CHAPTER I.
RELATING HOW I DROVE THROUGH THE VILLAGE OF GYLINGDEN WITH MARK WYLDER'SLETTER IN MY VALISE.
It was late in the autumn, and I was skimming along, through a richEnglish county, in a postchaise, among tall hedgerows gilded, like allthe landscape, with the slanting beams of sunset. The road makes a longand easy descent into the little town of Gylingden, and down this we weregoing at an exhilarating pace, and the jingle of the vehicle sounded likesledge-bells in my ears, and its swaying and jerking were pleasant andlife-like. I fancy I was in one of those moods which, under similarcircumstances, I sometimes experience still--a semi-narcotic excitement,silent but delightful.
An undulating landscape, with a homely farmstead here and there, andplenty of old English timber scattered grandly over it, extended mistilyto my right; on the left the road is overtopped by masses of nobleforest. The old park of Brandon lies there, more than four miles from endto end. These masses of solemn and discoloured verdure, the faint butsplendid lights, and long filmy shadows, the slopes and hollows--my eyeswandered over them all with that strange sense of unreality, and thatmingling of sweet and bitter fancy, with which we revisit a scenefamiliar in very remote and early childhood, and which has haunted a longinterval of maturity and absence, like a romantic reverie.
As I looked through the chaise-windows, every moment presented somegroup, or outline, or homely object, for years forgotten; and now, with astrange surprise how vividly remembered and how affectionately greeted!We drove by the small old house at the left, with its double gable andpretty grass garden, and trim yews and modern lilacs and laburnums,backed by the grand timber of the park. It was the parsonage, and oldbachelor Doctor Crewe, the rector, in my nonage, still stood, in memory,at the door, in his black shorts and gaiters, with his hands in hispockets, and a puckered smile on his hard ruddy countenance, as Iapproached. He smiled little on others I believe, but always kindly uponme. This general liking for children and instinct of smiling on them isone source of the delightful illusions which make the remembrance ofearly days so like a dream of Paradise, and give us, at starting, suchfalse notions of our value.
There was a little fair-haired child playing on the ground before thesteps as I whirled by. The old rector had long passed away; the shorts,gaiters, and smile--a phantom; and nature, who had gathered in the past,was providing for the future.
The pretty mill-road, running up through Redman's Dell, dank and darkwith tall romantic trees, was left behind in another moment; and we werenow traversing the homely and antique street of the little town, with itsqueer shops and solid steep-roofed residences. Up Church-street Icontrived a peep at the old gray tower where the chimes hung; and as weturned the corner a glance at the 'Brandon Arms.' How very small and lowthat palatial hostelry of my earlier recollections had grown! There werenew faces at the door. It was only two-and-twenty years ago, and I wasthen but eleven years old. A retrospect of a score of years or so, atthree-and-thirty, is a much vaster affair than a much longer one atfifty.
The whole thing seemed like yesterday; and as I write, I open my eyes andstart and cry, 'can it be twenty, five-and-twenty, aye, by Jove!five-and-thirty, years since then?' How my days have flown! And I thinkwhen another such yesterday shall have arrived, where shall I be?
The first ten years of my life were longer than all the rest puttogether, and I think would continue to be so were my future extended toan ante-Noachian span. It is the first ten that emerge from nothing, andcommencing in a point, it is during them that consciousness, memory--allthe faculties grow, and the experience of sense is so novel, crowded, andastounding. It is this beginning at a point, and expanding to the immensedisk of our present range of sensuous experience, that gives to them soprodigious an illusory perspective, and makes us in childhood, measuringfuturity by them, form so wild and exaggerated an estimate of theduration of human life. But, I beg your pardon.
My journey was from London. When I had reached my lodgings, after mylittle excursion up the Rhine, upon my table there lay, among the rest,one letter--there generally _is_ in an overdue bundle--which I viewedwith suspicion. I could not in the least tell why. It was a broad-facedletter, of bluish complexion, and had made inquisition after me in thecountry--had asked for me at Queen's Folkstone; and, _vised_ by mycousin, had presented itself at the Friars, in Shropshire, and thenceproceeded by Sir Harry's direction (there was the autograph) to NoltonHall; thence again to Ilchester, whence my fiery and decisive old auntsent it straight back to my cousin, with a whisk of her pen which seemedto say, 'How the plague can I tell where the puppy is?--'tis yourbusiness, Sir, not mine, to find him out!' And so my cousin despatched itto my head-quarters in town, where from the table it looked up in myface, with a broad red seal, and a countenance scarred and marred allover with various post-marks, erasures, and transverse directions, thescars and furrows of disappointment and adventure.
It had not a good countenance, somehow. The original lines were notprepossessing. The handwriting I knew as one sometimes knows a face,without being able to remember who the plague it belongs to; but, still,with an unpleasant association about it. I examined it carefully, andlaid it down unopened. I went through half-a-dozen others, and recurredto it, and puzzled over its exterior again, and again postponed what Ifancied would prove a disagreeable discovery; and this happened every nowand again, until I had quite exhausted my budget, and then I did open it,and looked straight to the signature.
'Pooh! Mark Wylder,' I exclaimed, a good deal relieved.
Mark Wylder! Yes, Master Mark could not hurt _me_. There was nothingabout him to excite the least uneasiness; on the contrary, I believe heliked me as well as he was capable of liking anybody, and it was nowseven years since we had met.
I have often since thought upon the odd sensation with which I hesitatedover his unopened letter; and now, remembering how the breaking of thatseal resembled, in my life, the breaking open of a portal through which Ientered a labyrinth, or rather a catacomb, where for many days I gropedand stumbled, looking for light, and was, in a manner, lost, hearingstrange sounds, witnessing imperfectly strange sights, and, at last,arriving at a dreadful chamber--a sad sort of superstition steals overme.
I had then been his working junior in the cause of Wylder _v._ Trusteesof Brandon, minor--Dorcas Brandon, his own cousin. There was acomplicated cousinship among these Brandons, Wylders, andLakes--inextricable intermarriages, which, five years ago, before Irenounced the bar, I had at my fingers' ends, but which had now relapsedinto haze. There must have been some damnable taint in the blood of thecommon ancestor--a spice of the insane and the diabolical. They were anill-conditioned race--that is to say, every now and then there emerged amiscreant, with a pretty evident vein of madness. There was Sir JonathanBrandon, for instance, who ran his own nephew through the lungs in a duelfought in a paroxysm of Cencian jealousy; and afterwards shot hiscoachman dead upon the box through his coach-window, and finally died inVienna, whither he had absconded, of a pike-thrust received from a sentryin a brawl.
The Wylders had not much to boast of, even in contrast with that wickedline. They had produced their madmen and villains, too; and there hadbeen frequent intermarriages--not very often happy. There had been manylawsuits, frequent disinheritings, and even worse doings. The Wylders ofBrandon appear very early in history; and the Wylder arms, with theirlegend, 'resurgam,' stands in bold relief over the great door of BrandonHall. So there were Wylders of Brandon, and Brandons of Brandon. In onegeneration, a Wylder ill-using his wife and hating his children, wouldcut them all off, and send the estate bounding back again to theBrandons. The next generation or two would amuse themselves with alawsuit, until the old Brandon type reappeared in some bachelor brotheror uncle, with a Jezebel on his left hand, and an attorney on his right,and, presto! the estates were back again with the Wylders.
A 'statement of title' is usually a dry affair. But that of the dynastyof Brandon Hall was a truculent romance. Their very 'wills' were spicedwith the devilment of the 'testat
ors,' and abounded in insinuations andeven language which were scandalous.
Here is Mark Wylder's letter:--
'DEAR CHARLES--Of course you have heard of my good luck, and how kindpoor Dickie--from whom I never expected anything--proved at last. It wasa great windfall for a poor devil like me; but, after all, it was onlyright, for it ought never to have been his at all. I went down and tookpossession on the 4th, the tenants very glad, and so they might well be;for, between ourselves, Dickie, poor fellow, was not always pleasant todeal with. He let the roof all out of repair, and committed waste besidein timber he had no right to in life, as I am told; but that don'tsignify much, only the house will cost me a pretty penny to get it intoorder and furnish. The rental is five thousand a-year and some hundreds,and the rents can be got up a bit--so Larkin tells me. Do you knowanything of him? He says he did business for your uncle once. He seems aclever fellow--a bit too clever, perhaps--and was too much master here, Isuspect, in poor Dickie's reign. Tell me all you can make out about him.It is a long time since I saw you, Charles; I'm grown brown, and greatwhiskers. I met poor Dominick--what an ass that chap is--but he did notknow me till I introduced myself, so I must be a good deal changed. Ourship was at Malta when I got the letter. I was sick of the service, andno wonder: a lieutenant--and there likely to stick all my days. Sixmonths, last year, on the African coast, watching slavers--think of that!I had a long yarn from the viscount--advice, and that sort of thing. I donot think he is a year older than I, but takes airs because he's atrustee. But I only laugh at trifles that would have riled me once. So Iwrote him a yarn in return, and drew it uncommon mild. And he has beenuseful to me; and I think matters are pretty well arranged to disappointthe kind intention of good Uncle Wylder--the brute; he hated my father,but that was no reason to persecute me, and I but an infant, almost, whenhe died, d-- him. Well, you know he left Brandon with some charges to myCousin Dorcas. She is a superbly fine girl. Our ship was at Naples whenshe was there two years ago; and I saw a good deal of her. Of course itwas not to be thought of then; but matters are quite different, you know,now, and the viscount, who is a very sensible fellow in the main, saw itat once. You see, the old brute meant to leave her a life estate; but itdoes not amount to that, though it won't benefit me, for he settled thatwhen I die it shall go to his right heirs--that will be to my son, if Iever have one. So Miss Dorcas must pack, and turn out whenever I die,that is, if I slip my cable first. Larkin told me this--and I took anopinion--and found it is so; and the viscount seeing it, agreed the bestthing for her as well as me would be, we should marry. She is awide-awake young lady, and nothing the worse for that: I'm a bit that waymyself. And so very little courtship has sufficed. She is a splendidbeauty, and when you see her you'll say any fellow might be proud of sucha bride; and so I am. And now, dear Charlie, you have it all. It willtake place somewhere about the twenty-fourth of next month; and you mustcome down by the first, if you can. Don't disappoint. I want you for bestman, maybe; and besides, I would like to talk to you about some thingsthey want me to do in the settlements, and you were always a long-headedfellow: so pray don't refuse.
'Dear Charlie, ever most sincerely,
'Your old Friend,
'MARK WYLDER.
'P.S.--I stay at the Brandon Arms in the town, until after the marriage;and then you can have a room at the Hall, and capital shooting when wereturn, which will be in a fortnight after.'
I can't say that Wylder was an old _friend_. But he was certainly one ofthe oldest and most intimate acquaintances I had. We had been for nearlythree years at school together; and when his ship came to England, metfrequently; and twice, when he was on leave, we had been for monthstogether under the same roof; and had for some years kept up a regularcorrespondence, which first grew desultory, and finally, as manhoodsupervened, died out. The plain truth is, I did not _very_ much like him.
Then there was that beautiful apathetic Dorcas Brandon. Where is thelaggard so dull as to experience no pleasing flutter at his heart inanticipation of meeting a perfect beauty in a country house. I wasromantic, like every other youngish fellow who is not a prematurecurmudgeon; and there was something indefinitely pleasant in theconsciousness that, although a betrothed bride, the young lady still wasfancy free: not a bit in love. It was but a marriage of convenience, withmitigations. And so there hovered in my curiosity some little flicker ofegotistic romance, which helped to rouse my spirits, and spur me on toaction.
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