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(Princeton University)
CHARLES TYRRELL;
OR,
THE BITTER BLOOD.
BY
G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.
AUTHOR OF "THE HUGUENOT," "THE ROBBER," "MARY
OF BURGUNDY," &c., &c.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1855.
CHARLES TYRRELL;
OR,
THE BITTER BLOOD.
CHAPTER I.
Among all the many fine and beautiful figures and modes of reasoning that the universe in which we dwell has afforded for the illustration of the bright hope that is within us of a life renewed beyond the tomb, there is none more beautiful or more exquisite, that I know of, than that which is derived from the seasons; from the second life that bursts forth in spring in objects apparently dead, and from the shadowing forth in the renovation of everything around us of that after destiny which divine revelation calls upon our faith to believe shall yet be ours. The trees, that have faded and remained dark and gray through the long, dreary lapse of winter, clothe themselves again in green in the spring sunshine, and every leaf and every hue speaks of life. The birds that were mute sing again as tunefully as ever; the flowers that were trampled down and faded burst forth once more, in freshness and in beauty; the streams break from the icy chains that held them, and the glorious sun himself comes wandering back from his far journey, giving summer and warmth, and fertility and magnificence to everything around. All that we see breathes of the same hope; everything that we see rekindles into life.
But, on the other hand, there are things within us that awake no more; there are feelings in our hearts that, passed away, return not; there are thoughts that can never be thought again: there are hopes that, once put out, are put out for ever. These are the things that speak to us of death! These are the things that would darken our hopes of immortality, were we not to draw from them inferences of a higher state of being, where love, and confidence, and happiness are not delusions; where the plant of enjoyment has not its root in the earth, and where the flowers of life wither not away. There are certainly changes in our very nature which would fill our bosoms with many dark and awful doubts, did we not find that, in the well-regulated mind, the bright and intoxicating dreams of early youth, the love that has been crushed or thwarted, the confidence that has been a thousand times betrayed, may give place to firmer and more solid things, feelings not so exquisite, but more deep and powerful; thoughts not so brilliant, but more just and true, did we not find that, with proper cultivation, the flowers made way for fruit; did we not find that every stage of existence would have, but for our own faults, its proper class of enjoyments, and that every stage but leads us on towards an appreciation of that last noblest state of being, for which all the rest are but a preparation. If we are immortal, is it not well that we should find earth's flowers fade? If we are immortal, is it not well that we should find earth's hopes deceive us? If we are immortal, is it not well that we should learn to regret the passing away of bright capabilities in our own nature, which are sure to be renewed extended, multiplied in heaven?
The flowers that have been torn up can never take root again on earth; but, nevertheless, there does occasionally come a time, there do occasionally occur events, by which all the pain and agony that our heart has suffered in disappointment of trust or expectation, is more, far more than made up; and though, perhaps, the same flower is not to be refreshed, brighter plants blossom in its stead, and give us back our confidence.
In a pleasant part of Hampshire, where I have passed many of the bright and sunshiny days of my early existence, not very far from the seacoast, there stands a house with which is connected three or four legends, each of a very interesting character, but from which I choose one as having reference to times and events within my own remembrance. It is a very large and convenient house, without any pretensions to architectural decoration, with no relationship to any style whatsoever, and constructed upon no principles except those implanted by nature, which teaches man to construct for himself a dwelling the best adapted to his own wants and conveniences. It had, in fact, at one time been a small house, built indeed with regard to no economy of space, but only with regard to the comfort of its first owners, who required but few apartments, yet made them as roomy as could be desired. It had been added to by about three generations, who, increasing in wealth and luxury, demanded more accommodation; and thus, though on one side of the building some degree of order and regularity was still preserved--that is to say, the windows were all in a line, and of the same number in each of the stories--on the other side they had been posted wherever pleasure or convenience suggested; so that the northern front was like a child's first drawing of a house, in which a window and a door are put in wherever a place is found open for them.
At the time I knew the building it was covered with stucco on the outside, and in appearance was as unlike a place in which tragedy or romance ever had been, or ever was likely to be enacted, as it is possible to conceive. There was a cheerfulness about its aspect, a bright, whitewashed, unsentimental gayety of appearance that spoke of blithe and joyful things; but, at the same time, it was relieved from the harshness and vulgarity with which whitewashed buildings are generally invested by the scenery that surrounded it, by the pleasant irregularity of its aspect, and by a number of old chimneys that came peeping over the parapets in odd places where nobody expected them. It was imbosomed, too, in a deep wood, which came up to three out of the four angles of the building, leaving long sunshiny lawns--only broken here and there by a fine tree with a garden-seat beneath it--sweeping up to the three principal fronts of the house.
The fourth front had once been the principal one; but, according to the plan of modern improvement, which in so many instances conceives that it produces all that can be desired by turning the back part of things foremost, that front had now been dedicated to the offices. From it wound away a long wide avenue of fine old elm-trees, like that which we see so frequently leading up to an antique French chateau; and I remember, in my young days, I used to dispute with myself in the summer and the winter, as I rode up the broad green road between the two rows, which looked the best and most congenial to the scene, those fine trees in the dark green fulness of their midsummer clothing, or in the cold, gray, solemn bareness of the winter, when all the bright things that had decorated them through the rest of the year were cast down withering at their feet, like the passing pleasures of existence cast off from a mind preparing for a tomb. I believe I then preferred the summer aspect, perhaps I might now find more harmony in the winter.
The woods that surrounded the building on the other sides were, in fact, kept as pleasure-grounds. They were full of winding walks, cleanly and carefully swept, though the extent was very great; while underneath the beeches and the elms, on either side of those paths, grew up an abundance of wild flowers, the plain white strawberry, the graceful and beloved plant of the winds, the columbine, the violet, and the primrose.
One of those walks which led away towards the south, at a distance of half a mile from the house, divided into two. The left-hand branch, which followed the original direction, brought me to another broad walk, which faced the risen sun upon the edge of the wood; and while the fine beech-trees, sweeping down with their long branches like a penthouse, sheltered it entirely from the sun in the summer, and from the rain in the spring and the autumn, they did not at all obstruct the view over some sunny fields to another little wood beyond, over which again rose up Harbury Hill, the chief landmark of the country round about.
The other branch of the road took a direction somewhat to the west, and at the distance of about a quarter of a mile, or a little more, from the place where the two separated, it reached the wall of the kitchen-garden, which lay imbosomed in the deepest part of the wood, containing within itself a space of about two acres, surrounded by high brick walls on all sides. There were two doors in this wall, the one exactly opposite to the path we have mentioned, the other on the other side. Besides this, however, there was a way in and out through the back of one of the two gardeners' cottages, which were built against the wall in the inside.
On the outside of the wall all was fair and smooth, no building of any kind being suffered to deface the external appearance of that high and imposing mass of lichen-covered brickwork, except--alas! that there should be an exception to everything in this world--except one little solitary toolshed, of the ugliest and most anomalous aspect, stuck on like an imposthume on the face of the tall wall, and offending the eye on the very first approach to the garden. Many and many a time have I petitioned that it should be removed; but there was some impediment in the very nature of things, it would seem, which prevented the request from being attended to.
The tools that were kept therein were not, it would seem, a part and parcel of the gardener's utensils. They belonged to the woodmen, and, of course, the gardener would not give them admission within his domain. The place where the great bulk of the woodmen's tools were kept was at the opposite side of the wood, a mile and a half off. It was very handy to have the tools near; and it would seem, that for various reasons, the nature of which I could never find out, or, at least, not understand, there was no place whatsoever in the wood round about which was so convenient as that spot against the garden wall. Such, at least, was the report of the woodman; and, of course, as he was a very veracious person, and somewhat surly withal, I was bound to believe him, and say nothing more upon the subject.
Now let not the reader suppose that either in the long and vague proemium with which this chapter opens, and in which he will find hereafter some reference to the tale; or in this minute and curious description of the house and grounds, especially of the paths leading to the back walk and the garden, that I have been led away by the vain desire of reading homilies to those who will not hear, or of dwelling with a sort of doting pleasure upon scenes which I loved in my youth, and about which few care or are interested besides myself. Every author, whose fingers are worthy to hold a pen, has an object in each sentence that he writes; and--although in the multitude of characters which throng the world, and the difficulty of ascertaining men's real feelings from their outward appearances, it would be impossible to put the right direction upon each epistle--every half page of every book that is worth reading is addressed to some particular person or class of persons, who are supposed by the author to be capable of understanding and appreciating him. The description that we have given, however, has a more general purpose, and the reader is besought earnestly to remember every word of it, or, at all events, to put a piece of paper in the place, inasmuch as, without having that scene constantly before his eyes, and knowing and comprehending it all as well as if he had walked through it a hundred times, he cannot clearly and distinctly understand the matter that is to follow.
Having given an account of the place, it now behooves us to speak of those who inhabited it; and certainly, at the period I speak of--I do not mean that period within my own personal acquaintance with the spot--it offered anything but an illustration of the beautiful words of Hooker in his description of the celestial dwelling-places. Nevertheless, we shall make the quotation, if it were but for the pleasure of transcribing those beautiful words, independent of the splendid opposition which they afford to all that we are about to describe. "Angels," he says, "are spirits immaterial and intellectual. The glorious inhabitants of those sacred palaces, where there is nothing but light and immortality, no shadow of matter for tears, discontentments, griefs, and uncomfortable passions to work upon; but all joy, tranquillity, and peace, even for ever do dwell."
This may be taken for a grand description of everything which that dwelling was not. Beautiful as was the scene, and pleasant as all the accessories round about, there was seldom anything like peace and tranquillity within. The pheasants came strutting upon the lawns, the timid hare lost a part of her shyness, and scarcely deigned to stand erect and listen with elevated ears for the half-heard sound; the squirrel crossed from one plantation to another within twenty yards of the windows; all the habits of the sylvan world around spoke of peace and tranquillity. But peace was not within. The truth was, that the inmates of that dwelling were too busy in making war upon each other to turn their attacks upon the people of the woods without.
But it is time that we should enter into more specific details, and bring the characters, one by one, before the reader.
Sir Francis Tyrrell, the proprietor of that mansion and of some very large estates in that vicinity, was in possession, besides, of a baronetcy, derived in a direct line by himself from an ancestor who had received it at the time whereat that mixed breed between the baron and the knight was first propagated. His ancestry was also distinctly traceable through several centuries before, producing a great number of very ornamental people in former times, who shone in the tiltyard, the tournament, and the battle-field; and, in later times, more than one who had received the high distinction of swinging in effigy upon a signpost, either as the distinctive mark of the house, or a recommendation to the beer within.
There were various of his progenitors, indeed, whose names were but lightly touched upon in the family history; they were not omitted, as that would have caused a breach in the line, but belonging to that numerous class of persons who may be best described by saying, the less said about them the better, those who compiled the genealogy had been cautious in dealing with them. Deeper investigations, however, would have shown that these members, who met with scanty mention, had generally encountered fates more or less tragical; one had been killed by a blow of an axe received from a woodman; another had been almost torn to pieces by a mob at the end of the reign of James II., and died of the injuries received; three or four of them had been killed in duels, and one had been shot by a soldier under his command, who was afterward executed for the offence.
All these were certainly mentioned by the genealogist, and, in some instances, their lamentable fate was commented on with praises of their virtues, &c. But the causes of those duels, the provocation given to the soldier, the woodman, and the mob, were not mentioned. There were three in the line whose birth and death alone were recorded; and it was shrewdly suspected by those who understood such matters, that one, if not two, of these had perished by the hands of a functionary of the law, while the other, or others, were supposed to have taken their departure unsummoned to their long account.
On looking nearer still, it was found that, in the whole race, there was a fierce and furious disposition, an impetuous and ungovernable temper, which, combined with a general fearlessness of character and heedlessness of consequences, formed that very moral constitution which was best calculated to lead them into dangers, difficulties, and even crimes. The man who had been killed by the axe had been proved to have exasperated the unfortunate woodman to such a degree by his intemperate violence and domineering pride, that a jury could not be found to condemn the slayer, though an inquest had brought in a verdict of murder upon the slain.
The same conduct was shown to have been the case in regard to him who was torn to pieces by the mob, he having, in his magisterial capacity, done anything but attempt to calm and quiet the sedition, but, on the contrary, had done all that he could to exasperate, to irritate, and to drive into madness. This was put forth, indeed, by his biographer as a bold and valiant proceeding on his part; but there were others who thought that it was only an evidence of the same furious, irritable, scornful disposition which had made itself so remarkable in the race.
The father of Sir Francis Tyrrell had differed very little from his ancestors. He had been a bold, fearless, overbearing, and tyrannical man; a soldier in his youth, a fox-hunter in his latter days; a despot in his magisterial capacity, an irritating neighbour, and an insufferable master of his house. He had been a very handsome man withal; and, in order to prove his disregard for personal beauty, he had married a young lady of the neighbourhood of considerable fortune, but who certainly possessed few personal attractions. As a girl, she had been silent, calm, unobtrusive, apparently thoughtful; in person, little, dark, pale, with small, keen black eyes, and a somewhat pointed nose. Her voice had been sharp, but not very musical; and there was something in her whole demeanour which made the old clergyman of the parish, who had known her from her youth, and who was, moreover, somewhat waggishly disposed, declare, when he heard of the marriage about to take place, that he was excessively glad of it, for that she was just the wife for Sir John Tyrrell.
When they were once fairly married, more of the lady's character appeared; not that she ever became more loquacious or loud-tongued than she had been before; but Sir John very soon found that she had always ready for any of his furious breakings forth of passion a calm, quiet, stinging reply, in which she seemed to combine with diabolical ingenuity everything that was most disagreeable for him to hear, and to compress it into the fewest possible words. She had a particular art, too, of modulating her voice, so that, in the midst of one of his most furious and noisy fits of rage, her low, quiet tones made themselves distinctly heard, and not one biting word was lost to his ear.
Sir John was not a man to be frustrated even by this sort of warfare, and he carried it on with his lady through the whole of his life; but he was a candid man, and used occasionally to acknowledge that his furious speeches and behaviour, compared with the quiet words and demeanour of his wife, were as a drubbing with a crabstick to a cut with a scythe.
The offspring of this hopeful union was Sir Francis Tyrrell, and well might his biographer declare that he combined in his own person all the virtues and qualities of his father and his mother: for, to an ungovernable temper, such as had descended to him from his ancestors, he added a sarcastic bitterness peculiarly his own.
Sir Francis Tyrrell was a learned and a literary man; in person somewhat below the middle size, dark in complexion, with sharp features and overhanging eyebrows, which, at the time I choose for opening this tale, were grizzled with some long gray hairs, which from time to time he industriously pulled out with tweezers, while they, with a pertinacity worthy of him from whom they sprang, regularly grew up again, longer, and grayer, and more prominent than ever. He wrote a good deal at various times, and produced works marked by very superior talents; and he also formed frequent theories, which were by no means always correct, but which all displayed genius of a certain kind, and considerable originality, if not perversity of thought. Of these works and these theories Sir Francis was not a little vain, and this was one of the most irritable points in his character. He could bear to be touched upon almost all other subjects but those; or rather we might say, that though it was not without danger that any one touched him upon any subject, upon these he became quite furious.
His family were totally without what the phrenologists call the organ of veneration. They had little respect for anything, and set out with having no respect for themselves. This they concealed in their own case, of course, as far as possible; but this want of respect never failed to make itself manifest both in words and deeds, when it referred to any member of their own family. Thus, Sir Francis was heard to declare that his father was one of the greatest fools that ever lived, and on being asked why, replied, "For marrying my mother."
"A man puts a lemon to a bottle of spirits," he said, "and people call him a sensible fellow, and go to drink punch with him; but if a man were to eat a whole lemon, plain people would say he was mad."
Again, on the occasion of his own marriage, he set out upon the principle of finding somebody the direct reverse of her who had been chosen by his father, declaring that he looked upon it as a duty to his children. Such an event, he said, as the marriage of his father and mother was sufficient to serve ten generations, and that he would do his best to dilute the quintessence of bitterness which had been hence produced. He chose, accordingly, a young lady from a distant part of the country, possessed of little of no fortune, of a gay and happy disposition, who had been brought up in great subjection to the will of parents that were really kind to her, and who had a fund of gentle and kindly feelings and good principles, but who was somewhat imprudent and incautious of speech, and of a timid as well as of an affectionate nature. From the first sight of Sir Francis Tyrrell, she had rather disliked him than otherwise. He had gained a little by attention upon her good graces, and upon her esteem by some philanthropic doctrines which he put forth, with no desire, indeed, of deceiving her or others, but solely because they were theories for which he had a fondness, and in which his vanity was concerned.
His progress in her favour, however, had not arrived beyond the dangerous point of indifference when he proposed himself to her parents as her future husband. She shrank from the very idea; but he was wealthy, bore a fair reputation, had, indeed, acquired a high character as a man of honour and integrity, and her parents pressed her so urgently to accept him, that she who was accustomed to yield to them in all things, yielded to them in this also, and she became the wife of a man that she did not love; though it is but fair to say, that there was no other person for whom she had any decided preference.
She married Sir Francis Tyrrell with the full desire and determination to love him as much as she could, and to make him as happy as it was in her power to do, and there were a variety of circumstances which combined to render the first two years of their union tolerably happy. In the first place, there were novelty and passion upon his side; in the next place, her very gentleness was a fortress to her upon which it was difficult to begin an attack; in the third place, her mildness and placability were something so new to the conceptions of Sir Francis, that they made him feel more or less ashamed of his own violence, till he became more familiar with the qualities which at first disarmed him.
But he was one of those who did not like to lead, but rather preferred to drive or to goad; and from the very first moment that some slight remonstrance on the part of Lady Tyrrell, with regard to something in which he had no business to interfere, gave the slightest suspicion of opposition to his will, the violent, the sarcastic, the bitter, the selfish spirit rose up with delight, unfettered; and the system of domineering and tyranny began in full force. The parents of the lady lived to see her apparent happiness, but not to witness its reverse. Her mother died before she had been married six months, and her father scarcely survived two years. Perhaps a suspicion of the truth troubled his deathbed, but we cannot say.
Unless we listen to the voice of the better spirit within us, prosperity and age generally lead forward selfishness between them; and then that selfishness who has hidden herself bashfully in the presence of the more generous feelings of youth, rushes forward with daring impudence, and blindfolds our eyes lest we should see her deformity. Such was the case with Sir Francis Tyrrell. There was no counterbalancing power to check or to control. His feelings of religion, if he had any, were not active; he had speculated away the greater part of his morality. He would not, indeed, have done anything that was glaringly and universally admitted to be evil; first, because his vanity would not consent to his incurring the reputation of a vicious man; and, secondly, because his passions did not particularly take that course. But of the moralities of life, which go hand in hand with the charities of life, he had no conception. To trample upon those who were prostrate before him; to make his own house a hell, and to act the part of ruling fiend himself; to cast every kind of aspersion and imputation, true or false, upon every one that offended him, and many that never offended him at all; to be suspicious, jealous, irritable without cause; to allow no opinion to prevail but his own; to deal a very different measure to himself and others; to exact the utmost, and to grant the least; to be avaricious while he was ostentatious, sensorious when he affected to be candid, and harshly severe to every one while he assumed the language of philanthropy, he considered to be no wrong, and sat down with the conviction that he was a very good and virtuous man.
The effect upon his wife was, that for a time she sank into a state of timid and cheerless despair, from which she at length rallied herself to make ineffectual resistance. When he accused her of things she had never committed, and purposes she had never entertained, she would now rouse herself to repel the charge, but still, having the worst of the argument, and cut to the heart by sarcasms and insinuations, she would have recourse to flight to her own chamber, and end the day in tears. When he was simply violent, she had the good sense to sit in quiet and make no reply.
But under all these cruel circumstances her health was daily injured, and she who had been full of bloom, and life, and health, became pale, and worn, and thin, and unequal to the least exertion. Sir Francis and Lady Tyrrell had but one child, a son, who was born in the second year of their marriage; but of that son, for various reasons, it will be necessary to speak apart.
CHAPTER II.
It is a terrible thing when youth--the time of sport and enjoyment, the period which nature has set apart for acquiring knowledge, and power, and expansion, and for tasting all the multitude of sweet and magnificent things which crowd the creation, in their first freshness and with the zest of novelty--is clouded with storms or drenched with tears. It is not so terrible by any means when the mere ills of fortune afflict us; for they are light things to the buoyancy of youth, and are soon thrown off by the heart which has not learned the foresight of fresh sorrows. The body habituates itself more easily to anything than the mind, and privations twice or thrice endured are privations no longer. But it is a terrible thing, indeed, when--in those warm days of youth when the heart is all affection, the mind longing for thrilling sympathies, the soul eager to love and be beloved--the faults, the vices, or the circumstances of others cut us off from those sweet natural ties with which nature, as with a wreath of flowers, has garlanded our early days; when we have either lost and regret, or known but to contemn, the kindred whose veins flow with the same blood as our own, or the parents who gave us being.
There are few situations more solitary, more painful, more moving, than that of an orphan. I remember a schoolfellow who had many friends who were kind to him and fond of him: but he said to me one day, in speaking of his holiday sports, "I, you know, have no father or mother." And there was a look of thoughtful melancholy in his face, and a tone of desolation in his voice, which struck me strangely, even young as I then was. But that situation, lonely as it is, deprived of all the tender and consoling associations of kindred feeling, is bright and cheerful, gay and happy, compared with that in which Charles Tyrrell commenced his career on earth.
He was as beautiful a child as ever was seen; strong vigorous, and healthy; with his mother's fair complexion, a fine, intelligent countenance, even in infancy and a smile of peculiar sweetness. His father was fond of him as long as he continued an infant. He was proud of him, I was going to say, but I believe the proper term would be, conceited of him. Everybody admired the child, and expressed their admiration, and, by some strange complication of ideas, the admiration seemed to the father reflected back upon himself. The child amused him too, and interested him, and for a certain time he seemed to derive a pleasure from caressing it, which softened his manner, if not his feelings.
Hard must be the heart and selfish the mind which is not softened and expanded by communion with sweet infancy. The innocence of childhood is the tenderest, and not the least potent remonstrance against the vices and the errors of grown man, if he would but listen to the lesson and take it to his heart. Seldom, too seldom, do we do so; and I cannot say that it was the case with Sir Francis Tyrrell; but still he could not undergo that influence without losing something of his harshness from the gentle presence of the child.
To Lady Tyrrell the birth of her infant was a renewal of hope and a solid store of happiness. She had a fresh object before her, a new motive for exertion and endurance; and as she gazed upon his infant face, she promised herself, for his sake, to bear all and to strive for all. Her health, however, gave way under constant irritation; and as the boy grew up, his father lost that pride in him which he had before experienced; and though he had fondled the infant, he chided and railed at the child; while Lady Tyrrell, who was, perhaps, inclined to be a little over-indulgent to her only son, roused herself to defend him from the bitter and unmerited reproaches of his father, when, perhaps, in her own case, she might have borne those reproaches in silence.
Every point of his education became a subject of contention. While a child, he had been to Sir Francis a mere plaything; but the moment that his reason began to expand, his father looked upon him as a new object of tyranny, and Lady Tyrrell would often sit and gaze with melancholy eyes upon her son's face, thinking of his future fate, and sorrowing, from the sad experience of her own, over the long and miserable years to be passed under the sway of such a man as his father. She exerted herself to conquer even her own affection for the child, and the selfishness of that affection. In order as much to remove him from home, and to give him the blessing of other society, as to ensure him a good education, she determined, if possible, to send him to school, though she thereby lost the comfort of his presence, and the continual solace and relief of all his sports, and words, and looks.
Sir Francis, however, on the contrary, did not choose to sacrifice his own pleasure. He did not choose to lose the new object of tyranny which he had acquired. He declared he intended to have a tutor in the house when his son was old enough to learn anything; and the very wish which his wife expressed, that the boy should be sent to school, only hardened his determination to keep him at home. He had no confidence in virtue or in sincerity of any kind; and although he knew that Lady Tyrrell was, when he married her, as frank and open as the day, he still could not persuade himself that she acted towards him without guile.
It was this error which, in the present instance, ultimately produced the result that she wished. He one day heard her say, by chance, while stooping over her boy, that it would break her heart to part with him; and a suspicion crossed his mind that she had proposed to send the child to school for the purpose of inducing him to pursue exactly the opposite course. The very thought was, indeed, but little complimentary to his own disposition, and arose from an internal consciousness (the full force of which he would not acknowledge) of the contradictory and mulish character of his own mind. His determination, however, was fixed by a scene of altercation with the boy himself, whom he had punished severely for doing something that his mother had directed him to do, but whom he could induce by no means, neither by anger nor by blows, to acknowledge that he had done wrong in the slightest degree. It was determined, in consequence, that he should go to school, and to school he was accordingly sent; but, unfortunately, not to a school which was at all likely to correct the constitutional errors of his disposition, or to afford to his mind that strong moral tone which might have served to counteract all the evils with which his mind became familiarized at home.
As it is not our purpose to trace him through the uninteresting details of a school life, we shall content ourselves with showing what was his natural disposition; and though he is the person destined to act the most prominent part in these pages, we shall in no degree conceal that which was evil in his nature. His first great fault, then, was a part of his inheritance, the violent passion of his father. Even when a child, he would throw himself down in fits of ungovernable anger, and lie writhing on the ground, as if in convulsions, till the fit went off. He had much of the talent, too, of his father; perhaps; indeed, more, and certainly possessed genius of a higher order; for the qualities of his mind received a much greater degree of expansion from being united with superior qualities of the heart. There was, however, a frequent similarity to be observed between the turn and form of his ideas and those of Sir Francis. In his childhood, even, he had been known unconsciously to utter many a keen and cutting phrase, which brought upon the countenance of his father a sarcastic smile, in which was strangely blended an expression of contempt and bitterness with that of approbation and pleasure.
The boy, indeed, would have been altogether what his nurses called the "moral of his father," with a finer person and much greater corporeal powers, had it not been that his mother's nature was intimately mingled with the whole, and counterbalanced many faults, if it did not counteract them. Under her tuition he acquired a love of truth which never left him through life; but he had by nature a frank straightforwardness of character which was very winning. One saw, even in his very infancy and childhood, that the heart acted before the mind had been taught to act; and with a spirit which was utterly insusceptible of fear, and a body not very sensitive of suffering, some of his very good qualities might have led him to wound the feelings of others much more frequently than he did, if he had not possessed a natural tenderness and kindness of heart, which led him, with a sort of unerring instinct, to perceive the points on which others were vulnerable, and to spare them on those points, except when moved by some fierce opposition or angry passion. He was also by nature--and that, too, he derived from his mother--most affectionate. That is to say, he did not attach himself to every one, or lightly. He was not as the seed of the mistletoe or the moss, that fixes itself upon everything wherever it lights, and grows there till it is torn away. But he had within his heart the power of deep attachment; strong, permanent, immoveable. He was not likely to form friendships very easily, or to love often; but where he did love, he loved wholly and for ever.
The first instance in which these qualities were put to the proof, was in choosing between his father and his mother. We may call it choosing, though, indeed, there was no choice; for he could not but love the one, and it was very easy not to love the other. On that mother, then, fixed the whole strength of his infant affection, and it grew with his growth, and strengthened with his strength. Everything that occurred--the gentle warnings and reproaches which she sometimes forced herself to make when he behaved ill; her ill health; her deep melancholy; her conduct to her husband, and his conduct to her, all made him cling the more closely to her--made him love her and respect her the more.
The next instance in which he was tried was in the choice of a friend among his schoolfellows. They were almost all inferior to himself; not in point of birth indeed, for there were some superior in that respect, but in talent, and corporeal as well as mental qualities; besides a great and marked inferiority in that most inestimable of all qualities, energy of character, which he possessed in an overwhelming degree. The school contained a variety of dispositions, shades and differences of every kind of mind; but he chose, as his companion and his friend, a lad somewhat older than himself, but much less in stature, inferior in station, not remarkable for any brilliant qualities, but of a calm, quiet, and thoughtful disposition, giving occasionally signs of dormant talent and penetration, which no one had been at the pains to call forth, and of a determination of purpose and constancy of character which is one of the greatest elements of success in life. His health was by no means vigorous, and his corporeal powers small; so that, in the contest with which we open out the struggle of life in our schoolboy days, he was generally vanquished, and, indeed, was somewhat ill-treated by stronger youths than himself, till Charles Tyrrell appeared in the school, and at once took the part of his defender.
Everard Morrison was grateful to him; admired the corporeal powers and vigour which he did not himself possess, and still more admired the brilliant and remarkable talent displayed by his new friend, though those talents were of a character as strikingly opposite to his own as Tyrrell's vigour to his feebleness. Even the wild and intemperate bursts of passion to which the new scholar frequently gave way, the rash and remorseless conduct which he displayed under those circumstances, seemed to afford him matter for thought and speculation, ay, and even admiration likewise; and when, on one occasion, some extraordinary act of violence had called down upon the head of the wealthy baronet's son a rare and reluctant punishment from the master, Everard Morrison stood forward as his defender, and with great ingenuity and talent endeavoured to show that the provocation which Charles Tyrrell had received was sufficient to justify the acts he had committed; and in boyish language, but with keen penetration, he pointed out that the violent passions of his friend were seldom, if ever, excited by any petty injury or offence solely to himself, but rather by what was mean, pitiful, unjust, or tyrannical in others.
Their friendship lasted during the whole time that they were at school together; but at length, on the same vacation, Morrison was removed to take a clerk's place in the house of his father, a country attorney, and Charles Tyrrell was sent to Eton to undergo the needful discipline of a public school. They separated with a thousand boyish professions of friendship, and consoled themselves with the idea that the county town in which Morrison's father made his abode was only seven miles distant from the seat of Sir Francis Tyrrell, called Harbury Park, so that they could often meet during the holidays. They promised to do so continually. But such promises, made in the guileless days of youth, are rapidly forgotten. The grasp of our affection expands with the grasp of our intellects, and the little things that we loved in infancy and youth but too often slip away from us as our mind enlarges, like sand through the fingers of a giant. It remains to be inquired, in the present instance, which it was that forgot the other. It certainly was not Charles Tyrrell; for his first expedition on his midsummer return from Eton was to pay a visit to Everard Morrison: and again and again he walked or rode over to the county town to see his old companion. Morrison always received him gladly to all appearance; but, notwithstanding all the reiterated invitations of his schoolfellow, he never visited Harbury Park but once. He showed, in short, no disposition to cultivate the acquaintance that he had formed at school.
Charles Tyrrell saw this, and was hurt, but he said nothing, and persevered for some time; but finding perseverance produced no effect, he gradually ceased to seek for Everard Morrison's closer friendship. But his peculiar tenacity of regard displayed itself in this instance also. Although he was hurt and offended, he gave way to no anger; he loved Everard Morrison still, and he did not cease to love him, although he saw him but rarely, and then under some restraint.
His life at Eton we shall not inquire into, for it was exactly the life of every person so situated, or with variations of no importance. Neither is there much to be told in the detached periods of his holiday residence at home; at least, not much which the reader may not divine without being told.
Age seemed to squeeze out the last drop of honey from his father's nature, and to leave all the bitter behind. His conduct to Lady Tyrrell would not, perhaps, in any court established for the purpose of dispensing justice or injustice, as the case may be, have been pronounced cruelty, for such courts weigh nothing but that which affects immediately the body; and the wounds, ay, or even the death inflicted through the mind, are left to the judgment of another world. Sir Francis Tyrrell showed no personal violence towards his wife. He treated her apparently with ceremonious respect, except when the fit of passion was upon him, and even then the weapon that he used against her was but the tongue.
With him, however, that weapon was worse than a poisoned dagger, inflicting wounds that could never be healed. Everything that was stinging, everything that was venomous, everything that was scornful, everything that was irritating, then poured from his lips without the slightest remorse, and without the slightest regard to truth or justice. There can be little doubt that he believed what he said at the time; for his passion acted as a sort of magician in his own breast, and conjured up chimeras, and phantoms, and demons which had no existence but in the phantasmagoria of his own imagination.
These fits of passion, too, were of frequent, nay, of daily occurrence; and his life with Lady Tyrrell, passed thus, either absent from her when, in order to avoid him or on account of illness, she confined herself to her own room; in cold and sneering ceremony when there was no absolute cause of offence; or in violent and angry dispute when she roused herself to resist or to deny.
The effect on her was such as might be expected. Ere she had reached the age of forty, the buoyant health which she had once possessed, the radiant yet gentle beauty, the cheerful and contented disposition, were all gone; and she remained old before her time, with a heart wrung and torn, and without one trace of that loveliness with which Heaven had at first endued her.
The conduct of Sir Francis Tyrrell to his son was also such as might be expected from his disposition. The first two or three days after his return during the vacations, the natural feeling of a parent, of course, had its way. He seemed glad to see him; fond of him; proud of him; but the third day scarcely ever passed over without some sharp rebuke, and the fourth never came to an end without one of those violent scenes of altercation, which increased in frequency and intensity as the boy grew up towards the man.
The power of reasoning, the will of acting for himself, which soon became evident in Charles Tyrrell, though not exercised prematurely, insolently, or obstinately, gave his father daily offence. It was with the gradual work of nature that he quarrelled in reality, while he affected to find fault with the conduct of his son. It was that he did not choose to see one, over whom he still thought to keep extended the rule of his iron rod, emancipated gradually, by the development of his corporeal and mental powers, from the authority which is given to parents for the protection and guidance of our immature years.
All this irritated him; but yet we do not mean to say that young Charles Tyrrell entertained any great veneration for his father's character, any love for his person, or any respect for his opinions: but that he did not do so was not his fault. The treatment which he daily experienced himself, and which he saw his mother undergo, had put an end altogether to anything like love and veneration; and the frequent variations of opinion which he daily beheld in his father; the arguing one day on one side of the question, and the next on the other side, as the passion of the moment dictated, left him, whether he would or not, without anything like respect for his judgment.
He had learned at a public school to put some degree of restraint upon himself, and to show some degree of respect, whether he felt it or not, to older persons than himself. Thus, as far as he could, he restrained himself and obeyed; but it was when his mother was concerned that he forgot all deference towards his father. Then the strong passions which he had inherited from him would burst forth; then the indignation, which he smothered in his own case, would find a voice; then the vehement energy of his nature would display itself, employing all the talents he possessed to give fire and point to his angry rejoinders.
Still, however, his father's experience, knowledge of the world, learning, and skill in sarcasm, would furnish him with weapons which almost drove the boy to madness; and more than once, during the first two or three years after he had ventured to oppose his father in regard to his mother, his anger ended in bitter and disappointed tears at being overpowered by arguments and sarcasms which he felt to be wrong and unjust.
After a time, however, as he approached the age of seventeen or eighteen, instead of tears, he fell into deep silence, partly from finding himself unable to express his indignation in words such as he dared to use towards his father; partly from the desire to examine intensely what could be the cause which prevented him from proving himself right when he knew himself to be so. That silence, however, was mortifying to Sir Francis: the tears he had liked very well to see; but when once in the career of passion, he loved to provoke a rejoinder, almost sure that it would throw his opponent open to some new blow. Silence, therefore, was the most irritating thing that could be opposed to him; and twice, when, in some of their violent altercations, his son suddenly ceased and said no more, he was even hurried on to strike him, although the period of life at which such an act from a father to a son is at all justifiable had long passed.
On those two occasions, Charles Tyrrell put both his hands behind his back, and clasped them tight together, till round each of the fingers, as they pressed upon the flesh of the other hand, a deep white space might be seen, showing the stern energy with which he clinched them together. On both these occasions, too, after gazing, with a frowning brow and a quivering lip, on his father's face for two or three moments in deep silence, he rushed suddenly out of the house and plunged into the woods around.
CHAPTER III.
We have dealt long enough in general descriptions, but they were necessary to explain what is to follow. We must now turn to particular incidents and to details of facts, endeavouring to set forth our tale more as a gallery of pictures than as a consecutive narrative.
The period of Charles Tyrrell's schooldays was over, and he was now studying at the University; but with his studies there we, of course, shall not meddle, but take up his history at his first return to his father's house, after having been absent some months at Oxford. His father, though possessed, as we have said, of very large fortune, had made his son no larger allowance at college than mere shame compelled him to do. This, however, proceeded in no degree from parsimony; for, as far as money was concerned, he was a liberal and a generous man; but the latent motive was to have a continual check upon his son, and a subject, at any time that he chose to employ it, for censure and irritation.
Do not let any one suppose that this picture is caricatured; for, on the contrary, it is true, and only drawn with a hand not strong enough to paint it accurately. The sum which he allowed his son was by no means sufficient to maintain him upon a level with young men of his own station, and, ere he had been many months at college, the thoughtlessness natural to youth, joined with a free and generous disposition, had, of course, plunged him into some difficulties. As soon as he found it was so, Charles Tyrrell, well knowing his fathers character, determined to extricate himself without subjecting himself to make a request to his father, which would be granted, he knew, with taunts and reproaches, and held over his head as an obligation incurred, to be frequently alluded to in the future. He therefore applied himself to economize with the most rigid exactness; and at a time when everything that was extravagant and thoughtless was done by all those around him, he devoted himself to study and to thought, making his application to such pursuits an excuse for absenting himself from the society of those with whom he had begun to associate.
So far, perhaps, the effect was good; and, indeed, we might go farther. The habit of commanding one's self, of resisting inclinations, conquering habits, doing right in spite of our own weakness, is the most ennobling, enlarging, elevating act of the human mind. Under the influence of such a purpose and of such an effort, Charles Tyrrell grew day by day more manly, more vigorous in mind, more competent even to guide and rule others.
He was grave and sad, however, for the fetters of circumstances pressed heavily upon him. He could not do good where he sought to do good; he could not reward where reward had been deserved; he could not encourage where encouragement was wanting. All this he felt, and he felt bitterly, and he knew that all was inflicted upon him by his father, at once unnecessarily and unwisely. Nor, it must be confessed, was he without a consciousness of the motive which caused the infliction; and, of course, that motive made his heart swell indignantly at the tyranny sought to be exercised over him, and the means which that tyranny employed.
When we are aware that those to whom we owe existence have devoted long years, during our infancy and youth, to protect, to nourish, and to guide us; when they have thought of us rather than themselves, and sacrificed pleasure and amusement, and tastes and feelings, for our benefit; when they have spent the weary hours of watchfulness over the bed of infancy and of sickness; when they have rejoiced in our joys and mourned for our sorrows; when they have made efforts for us that they would not have made for themselves, and even corrected us with more pain to themselves than to us, for our benefit; when they have felt it a pang, and yet a duty, to deny us what we sought; and when they have given up, in short, time, thought, pleasure, exertion, energy, hope, comfort, selfishness, for our after welfare; when they have done all this, and we know it, there is nothing on earth can equal, or should equal, the love and gratitude of a child for his parents. But when, on the other hand, we owe them nothing but existence, a gift given selfishly, to be selfishly employed; when we have been to them but as objects of pleasure or dominion to themselves, the matter is very different, and the love and gratitude that we show them must have its source in that love and gratitude we owe to the better Father, whose will placed them in such relationship to us.
Charles Tyrrell, then, could not love his father; and, had not his mother been living, it is probable that, devoting himself entirely to study, he would not even have visited his paternal mansion during the vacations; but when he thought of her, and how much she needed comfort; of her fond and deep affection for him, and her loneliness in his absence, he determined to go back, although he feared the violence of his father's disposition, and even feared the violence of his own.
Such was the state of his mind towards the commencement of his first vacation; and pursuing his plan of economy, he came up to London by the Oxford stage, and thence proceeded by the Old Blue, night coach, towards his own dwelling, though that was a period at which young men were not in the custom either of driving the coaches that carried them, or, indeed, of travelling by such conveyances at all, when their circumstances enabled them to afford another. The Old Blue coach contained in the inside the number of six passengers, and slow and heavy was its progress along roads which had not yet submitted to the petrifying power of Mr. M'Adam. The personage, then, who was seated in the middle, was under the unpleasant necessity either of watching through the long progress of a tedious night in the strait-waistcoat of a close-packed stage, or to choose the shoulder of one of his fellow-travellers for a pillow, which was hard or soft, as the case might be.
On entering the coach, Charles Tyrrell found it full when he himself was added to the number of its occupants; but the faint glimmer of the feeble lamps in the courtyard of the old Golden Cross, Charing Cross, was not sufficient to show him distinctly the countenances of his companions, though a man with a pen behind his ear, and a book in one hand, came forward to see that all the booked passengers were assembled in the interior, holding up a sickly-looking tallow candle, with a long wick and a fiery mushroom at the top. All that Charles Tyrrell could discover was, that the middle place of the front seat had been left for him; and, when the coach drove off, not a further word was said by any one, everybody seeming well disposed, with the exception of himself, to seek oblivion from the evils of their state in the blissful arms of slumber.
The young Oxonian had no inclination to sleep; and leaning back, as far as circumstances would permit him, with his broad shoulders somewhat circumscribed by the bulk which his companion on either side contrived to give to theirs, he remained pondering in silence over the coming days, looking forward to the time spent at home with none of that expectant pleasure which awaits those whose hearts have a domestic refuge when they return from long absence and from distant scenes.
At a small but pretty inn, which there are few who do not know well, called Hertford Bridge--Heaven knows what changes it has undergone since--the coach stopped for supper, as was customary in those days, and the sight of the woodbines and other climbing plants, which at that time twined round the door of one of the prettiest little inns in Europe, was refreshing and delightful to the eye of the traveller. The breath of the plants, too, some of which pour forth their odours more fully at midnight than at any other hour, came sweet and balmy to the senses of Charles Tyrrell, as, entering the little inn, he turned into the room on the left hand, where the coach supper had been prepared. There was a room opposite, through the brown Holland blinds of which he had seen streaming forth a light as the coach came up; but the door of that room was closed, and all that could be known of its inmates was gathered from the sounds of some gay and cheerful voices speaking within, and mingling sweet musical tones with laughter.
On entering the supper-room, one after another of the inside passengers were found stripping themselves of various parts of their travelling costume, and in one of them Charles Tyrrell instantly recognised a person whom he had seen more than once before. This was a gentleman somewhat past the prime of life; that is to say, he might be fifty-five or fifty-six years of age. He was hale and well, however, though of a thin and meager habit; and his whole countenance bespoke health, not of an exuberant, but of a durable kind. His face, though undoubtedly handsome, was not of a pleasant character; the eyebrows ran up as well as the eyes; the nose was somewhat sharp and pointed; the cheek bones rather too high; the forehead not low, but wide rather than high, and a monstrous protuberance of that superior part of the back of the head in which phrenologists have thought fit to place the organs of self-esteem, self-will, caution, &c. The line might be made to comprise all those organs which tend to combativeness and acquisitiveness, though the former in somewhat of a less degree than the latter.
The shape of a man's head has a far greater share in giving expression to his face than people in general imagine; and as we have said, though one could not help acknowledging that Mr. Driesen must have been a handsome man in his youth, there was about his countenance that look and air which gave to the features of Voltaire the expression of an old and malicious monkey. Charles Tyrrell had seen him frequently with his father, with whom he used to spend a part of every year, and what he had seen of him under such circumstances had not by any means tended to diminish the impression of dislike which his face had at first produced.
Mr. Driesen was descended from a family originally German, but which had been settled for many centuries in England. He was possessed of a small property, which, during his youth, afforded him quite sufficient to live upon in comfort without pursuing any profession in order to make it larger. He had studied the law, but he never attempted to practise it; and had devoted himself, during many years, to the pursuit of that sort of philosophy which prepared the way for, and ushered in, not so much the French revolution as the horrors and impieties which accompanied an act that might have passed over, perhaps, innocuously, had not the whole moral and religious foundations of society been previously shaken in France by the efforts of men who fancied they were pursuing wisdom, when, in fact, they were pursuing vanity.
Mr. Driesen was a man of talent, however, and a man of learning. He was a profound Greek scholar, a tolerable mathematician, a clear and cutting reasoner, but artful as a sophist; and, aided by his own vanity, deceiving himself while he deceived others. He was fond of all sorts of startling propositions; feared to shock no feelings or opinions, however respectable or however well founded; and he was, moreover, full of rich stores of rare and unusual knowledge, and of reading in works which are sealed to the eye of most men. His memory was unfailing, his fluency great, and he could thus bring to bear upon any subject arguments and quotations startling from their novelty and confounding from their multitude. He made a boast of being without any fixed principle, and Sir Francis Tyrrell did not esteem him at all the less on that account, not being overburdened with principle himself.
But there was one secret in his partiality for Mr. Driesen, which was, that his friend was in the custom of comparing him to the famous Mirabeau, whom they had both known in France, in their youth, during the period of his utmost power over the National Assembly. The comparison was not altogether without justice. But it was to Mirabeau's father, the old Marquis de Mirabeau, that Sir Francis Tyrrell bore a strong resemblance rather than to the son. However that might be, the comparison flattered him, and he was fond of the society of Mr. Driesen, who, without bearing by any means a good character for morality, did not, on the contrary, bear a very bad one. He, on his part, had contrived by various means to diminish his own patrimony considerably, and therefore the luxuries of Sir Francis Tyrrell's house were not disagreeable to him; nor, indeed, if the current tales were true, the occasional assistance of Sir Francis Tyrrell's purse.
Although there had never existed any very great acquaintance between him and his friend's son; and though, on the part of Charles, there had always been a feeling of antipathy, which he could scarcely explain to himself; in the present instance, no sooner did Mr. Driesen discover who had been his companion in the night-coach, than he advanced to shake hands with him with a warm and friendly air, which Charles Tyrrell could not make up his mind to repel. They sat down together to supper with the rest of the travellers, and the conversation between the two acquaintances took a turn the least likely in the world to be taken between two travellers in a stagecoach. It neither referred to politics, nor war, nor locomotion, nor the supper that was before them; but it referred to Greek and Latin poets, to Hesiod, to Euripides, to Lucan; or else, turning to more modern, but not less unusual topics under such circumstances, commented upon Clement Marot, or inquired into the authenticity of the poems attributed to Clotilde de Surville.
The company round about opened their eyes and looked aghast, or opened their mouths and devoured their supper in silence; but the conversation did not certainly receive that direction from an intention on the part of either of the two to excite astonishment in the listeners. It is very probable that neither of them had the slightest intention of giving it the direction which it took. It very often happens that a single chance word; the most remote or trifling accident; some circumstance scarcely noted even by ourselves; the fall of a spoon, or the change of a plate, or any other insignificant occurrence, will set that rapid flyer, thought, winging her way through the endless regions of imagination and memory, leading after her words and even feelings into directions the most remote from the occurrences which first gave them rise. A single word, a single tone, a single look, is often sufficient, not only to carry us away into trains of idea and conversation quite different from all that we had proposed to follow, but more, far more! to throw open the gates of a new fate before us, and lead us onward to our destiny through narrow, tortuous, and darkling tracts, which we would never otherwise have trod.
If any one had a design in leading the conversation in the direction which we have mentioned, it was Mr. Driesen; and it might be so, for these were not only subjects of which he was fond himself, as a clever and a learned man, but they were also those on which he fancied that his young acquaintance, all hot from Oxford, would be prompt to speak, especially as he had learned that Charles Tyrrell had devoted himself earnestly to study.
Eager in all things, and with a taste naturally fine and cultivated, Charles Tyrrell followed the lead willingly, and, ending his supper before the rest, he still carried it on, though Mr. Driesen himself soon showed a disposition to profit by the good things set before him, and took care of the corporeal part of his being at the expense of the supper.
At length, perceiving such to be the case, Charles Tyrrell ceased; and, thinking the time long, turned to the door to see if the horses were not yet put to. Just as he was entering the passage on quitting the supper-room, the opposite door opened, and a lady came partly out, bearing a light in her hand. She was turning her head to speak to some one within the room, and at first all that Charles Tyrrell could see was a beautiful figure, graceful in every line; but more peculiarly graceful from the manner in which the head was turned, showing the beautiful hair, fine, full, and glossy as silk, gathered up into a knot at the back of the head, from which one or two curls escaped, and fell upon the fair neck below. The form and the attitude were beautiful, but that attitude lasted only for a moment; for the first step of Charles Tyrrell made her turn round, not with any quick and nervous start, but quietly and slowly, to see who it was so near; and the moment she had seen the stranger, she withdrew again quietly into the room and closed the door, probably divining that the members of the supper party belonging to the stagecoach were about to resume their journey, and resolving to let them depart ere she proceeded whithersoever she was going.
The single moment, however, during which she had turned towards him, had been sufficient to show Charles Tyrrell one of the loveliest faces he had ever beheld. It is nearly in vain to describe beauty; for the pen will not trace the same definite lines as the pencil, and the imagination of those who read will not be fettered down to the reality, like the imagination of those who see. Nor, indeed, although Charles obtained a full sight of that beautiful face, was the idea that he formed of it accurate. He fancied that her eyes were black, when, in truth, they were deep blue; but that mistake might proceed from their being shadowed by the great length of the thick black eyelashes. He fancied, too, that the hair was nearly black, when, in fact, it was of the rich brown of a chestnut just separated from its green covering; but that might proceed from its being of a very deep tint of that brown, and from the position of the light which she carried.
Every one has felt, and more than one poet besides Lord Byron has expressed the peculiar sensations which we experience when some bright and beautiful form crosses our path for a moment, and then leaves us without our seeing it any more. A shooting star, though but the meteor of a bright electric night, seems often more brilliant than the orbs that hold their place crowned with eternal splendour, and Charles Tyrrell thought that face the most beautiful, that form the most graceful, that he had ever beheld. There was, besides, a certain feeling of mystery about her rapid appearance and disappearance. It seemed to be a vision of loveliness given to him alone. It touched and woke imagination; and advancing to the door of the inn with very different thoughts from those which he had come from the supper-room, he gazed up towards the heavens, all sparkling with their everlasting fires, and fixing upon one bright planet which had not yet set, but remained pouring its calm light more tranquilly and equally than the rest, among all the radiant things that surrounded it, he thought that it was like her whom he had just seen, and, plunging into the dreams of fancy, he revelled in sweet reveries till it was time to depart.
CHAPTER IV.
The scenery amid which we are born and brought up, if we remain long enough therein to have passed that early period of existence on which memory seems to have no hold, sinks, as it were, into the spirit of man; twines itself intimately with every thought, and becomes a part of his being. He can never cast it off, any more than he can cast off the body in which his spirit acts. Almost every chain of his after thoughts is linked at some point to the magical circle which bounds his youth's ideas; and even when latent, and in no degree known, it is still present, affecting every feeling and every fancy, and giving a bent of its own to all our words and our deeds.
I have heard a story of a girl who was captive to some Eastern prince, and wore upon her ancles a light golden ring. She learned to love her master devotedly, and was as happy as she could be in his love. Adored, adorned, and cherished, she sat beside him one day in all the pomp of Eastern state, when suddenly her eye fell upon the golden ring round her ancle, which custom had rendered so light that she had forgotten it altogether. The tears instantly rose in her eyes as she looked upon it, and her lover divining all at once, asked, with a look of reproach, "Would you be free?" She cast herself upon his bosom and answered, "Never!"
Thus, often the links that bind us to early scenes and places, in which we have passed happy or unhappy hours, are unobserved and forgotten, till some casual circumstance turns our eyes thitherward. But if any one should ask us whether we would sever that chain, there is scarcely one fine mind that would not also answer, Never! The passing of our days may be painful, the early years may be checkered with grief and care, unkindness and frowns may wither the smiles of boyhood, and tears bedew the path of youth; yet, nevertheless, when we stand and look back, in later life, letting Memory hover over the past, prepared to light where she will, there is no period in all the space laid out before her over which her wings flutter so joyfully, or on which she would so much wish to pause, as the times of our youth. The evils of other days are forgotten; the scenes in which those days passed are remembered, detached from the sorrows that checkered them, and the bright misty light of life's first sunrise still gilds the whole with a glory not its own. It is not alone, however, after long years have passed away, and crushed out the gall from sorrows endured, that fine and enchanting feelings are awakened by the scenes in which our early days have gone by, and that the thrill of association is felt in all its joyfulness, acting as an antidote to the poisonous sorrows which often mingle with our cup.
It was so, at least, with Charles Tyrrell as he returned towards the home of his fathers. The sun rose upon his journey when he was about twenty miles from home, but still in scenes of which every rood was familiar to him; and while the first red and blushing hues upon the eastern sky were changing into the bright and golden splendour that surrounds the half-risen sun, the road wound out upon the side of a hill, showing him a wide extent of country to the right, scattered with many a mound and many a tumulus, each, in general, planted with a small clump of dark fir-trees, which waved above the conical hillocks like plumes from the casques of the warriors who now slept beneath.
Beyond that extent again might be beheld long lines of hill and woodland, broken, before the eye reached the faintest line in the distance, by a tall, curiously-shaped hill, known by the name of Harbury Hill, or, as some called it, Harbury Fort, though, to say sooth, scarcely a vestige of a fort existed there, except the broken vallum of a Roman camp, on the short sweet grass of which now grazed some innocent sheep and peaceful cows.
Looking forth, as well as he could, from the window, the eyes of Charles Tyrrell instantly sought out Harbury Hill, which was, it may be remembered, within a very short distance of his paternal mansion. They lighted on it at once; and, notwithstanding all that he had suffered there, and felt he was still to suffer, a thrill of satisfaction passed through his bosom, again to behold the well-known scenes of his early years; the hill, the valley, the wood, the plain, all glowing in the early light of the morning, which imaged not amiss the light of youth pouring its lustre through all that surrounds it. He gazed and enjoyed; and, with an economy of pleasure, which the harsh lessons of the world had taught him to practise even then, he enjoyed, perhaps, the more, because he felt that that first glow of joy was the only pleasure which was likely to be his during his sojourn there.
All the passengers in the coach were still sound asleep; and after a glance, which gave him no satisfaction, at the sharp, astute countenance of Mr. Driesen, he turned away from the fat, unmeaning faces of the rest, heated with travelling and dirty with a journey, and continued to gaze at every well-remembered object till the coach stopped, the horses were unharnessed, and four staid and heavy animals, but very little like the light blood tits that now gallop over the ground with the Highflyer behind them, were brought out, and with somewhat slow and clumsy hands attached to the heavy Blue. The stopping of the coach roused almost all the inside passengers, and amid many expressions of wonder at the sun having risen while they were all asleep, Mr. Driesen put forth his head from the coach window, commented on the beauty of the morning, and assured Charles Tyrrell that, though he had been absent but a few months, he would find very great improvements in the neighbourhood of Harbury Park.
