Yet the dead leaves whirled about in the wind, and faint sounds of the minute-bell came wandering over the lake, like the knell of departed hopes and joys. Even Phœbe’s soft sweet voice and tender words did not altogether neutralise the melancholy effect of these dead leaves and that distant bell. But Amy felt that there was peace in this solemn autumn-time, nevertheless; and that all danger of losing Earl Verner’s love was at an end. Remembering the peril through which she had passed, there was happiness in this; looking back for a moment to the black clouds which had hovered over Montem within the last few days, she could bear to look upon the dead leaves now without a pang, and with the soft, tender, soothing words of her dear, dear friend Phœbe nestling in her heart, there was peace and hope even in the murmurs of that funeral bell.
CHAPTER XIX.
IN WHICH SEVERAL PERSONS QUIT THE STAGE FOR EVER.
No great amount of persuasion was required to induce Lord Verner to give up his intention of prosecuting the superintendent of police at Brazencrook. The Watch Committee of the old borough had intimated to the officer that it would be necessary he should resign his situation, and he had done so. They were very obsequious to Lord Verner, and this was the most practical way of showing the town’s allegiance to his lordship. But the chief contended, as fairly he might, that there were grounds of suspicion against Captain Hammerton, and that although he might have been hasty, he had not exceeded his duty in apprehending that gentleman. The subject was taken up warmly by the local Press, and a smart London paper had a powerfully sarcastic and biting article calling the Brazencrook Watch Committee a set of snobs, and upholding the officer of police. On all hands, however, testimony was borne to the complete exculpation of Lionel Hammerton.
Seeing that the guilt of Shuffleton Gibbs was established most clearly in the first examination before the Brazencrook magistrates, it was certainly due to Lionel that he should be regarded as an injured man in that unfortunate apprehension by the Brazencrook chief. All his trouble and sorrow had arisen out of his own pride and want of confidence in the woman whom he professed to love. If he had been content to accept the warning of Paul Somerton that night in London, near the steps of the Ashford Club, what a world of misery he might have been spared; a manly faith in that high-spirited girl at Barton would have saved him. No one saw all this now more clearly than Lionel Hammerton, and what was more, he knew that he had been rightly punished. The only real bit of consolation in the whole business was the prison episode. 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. His incarceration was the only injury done to him which he had not courted, which his pride and injustice had not brought upon himself; but it was a source of gratification to him that Amy felt he had undergone this indignity on her account.
It was hard work to part from Amy; to leave the two girls whom he had known in those happy days at Barton Hall; to erase the past, and look forward into a future in which there were no familiar faces; but this was his penance, and he was willing now to abide by it. If that most unkind suspicion of mercenary motives (which Lionel had not strength of mind enough to keep back in the personal explanations) set forth in a previous chapter, had not rankled in the mind of the Countess, the parting would have been no small trial on her part. She would not have given any outward sign of her feelings had her heart been breaking; but Lionel’s unmanly suspicion had almost entirely removed the last fragment of her romantic love for him. 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. Happiness may come in time to each of those who have broken this first instinctive contract of nature; but it is a very limited happiness compared with that perfect bliss which true lovers feel.
The Countess of Verner was as happy as a woman can be who had loved and lost, and married for revenge and ambition. Regard and respect ripened by degrees into what may be called sincere matrimonial friendship, and this was still further enhanced by the discovery of her old lover’s unworthy suspicion about the sincerity of her love. She vowed to Mrs. Phillips, that had she been free to accept Lionel Hammerton, and he had sued at her feet with ten times the honeyed sweetness of his eloquence in the Barton gardens, the knowledge of his unworthy doubt of her true faith would have made her refuse him, had he been twenty times Lionel Hammerton and her first love.
So when they parted, Lionel Hammerton’s brotherly kiss sent no thrill to Amy’s heart, though she knew it was his intention never to return. Lord Verner shook his brother warmly by the hand, begging him to come home as soon as he liked and as often. Mrs. Arthur Phillips kissed him for “Auld Lang Syne;” and her husband, the artist, exchanged a sympathetic glance with the friend of his early days, which deeply affected the voluntary exile. Mrs. Dibble, who was living in the housekeeper’s room until Thomas should be released, begged to be allowed to shake hands with the Captain, and she told the servants afterwards that it did not need a boarding-school education to see that the Earl’s brother was born nobility, and that you need not be a builder’s daughter and copy specifications to know that Mr. Bales was a policeman in disguise, as he stood by all the time without the least emotion, for all the world as if a trial had just come to an end and the prisoner was going to be hanged, and he had the job of taking him back to gaol prior to the sentence being carried out.
Mr. Bales travelled as far as London with the Captain, and almost the first person he met, after seeing Lionel off, was Mr. Williamson, the barrister, walking into the Temple. The two recognised each other immediately.
“Ah, Mr. Williamson, sir! how do you do? I thought you were lost,” said the detective.
“No, not lost, Bales,” said the barrister, extending his hand. “Come with me.”