant were being buried; buried in the same tomb where the father lay in that old church near Barton. Earl Verner had desired that the obsequies might be performed with all decency and respect, seeing that whatever the dead man might have been, he was his wife’s brother. So Lionel Hammerton and Arthur Phillips had attended with the Earl, and the body was buried with due solemnity.
What a termination to the ambition of Christopher Tallant! What an end to all that pride of wealth!—all those years of hard work, of toil and anxiety in the father’s younger days; all those lessons of thrift, of energy, of industry, learnt in the north countrie; all that heaping up of riches: here was the final scene. Father and son lay together, the one a broken-hearted man, the other a bankrupt in purse and reputation, with a murderer’s bullet in his brain!—the son of that London wife whom Christopher Tallant had taken down to Avon-side in those days of his early manhood. Here they lay together—the proud dead father and his disinherited son: here they lay with their dead hopes, tenants of a dishonoured grave! They who should have been living in honour and high repute, assisting to govern the destinies of a nation. A fine, generous, hospitable, manly fellow that proud merchant had been, hating anything and everything that was dishonourable in a monetary sense, yet gauging everything by a simple golden standard; he had carried his just anger at his son’s misconduct into the grave, but there lay the son by his side, quiet enough now. It had been a subject of considerable discussion at Montem Castle before the funeral, whether Richard Tallant should be buried in the family vault, and Lord Verner had overruled all objections with his arguments in favour of this interment. He was the last male representative of the race, and it was not for them to carry further that awful retribution which had befallen him; and so, as we have said, the merchant’s son was buried in the family vault.
Arthur Phillips remembered the other funeral; that gloomy cortége, which had arrested his steps on that misty autumn day, when, assured of the success of his picture, he had come down to Barton Hall to see Phœbe. It was Autumn again at this second funeral, but the sun was shining brightly now, sending glints of coloured light from the oriel windows down the chancel of the old church, and glimmering upon the ceiling with a trembling reflection from the adjacent lake. The old church was full of people, not mourners, but lookers on: men and women come to see the murdered man’s funeral, just as many of them would go to see the man hanged who had killed him, if they had an opportunity.
The old trees that had loomed forth dim and shadowy in the adjacent park, now stood forth in all their autumnal grandeur, and some of them cast long shadows in at the open doorway, upon the monumental pavements. The October wind moaned now and then round the old tower, and rustled the ivy, making it tap upon the windows in the midst of the parson’s solemn funereal words. And now and then a few brown leaves came rushing into the chancel, as if they sought sanctuary against the persecutions of the wind. When the sexton crumbled the dust upon the coffin-lid, these stray leaves shambled in also,—sad emblems of death and decay, but not without an eloquent suggestion to the thoughtful mind, of our reasonable faith in the resurrection of the dead; for autumn and winter are but the harbingers of spring. Arthur Phillips uttered a prayer that they whose sins brought their own punishment in this world, might thereby find forgiveness in the next for these same misdeeds.
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. These were her dead hopes, the leaves of her young love that had been nipped by the frost of neglect. She had watered them with her tears, and then bade them go whither they listed.
Poor Amy! What a relief it was to open all her heart to Phœbe now, to repeat to her all those acts of deceit which she had practised. Mrs. Phillips shuddered at her friend’s description of her interviews with Richard Tallant, and Amy painted her own miserable acts of dissembling in more sombre colours than they deserved. Yet all this had increased her gratitude to the Earl, who had believed in her despite everything, who had loved her from the beginning with the same earnest affection, who had never once doubted her, and whom she vowed again and again she would love at last.