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Charles Tyrrell; or, The Bitter Blood. Volumes I and II

by G. P. R. James · English · Gutenberg #50856 · 698,329 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Charles Tyrrell; or, The Bitter Blood. Volumes I and II

Author: G. P. R. James


        
Release date: January 6, 2016 [eBook #50856]
                Most recently updated: October 22, 2024

Language: English

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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.

"Indeed," said Charles; "I have not heard of any, either in progress
or contemplation."

"It is nevertheless true," replied Mr. Driesen, "and I may say that I
have had some share therein, for I suggested several of the plans to
your father; and I hear that he is not only executing them, but
greatly improving upon them: I am even now on my way to spend a week
or two at the Park, and see what progress has been made."

"Pray, in what may these improvements consist?" demanded Charles
Tyrrell. "I do not understand how any very considerable improvements
could be made, especially in so short a time."

"You will see, you will see," replied his companion. "But you remember
the old manor-house which your father was at one time talking of
pulling down, and laying out the gardens by the bank of the stream in
meadows?"

"I remember it well," replied Charles Tyrrell, as the words of his
companion called up before his mind the picture of a place where he
had often played in infancy. It was situated in a valley, at the
distance of about three quarters of a mile from his father's dwelling,
with a clear and rapid stream rushing through the green turf of the
lawn. The house was an old house, built of flints, with manifold gable
ends turning in every different direction, but with an air of grave
and quiet antiquity about it all which was pleasant to the
imagination. It was the property of Sir Francis Tyrrell; but the house
in which he dwelt was more convenient and suitable to him in every
respect; and though he had once let the old manor-house, he had
contrived to quarrel so violently with his tenant, that no one could
be found to take it when the lease expired.

It had thus remained uninhabited for many years and on it time had
consequently had the destroying effect which time has on all man's
works, when once they are deprived of the constant superintendence of
his care. It had not, indeed, been totally neglected, but still it had
fallen into decay; and when an occasional servant was sent down to
open the windows and give admission to the healing air and sunshine,
the rooms appeared damp and chilly, while the garden, with less
tendance than was required to keep it up, showed a crop of speedy
grass upon its gravel walks, and a sad luxuriance of weeds.

Nevertheless, Lady Tyrrell loved it, and would often wander thither
with her child and the nurse in the days of Charles's infancy, to
enjoy an hour or two of peace at some distance from her troublous
home. He thus did, indeed, remember it well; and at the very name, the
clear rushing stream seemed to flow on before him, the green lawns to
slope out beneath his feet.

"I remember it well," he said: "but what of it? My father is not going
to pull it down, I hope."

"Oh, no," replied his companion, with a cynical sneer, which he could
not restrain even when speaking of his best friend. "Oh, no! your
mother said she wished he would, and so, of course, he has abandoned
that idea. No; on the contrary, he has repaired and beautified it; has
had all the gardens trimmed and put in order, and made it one of the
sweetest spots in the country."

Charles Tyrrell was surprised; and revolving rapidly in his mind what
could be his father's motive, he was inclined to believe, and the
belief was not unpleasant to him, that his father contemplated a
separation from Lady Tyrrell, and intended to give her the old
manor-house for her dwelling. The belief, we have said, was pleasant
to him; for, notwithstanding some pain and some annoyance which might
still exist, he felt confident that tranquillity and peace, which were
the only objects that Lady Tyrrell could now hope for in life, were
only to be obtained by separating her from him who had inflicted upon
her twenty years of misery.

As one is very much accustomed to do in conversing with one in whom we
have little confidence, and with whom we have few sources of feeling
in common, Charles Tyrrell pondered what he had heard in his own mind
for some moments before he asked any explanation from his companion.
When he had done so, however, and began to doubt, from what he knew of
his father's nature, whether his first solution of the mystery was
correct, he once more turned to his informant and demanded, "Pray what
may be my father's purpose in this new arrangement, do you know?"

"Ay, that you will learn hereafter," replied Mr. Driesen, with a
sententious shake of the head, expressive of all the importance of a
profound but not unpleasant secret. "Ay, that you will learn
hereafter; but you must hear that from your father himself."

Charles Tyrrell had a potent aversion to mysteries of every kind, and
an avowed animosity, not a little mingled with contempt, for those who
made them unnecessarily. To Mr. Driesen's answer, then, he offered not
the slightest rejoinder; and, unwilling to gratify him by letting him
see that his curiosity was excited in the least degree, he instantly
turned the conversation to some indifferent subject, talked of the
weather and the high road, the old heavy Blue coach and the horses
that drew it, and of anything, in short, but that in regard to which
he was really inclined to inquire.

In the mean while the coach rolled on, and bore him nearer and nearer
to his home. At one particular point the road commanded a view of the
old manor-house; and Charles, looking out of the window, saw it
gleaming out from among the trees. Though it was lost again almost
instantly, and he could catch none of the particulars, there was an
indefinable look of freshness about it, an air of renovation, which
showed him that it was greatly changed. A little farther on, the coach
rolled past the lodge, and it, too, had undergone improvement; but
that was not all. There was a servant in mourning livery standing at
the gate, and looking out at the pretty country scene before his eyes
with an expression which seemed to show that the whole scene was new
to him. The suit which he wore showed that he was not a servant of Sir
Francis Tyrrell; but Charles saw the small, keen black eyes of Mr.
Driesen wandering over his face, and he took no more notice than if
the servant had been a post at the gate of some house which he had
never seen before. About three quarters of a mile farther the coach
stopped at the lodge of the Park, and Charles Tyrrell and his
companion alighted, leaving the inside passengers to tell strange
stories of the violent temper and uncontrollable passions which were
considered in that neighbourhood as a part of the inheritance of the
Tyrrell family.

On entering his paternal mansion, Charles found his father apparently
in a more placable mood than usual; but it certainly seemed as if the
coming of Mr. Driesen afforded him greater pleasure than the visit of
his son. His mother was not present; and after spending a few minutes
in the library with Sir Francis Tyrrell, Charles rose to seek his
mother.

"You are in vast haste, Charles," said his father; "but I suppose it
is of great importance that you should make Lady Tyrrell aware how
soon young men at college learn to know everything better than their
father. You can seek her in her own room, where you will most likely
find her."

Charles's lip quivered and his nostril expanded. "I seek my mother,
sir," he replied, with a look of indignation that he could not well
control, "to inquire after her health, and to tell her about mine."
And though some other bitter words sprang up to his lips, he had the
good sense to remember that it was the first day of his return home,
and to repress them before they found utterance.

In order to make sure of his own temper, he left the room at once; but
could hear, as he shut the door, Mr. Driesen's low, sarcastic laugh,
and fancy pictured the figure of his father and the skeptic amusing
themselves with the anger which had been excited in his bosom. He
smothered that anger as far as he could, however, and hoped to leave
no trace of it ere he reached his mother's apartment; but, at all
events, his feelings were, of course, turned into gall and bitterness
by this first occurrence in his father's house.

Lady Tyrrell received him with joy; and as she gazed upon the
countenance of her son, with proud feelings at the noble and manly
aspect which his whole person was beginning to assume, she felt that
there was yet one tie between her and life, one bright spot for
affection to rest upon in the great desert of "this side the grave."
Their meeting was full of tenderness and affection, and in the first
overflowing of their feelings Charles forgot Mr. Driesen, and all that
he had told him of changes, improvements, and plans.

At length, however, after having passed about an hour with his mother
in telling her all that he had done at Oxford, hiding, indeed,
everything that was painful, and only displaying that which was
pleasant, his eye lighted upon his father and the sophist crossing the
lawn before his mother's windows, and slowly walking on towards that
part of the wood through which a tortuous pathway led to the grounds
of the old manor-house. His journey in the coach, and all that had
been said, then rose upon remembrance, and he said, "I forgot, my dear
mother, to tell you that fellow Driesen had come down in the coach
with me."

"I knew he was coming, my dear Charles," replied his mother; "I heard
your father mention it to one of the servants, telling him to get Mr.
Driesen's room ready; for it has gone on till the blue room at the top
of the staircase is called Mr. Driesen's room now."

Charles replied nothing, though his mother paused. After a short time,
Lady Tyrrell went on: "I grieve that that man is so much here,
Charles; he is a dangerous, a bad, and an unprincipled man; and I
should grieve still more if your character were anything but what it
is; but I feel certain that, notwithstanding all his art and all his
eloquence, both of which are undoubtedly very great, Mr. Driesen could
no sooner lead you than he could make oil and water mix."

"Indeed, my dear mother, he could not," replied Charles Tyrrell: "I
know him thoroughly, I think, and dislike him not a little; but still
I shall keep away from him as far as possible; for he is continually
throwing out those sneers at everything that is holy and good; at
religion, at virtue, at feeling, which leave unpleasant impressions;
stains, in fact, which are difficult to efface."

"Do, do avoid him as much as possible, Charles," replied his mother.
"I sincerely believe that the only safeguard against such insidious
serpents is that tendency which nature has given us to avoid them from
our first abhorrence of their doctrines and feelings: I believe,
otherwise, very few would escape them."

"Oh, I do not think that," replied Charles Tyrrell; "I never yet heard
of a strong-built house being knocked down by footballs or beaten to
pieces by peashooters; but the one and the other may break the windows
if they go on too long. At all events, I shall keep out of his way,
because I dislike him. But tell me," he added, "what is this he has
been speaking of, and which must be true from the changes I observed
as I passed? The old manor-house, it seems, is repaired and
beautified, and I saw a servant standing at the lodge: what is the
meaning of all this?"

A smile, sad and thoughtful, but still a smile, came over Lady
Tyrrell's countenance. "It is a plot against you, I fear, my dear
Charles," she replied: "but, still, not one that is likely to be very
dangerous, unless you yield yourself to it. You have heard," she
added, seeing that she had excited her son's surprise, "you have often
heard your father speak of Mr. Effingham, who had a beautiful place in
Northumberland. It was at that house, then Mr. Effingham's father's,
that I first met my husband, and he has two or three times talked of
taking you there."

"I forgot all about it," interrupted Charles Tyrrell; "I remember the
name of Effingham, and hearing that he was my father's cousin, I
think, but nothing more."

"A very distant cousin indeed," replied Lady Tyrrell; "a Scotchman
might call it a close connexion; but we, who have no clans, forget
such cousinships except when it serves our purposes; but, as I was
going to tell you, Mr. Effingham died some months ago, and made your
father his executor. You know how fond he is of projects, and no
sooner did he find that Mr. Effingham had left a large estate somewhat
encumbered, together with a widow and a daughter not yet of age, than
he laid out in his own mind a scheme for bringing them to the old
manor-house, for saving sufficient from the rents to clear off the
encumbrances on the Northumberland estates, and for marrying you, I am
sure, to the daughter."

"Indeed!" said Charles. "I rather suppose that he will find himself
mistaken in his calculations; for, thank God, the time is gone by when
parents had it in their power to marry their sons and daughters to
whomsoever they pleased, and took them to the altar as to a cattle
fair, to sell them to whom they liked. I hope, my dear mother, you
have given no countenance to this scheme?"

"None whatever, Charles," replied his mother, "but quite on the
contrary. I was well aware, my dear boy, that the endeavour to force
anybody upon you was the readiest way to make you take a dislike to a
person whom you might otherwise have chosen for yourself; and,
besides, I had various reasons which made me anything but anxious that
such a marriage should take place. In the first place, I should much
wish you to see a good deal more of the world before you marry at all;
nor do I wish you to marry early. It is not, indeed, so much the
desire of keeping you altogether to myself, for my own comfort and
consolation, as for the sake of your own after happiness and the
happiness of the person you may choose. There are some men who
certainly should marry young, and who are all the happier in after
life for so doing; but such is not the case with your family, Charles.
You should all of you plunge into the world; endure even its sorrows
and its reverses; taste the uses of adversity; encounter
disappointment, care, anxiety, even overthrow and defeat, perhaps, to
take off the keen and fiery impetuosity with which you set out in
life, and never think of marrying till you can deliberately propose to
yourselves to seek in domestic life calmness, peace, tranquillity, and
the reciprocation of equal affection, rather than rule, domination,
and contention."

Charles Tyrrell was silent for several moments. He felt that what his
mother said was true in some degree, and yet there was a good deal in
it that mortified him. He loved her too well, however; he appreciated
her motives too well; he was of too frank and candid a nature to
suffer any mortification he felt to appear harshly.

"My dear mother," he said, in a melancholy tone, "I think, if you knew
all that I have felt, you would judge that I have had disappointments
and griefs enough in seeing my mother's unhappiness, and living in a
house of strife, to trample down, even from my infancy, great part of
those strong passions that you fear."

Lady Tyrrell shook her head, and Charles went on. "Well, well, my
dear mother, it does not signify; at all events, I am very glad that
you have given no encouragement to this scheme of my father's; for,
depend upon it, it must and will fail."

"I would have encouraged it on no account whatsoever," replied Lady
Tyrrell; "I should have thought it unjust and wrong in every respect;
but I am sorry to say that it has been the cause of as bitter a
quarrel between myself and your father as ever occurred, and they have
been but too many. He wished me to write and invite Mrs. Effingham
here; but I would not do so. I had never seen her, for Mr. Effingham
was not married when I was last at his father's house; and as your
father had often spoken of Mrs. Effingham as of a weak, poor-minded
person, with whom he did not wish me to keep up any acquaintance, of
course I never made the attempt; but I could not be expected suddenly
to turn round and affect great regard for persons I had never seen,
and towards whom I had shown some neglect. If, immediately after Mr.
Effingham's death, your father had asked me to write, and, as a matter
of kindness, invited Mrs. Effingham here for change of scene, I would
have done it with pleasure; but when it was to press her to come
hither after two or three months had elapsed, and to say everything I
could in my letter to forward a scheme I disapproved, of course I
endeavoured to avoid doing so; and on my showing the least reluctance,
your father took fire, and spoke and acted as you can conceive. He has
scarcely ever opened his lips to me since, except, indeed, the other
day, when he informed me that he himself had written to Mrs.
Effingham, and that she had accepted his invitation, which, of course,
did not raise her very high in my opinion. All the other arrangements
were concluded too, I find; so that she has taken the manor, and is
about to reside there with her daughter till Lucy becomes of age, and
is, consequently, no longer under your father's guardianship.
Everything will be prepared to receive them there in about ten days.
In the mean time, they come here before the end of the week; what day
I do not well know, as I have not been informed. I shall treat them,
of course, with kindness and civility, and trust you will do the same;
for your father has the fullest right to expect that at our hands,
though I cannot write hypocritically pressing invitations to people
that I not wish to see."

The impression produced on the mind of Charles Tyrrell by the account
which his mother gave him, was certainly anything but pleasant in
regard to Mistress and Miss Effingham; and certain it is that,
although he, as well as Lady Tyrrell, made up their minds to perform
every external act of civility, yet there was a predetermination on
the part of both to make that civility so cold and icy as to cut short
every project of an alliance with one whom they were resolved to
dislike.

Their conversation then turned to other subjects, on which it is not
necessary to dwell; and the only thing which occurred further between
the mother and son worthy of remark, was, that Charles Tyrrell, who
had always entertained a great antipathy to the name of Lucy, took
pains to repeat it with particular emphasis whenever the conversation
returned to Mistress and Miss Effingham.

In the evening Lady Tyrrell came down to dinner, which she had not
done for several days before; and willing to make her son's return
home as cheerful as she could, she restrained, as far as possible,
every appearance of bearing in mind the dispute between her husband
and herself, though it had thrown her into a fit of illness. Acting on
the same principle, she suffered Mr. Driesen to take her unresisting
hand, and in reply to several speeches, which he purposely rendered
extravagantly gallant, she uttered some civil words, of course.

Sir Francis, in the course of his walk, seemed to have been tutored to
politeness by Mr. Driesen, and both to his wife and son behaved with
an unusual degree of courteousness, though the very nature and
constitution of his mind prevented him from abstaining altogether from
an occasional sneer or sarcasm. In fact, his very politeness savoured
thereof, and there was nine times out of ten as much bitter as sweet
in everything he said.

On the whole, however, the evening passed over more pleasantly than
usual; and though both Lady Tyrrell and her son were well aware that
no real change for the better had taken place, they were only too
anxious to protract, as long as possible, the temporary suspension of
strife and irritation. It was to be remarked, too, that every time Mr.
Driesen found Sir Francis Tyrrell touching upon dangerous ground, he
skilfully contrived to draw him away, by throwing some new element
into the conversation of such a kind as he knew Sir Francis Tyrrell
would dash at, forgetful of what went before. Thus the whole party
were, in fact, in a much more placable mood, when the rush of a
carriage wheels was heard indistinctly through the open doors, and a
loud peal upon the bell called the servants to the gate.




CHAPTER V.


Sir Francis Tyrrell heard the sounds, but, for a moment, took no
farther notice of them than by raising his eyes, with a meaning look,
to the countenance of Driesen, who was sitting at a little distance,
in an attitude which he was very fond of, when busy in propounding
some of his own speculative opinions, which he knew were likely to
sound harsh in the ears of some of the persons present. It was an
attitude entirely composed of angles, one knee nearly up to his chin,
which was itself long and pointed, one arm thrust behind his back, the
other bent into a sharp angle to support his head, and his whole body
leaning forward, with his under jaw a little protruding. Charles
Tyrrell used to say, when he saw him in this attitude, that he was
knotted into a theorem; but, nevertheless, the attitude, which was
beyond all doubt studied, was not without its effect upon those who
saw it, from its very extravagance.

He also heard the carriage, and stopped in the midst of a disquisition
which he was addressing to Sir Francis, as to whether the religion of
the Greeks and Romans was not more rational than Christianity. Lady
Tyrrell was working and hearing as little as possible, and Charles
Tyrrell sat by his mother drawing a flower for her embroidery, and
from time to time addressing her in a low voice, with a running
comment upon Driesen's discourse, which certainly would not have
gratified that gentleman to hear.

Lady Tyrrell heard the carriage like the rest, and was the first to
speak upon the subject. The feeling that it was impossible to avoid
the daily strife with her husband had engendered carelessness, but not
awe; his tyranny having, like all other tyranny, taught her, to
resist.

"There is the sound of a carriage," she said, fixing her eyes full
upon her husband. "Do you expect any company to-night, Sir Francis."

"To-night or to-morrow," replied Sir Francis, "I expect Mrs. and Miss
Effingham, Lady Tyrrell."

He was about to add something bitter; but as he particularly wished
that Lady Tyrrell should not show towards his new guests any distaste
for their society, he commanded himself sufficiently to stop short.
Nor was it unusual with him, indeed, so to do; for he was one of those
who loved the condition better than the reputation of a domestic
tyrant, and, when any strangers were present, he contrived, as far as
possible, to veil the natural badness of his temper under the garb of
formal courtesy towards his wife and son.

Lady Tyrrell thought that it might have been as well to inform her
that such guests were so speedily expected, and she had every
inclination either to say so, or to quit the room and leave Sir
Francis to receive them himself. She looked at her son, however, and
one or two ideas crossed her mind which prevented her from giving way
to a wrong impulse. She recollected that a painful scene might be the
consequence between Sir Francis and herself. She recollected that it
was the first day of her son's return, and that such a scene might, on
that very day, call up one of those bitter quarrels between father and
son which she had more than once seen take place on her account. She
remembered, too, the purposes with which she had set out in married
life, and the efforts which she had often made to conquer harshness by
gentleness, and overcome bad conduct by good. However ineffectual she
had found it, she resolved once more to try the more generous course,
and in everything to act towards Mrs. Effingham as a lady, with
courtesy if she could not affect kindness.

Lady Tyrrell laid down her work and rose. Sir Francis frowned, not
knowing what was to follow; but she said, "If you think that is Mrs.
Effingham. Sir Francis, I had better go out to receive her,
considering that she is a stranger, and come from a long journey."

The face of Sir Francis Tyrrell changed in a moment, and Charles's
heart smote him for not having felt at once what was the conduct which
his mother ought to pursue. Lady Tyrrell moved towards the door, which
was, as we have said, partly open; but, before she reached it, the
servant threw it wide, announcing Mrs. Effingham.

The next moment that lady entered, and certainly bore nothing in her
appearance which could inspire any feeling of coldness or dislike. She
was tall, though not quite so tall as Lady Tyrrell, and dressed in
widow's mourning; but the close cap and the dull crape could not
conceal that she was very beautiful. Yes, even yet, though past the
season of youth, extremely beautiful. Her hair, which had once been
bright and glossy as woven sunbeams, was now, indeed, carefully
hidden; but there were the fine, straight features; the calm,
expressive eyes; broad, clear forehead; the beautiful mouth and fine
teeth; the oval face, which was not without the expression of sorrow;
but even sorrow as well as time had treated it leniently. She was
entering a strange house, to meet people only one of whom she had ever
seen before, under circumstances very different from those to which
she had been accustomed; but yet there was a grave calmness about her
which seemed to say, "Wrapped up in deeper thoughts and feelings, I
set all trifling inconveniences at defiance."

There was something in her appearance which--why or wherefore she
could scarcely tell--changed Lady Tyrrell's feelings to her in a
moment, not entirely, indeed, but in a very great degree. What was it
that she expected to see in Mrs. Effingham? It was, in fact, anything
but what she did see. It was a gay widow, that darkest and most
anomalous of all natural chimeras. Now, the whole of Mrs. Effingham's
appearance bespoke her the very reverse. There was not the slightest
trickery about her dress. It was the plain, unbecoming dress of the
widow, as unbecoming as it could be rendered. There was no affectation
about her manner. It was sad even under an effort to be cheerful. She
smiled, indeed, but it was the ripple over a dark, deep sea, and Lady
Tyrrell found that she had misconstrued her husband's words, or that
they had pictured Mrs. Effingham very ill. She instantly extended her
hand to her.

Mrs. Effingham took it quietly, saying, "Lady Tyrrell, I suppose;"
but, by this time, Sir Francis Tyrrell had advanced, and he now
proceeded not only to welcome his fair guest, but to introduce her and
Lady Tyrrell to each other with formal courtesy and politeness. The
introduction of his son followed; but almost at the same moment Lady
Tyrrell asked, "Where is Miss Effingham? Has she not accompanied you?"

"She is speaking with her maid," replied Mrs. Effingham, "and will be
here immediately. I have been lately somewhat of an invalid, and
therefore came in from the night air at once."

Charles Tyrrell was young, and hesitated whether he should or should
not go out to the carriage door to meet Miss Effingham. He would have
done so to any other person; but the hint which Lady Tyrrell had given
him of the purposes of his father, and a doubt whether those purposes
might not be suspected or known both by Mrs. Effingham and her
daughter, made him hesitate. That hesitation was increased by seeing
the eyes of Mrs. Effingham fixed steadfastly upon him, with some
degree of surprise, perhaps, but still with a scrutinizing and
examining look.

A hint from his mother, however, made him turn towards the door for
the purpose of doing what was courteous, at all events; and as soon as
he had left the room, Mrs. Effingham said, in some surprise to Sir
Francis, "I thought your son was much younger! He seems two or
three-and-twenty. I fancied him much younger than Lucy."

A well-pleased smile came over the countenance of Lady Tyrrell, and
Sir Francis answered, "That was, I suppose, because, in writing, I
called him _the boy_; but that is only a form of speech, you know. He
is not of age, yet, however, thank Heaven, for I am sure he is not fit
to take care of himself. Few men have sufficient wit to keep
themselves from running their head against a wall till they are thirty
at least. Permit me, madam, to introduce my friend Mr. Driesen;
though, I believe, you already are acquainted with him."

Mrs. Effingham drew herself up, saying coldly, "I have had the honour
of seeing Mr. Driesen before."

That gentleman, however, was not one easily repelled, and throughout
the whole of that night he devoted himself assiduously to paying court
to the fair widow. Whatever were her feelings towards him, whatever
was her opinion of his character, it cannot but be acknowledged that
she, as well as others on whom he chose to employ his art, was
compelled to listen, and could not help finding something agreeable in
his conversation, for he was one of those endowed with the rare power
called eloquence. It is true that he misemployed one of the noblest
gifts of Heaven; but still he possessed it, and by means of it he
could sweeten the poison he was too fond of offering to others.

While the brief conversation which we have noticed was taking place,
however, Charles Tyrrell had left the drawing-room, and proceeded
through the glass doors which separated the inner corridors from the
entrance hall, thinking to himself, with that injustice which
naturally follows prepossession, either for or against, "This young
lady seems to be giving herself vast trouble to ensure the safety of
her caps and bonnets."

As he entered the vestibule, however, he saw the person he sought
speaking eagerly to one who seemed her maid, while a man-servant in a
travelling dress held up a long basket, such as plants are sometimes
carried in, and two or three of the servants stood round and assisted.
He heard, at the same time, a sweet, musical voice, which was not
altogether strange to him, saying, "I hope they are not broke,
Margaret. You know how fond my mother is of them, and I would rather
that anything else had been injured than these flowers."

"There is but one of them hurt, Miss Lucy," said the man-servant; "and
I will get some of the people to show me the way down to the house
to-morrow morning, so as to have them planted at once."

Lucy Effingham examined the plants for a moment, and then telling the
man to do as he proposed, turned round to enter the house. She had not
remarked the approach of Charles Tyrrell, and he had remained a step
behind her, waiting till she had given her orders. In the time that
had elapsed, however, he had made a discovery by the tone of her
voice, which, it must be acknowledged, was not at all unpleasant to
him. When she did turn round, therefore, he was not at all surprised
to see the face and form of the young lady he had seen the night
before at the pretty little inn of Hertford Bridge. Lucy, on her part,
did not recognise him; for on the preceding evening she had seen him
but for a single instant, and had withdrawn and shut the door before
she was conscious of anything except that there was some stranger
going along the passage.

Throughout life we are constantly holding long conversations without
saying a word, for the expression of the countenance is just as much a
language as that which hangs upon our tongue; and though the one and
the other are often equally deceitful, yet we are constantly
endeavouring to correct the falsehood and mistakes of either by the
commentary of the other.

Charles Tyrrell instantly saw that she did not recollect in the least
having seen him on the preceding night; but she saw that he knew who
she was and that he seemed very well pleased to see her; and she
therefore gathered from that circumstance that he was Sir Francis
Tyrrell's son, though there was certainly four years difference
between his real age and that which she had fancied it to be, and at
least six in appearance. Charles Tyrrell bowed, and, though he saw it
was unnecessary, informed her who he was, and then led her to the
drawing-room, where his mother received her kindly.

A strange house, strange people, and a novel situation in every
respect, of course, had their effect upon a young and inexperienced
girl, who, though not precisely of the character which is called
timid, was yet naturally modest and retiring in all her feelings, and
full of high and noble principles, which would, if called upon, have
enabled her to take a strong, a vigorous part in any situation of
difficulty. She was, however, grave and reserved through the greater
part of the evening, and till they retired to rest Charles Tyrrell did
not hear again that cheerful tone which had struck his ear in the inn
at Hertford Bridge.

Lady Tyrrell accompanied her guests to their apartments, and Charles
remained a moment or two before he himself retired to his own room. To
him his father made no observation; but, almost as soon as the ladies
were gone, he turned to Mr. Driesen, saying, "She is very beautiful
indeed."

"Which do you mean," demanded Mr. Driesen; "the mother or the
daughter?"

"Oh, I meant the daughter, of course," replied Sir Francis: "I had
seen the mother often before; but I had no idea that Lucy, whom I
remember a plain child, would have turned out so beautiful."

"She puts me in mind," said Mr. Driesen, in reply, "of a piece of
French porcelain, all rosy, red, and clear white, and ultramarine
blue."

There was a sneer upon his lip as he spoke, and Charles Tyrrell, who
felt the simile to be unjust in everything but the mere terms,
inasmuch as nothing could be more beautifully shaded and harmonized
than the colouring of Lucy Effingham's complexion, turned round and
quitted the drawing-room.

Immediately after he was gone, Sir Francis proceeded to read Mr.
Driesen a lecture upon the impolicy of decrying Lucy Effingham's
beauty, knowing, so well as he did, the project formed for uniting her
to his son. "I can tell you, Driesen," he added, "that young man is
harder to deal with than you know; to use the late King of Spain's
expression, 'he is as obstinate as an Aragonese mule.'"

"My dear sir, he is your son!" replied Mr. Driesen, with a cynical
bow; "but, begging your pardon, I said what I did quite advisedly. She
is a great deal too pretty for him to acknowledge the justice of what
I said. He is even now gone up to his room, not only excessively angry
at me for saying it, but thinking Lucy Effingham ten times as
beautiful as he did the minute before, simply because I compared her
to a French flowerpot. He will, in all probability, dream of her all
night, and will rise to-morrow morning fully prepared to tilt his wit
against mine in her defence."

"Perhaps you are right," replied Sir Francis Tyrrell, "though you
concealed your meaning so well that I did not perceive it: Latet
anguis in herbâ Driesen, eh? I did not perceive the reptile under the
flowerpot, though I might have known, too, that there must be a snake
under any flowers that you choose to cull;" and thus, having repaid
him for the rejoinder to the Aragonese mule, Sir Francis Tyrrell
wished him good-night, and they mutually retired.

Mr. Driesen went up to his room; saw that everything was comfortable
for the night; put his two feet upon the hobs by the side of the fire,
and made some calculation on a piece of paper resting on his knee. He
then took down, from a corner in which he had placed it when he
unpacked his baggage, Hobbes's Leviathan, without which he never
travelled; varied it with an article out of Bayle; added a page or two
of Petronius, and then, upon the comfortable doctrines he had imbibed,
went to bed and slept.

On the following morning, Lady Tyrrell sent her maid to inform Mrs.
Effingham that, having a violent headache, she was compelled, as the
only means of removing it, to remain in bed. In truth, the arrival of
her son and of unexpected guests had excited her more than usual, and
her health was so shattered by anxiety, grief, and disappointment,
that a very little agitation had a serious effect upon her.

The morning was thus passed by Mrs. Effingham and her daughter with
the three gentlemen only; and on Sir Francis proposing to walk through
the grounds to visit the old manor-house, Mrs. Effingham declined, but
said her daughter would go, while she herself would visit Lady Tyrrell
in her own room.

Sir Francis took the hint that had been given by Mr. Driesen the night
before, and having fancied that his son was somewhat struck by the
beauty of Lucy Effingham, and was inclined to court her society, he
determined to throw a few obstacles in the way, and declared that he
would have the young lady's company all to himself, so that Charles
and Mr. Driesen might amuse themselves the best way they could.

While he and Lucy set off through the woods to the manor-house, Mrs.
Effingham having sent to inquire whether Lady Tyrrell could receive
her without increasing her headache, proceeded to her room, and we
shall beg leave to accompany her thither, as the conversation between
the two was not without importance; and it is the only one which,
perhaps, it may be necessary to record, as a specimen of many which
afterward took place between those ladies.

Mrs. Effingham proceeded calmly to Lady Tyrrell's bedside, and sat
down in a chair which was placed for her by the maid, who then
retired. She asked kindly after Lady Tyrrell's health, and told her
that Sir Francis and her daughter had gone to the manor-house. There
was something in her manner which, without the slightest affectation
of so doing, displayed towards Lady Tyrrell a feeling of tenderness
and interest which touched that lady's heart, and won very much upon
her regard, though it was impossible to say in what consisted the
charm to which she was so willing to yield.

After she had spoken of several other things, and found that Lady
Tyrrell appreciated and understood her character, at all events, in
some degree, she added, "I have taken this opportunity of speaking to
you, my dear Lady Tyrrell, because I do not know when I may have
another opportunity of conversing with you alone for any length of
time; and yet, as what I have to say is a matter of some interest, I
almost fear that it may make you worse if I go on, though it ought to
be said at once, as we are placed in a relative position towards each
other which makes it necessary that we should understand each other
from the beginning."

"Go on, my dear madam, go on," replied Lady Tyrrell; "there is nothing
I love so much as frankness and sincerity; and I am so much accustomed
to bear ill health and to undergo much more painful excitements, while
suffering sickness, than any your conversation can produce, that I
have no fear of your making my headache worse, and even trust that
your conversation may have another effect."

Mrs. Effingham paused for a moment and looked upon the ground. "You
have so plainly alluded, my dear madam," she said at length, "to
matters which I dare scarcely have ventured to touch upon, that I may
now say, I trust my being here in your neighbourhood may perhaps
afford you some comfort and consolation. I do not mean that the vain
hope of doing so induced me to accept your husband's invitation to
this house, even although that invitation was not ratified by your
own."

Lady Tyrrell turned a little red as Mrs. Effingham touched at once so
distinctly on her not having written herself, especially as she felt
that it would be impossible to meet the apparent candour with which
that lady treated her, by explaining the motives which had induced her
so to act. Mrs. Effingham went on, however, without apparently
noticing the embarrassment of her hostess.

"I had many important reasons," she said, "for accepting that
invitation and coming hither; but, believe me, Lady Tyrrell, that the
thought of being a companion and consolation to you, strange as it may
seem, had no slight share in my determination. In the first place, let
me inform you, that my late husband, whom I revered and respected, as
perhaps you know"--she spoke with perfect calmness--"requested me,
upon his deathbed, when the eyes of the only one I ever loved were
closing for ever, to accept the invitation, which he doubted not I
should receive, to spend some time in this place. It was as a command
to me, Lady Tyrrell, which I could by no means disobey. In the next
place, I was very anxious to quit that part of the country for a time
on two accounts, the strongest of which I will explain to you
afterward; the other was personal, I believe I might say, selfish.
There are some people who linger fondly in scenes where they have
spent happy hours with persons who are lost to them: it seems to
recall the happiness without the loss; to me it daily recalls the loss
without the happiness; and though I struggled hard against what I felt
to be a weakness, yet both the weakness and the struggle undermined my
health, which had already suffered. Then, again, my late husband had
the highest confidence in the honour and integrity of Sir Francis
Tyrrell."

"His honour and integrity," said Lady Tyrrell, "and even his
generosity, where neither passions nor prejudices are concerned, Mrs.
Effingham, may be fully relied on. God forbid that I should not give
my husband his full due."

"I am sure you would, my dear Lady Tyrrell," replied her companion.
"My husband knew him well; his faults, his failings, and his good
qualities; and he told me, that although not the wealth of a Cr[oe]sus
or the power of an emperor would have made him give his sister or his
daughter to be the wife of Sir Francis Tyrrell, yet he could put his
wife and daughter confidently under his charge and direction, and with
the more confidence, inasmuch as Sir Francis held a considerable
mortgage upon his estate, which he believed would only act as a bond
to make him treat them more nobly and guide them more carefully."

The words of Mrs. Effingham put the character of Sir Francis Tyrrell
to his wife in somewhat of a new light, or, at all events, in a light
which had not shone upon it for many years, and her eyes filled with
tears, called up by many mingled emotions.

"Doubtless, you remember my husband well," continued Mrs. Effingham,
"for he knew and esteemed you highly, I can assure you, though he had
not seen you since your marriage; but there was a conviction upon his
mind that yours was the last character on earth to cope with such a
temper as that of Sir Francis; who required, he thought, one almost as
vehement, quite as determined, and somewhat more calm than his own.
Such he knew that you were not, and there was a conviction upon his
mind that--"

"That I was unhappy," said Lady Tyrrell, calmly, as she saw Mrs.
Effingham hesitate.

"At all events, that you might require and appreciate some
consolation," said Mrs. Effingham. "Among the last things that he said
to me were, 'I wish you could be near her; you might mutually support
and console each other after I am gone;' and therefore it was that I
first proposed to your husband to seek for me a house in this
neighbourhood; accepted gladly what he proposed, when he offered to
repair and let to me, what I hear is a very beautiful place, in the
immediate vicinity, and did not refuse when he invited me to spend a
week or ten days here, although Lady Tyrrell did not confirm the
invitation."

"Lady Tyrrell was, perhaps, very wrong not to do so," said the
invalid; "but many circumstances prevented me from doing what, I
sincerely assure you, I regret not to have done. Those circumstances
would be tedious to explain, and even painful; for to do so would
compel me to enter into the private particulars of the state of this
house, which perhaps you may learn, ere long, by your own observation,
but upon which I cannot myself dwell."

"Say not a word, my dear Lady Tyrrell," replied Mrs. Effingham. "It is
very possible that even Sir Francis Tyrrell himself, when he made the
invitation, was not well aware whether he should regret it or not; for
when I last saw him, on his visit to Northumberland several years ago,
I do not know that we were the best friends in the world. It was with
great difficulty that my husband could make me believe, that a man who
professed to have little or no religion, except of a very vague and
unsatisfactory nature, could be an upright, honest, and honourable
man. I was wrong, I know; and he, on his part, was wrong too. Because
I put forth, perhaps with a good deal of the vanity of youth--I was
young then--somewhat more than necessary of my religious opinions in
the presence of one I knew to be a skeptic and believed to be an
infidel, he thought me a foolish fanatic, as well as a very
disagreeable person. Those religious feelings, Lady Tyrrell, however,
have since been more withdrawn into my own heart. I feel them more
deeply than ever: I thence derive the only consolation that I know.
They make me cheerful under sadness, and give me happiness because
they render hope immortal; but I have since learned, that to display
those feelings too frequently or obtrusively is a vanity which cannot
be pleasing to God, and must naturally be offensive to man."

Lady Tyrrell held out her hand to her. "I will acknowledge, my dear
Mrs. Effingham," she said, "that I must have sadly misconstrued some
of my husband's expressions in regard to you, and I thank you for all
your candour and your confidence. Depend upon it, I will return it
with pleasure and with comfort to myself."

"I thought so from what I saw of you last night," said Mrs. Effingham;
"but I had determined, nevertheless, whatever might be your character,
to explain to you frankly and straightforwardly why I came without
your invitation. I must now, however, come to another part of the
subject, more difficult, and, perhaps, more disagreeable to treat of."

"Indeed!" said Lady Tyrrell, with some alarm. "Pray what may that be?"

"It is in regard to your son and my daughter," said Mrs. Effingham.

Lady Tyrrell smiled; but she was as much wrong in her present
conclusions as she had been in her former ones.

"I have been entirely mistaken," continued Mis. Effingham, "in regard
to your son's age; I had thought, I do not well know why, that he was
not more than fifteen or sixteen, and I cannot let Lucy be here even
for the short time that we are to stay, nor be so intimate in the
house after we have removed to the manor, as I hope we shall be,
without being straightforward and candid on that subject also. I
mentioned that there were two motives which induced me to wish to
leave Northumberland."

"Good God!" exclaimed Lady Tyrrell, raising herself in bed. "Your
daughter is in love with somebody there." And she felt strangely at
that moment what a perverse thing is human nature. Not two days
before, all her feelings would have been different on hearing that
Lucy Effingham was either engaged to, or in love with, somebody in
Northumberland; but now, although she would not admit even to herself
that she absolutely wished her to marry Charles Tyrrell, yet she was
disappointed to think that such a thing was out of the question.

Mrs. Effingham, however, after a moment's pause, replied, "Not
exactly, my dear Lady Tyrrell; I do not mean to say that Lucy is
absolutely in love with anybody; but there is a young gentleman in
that neighbourhood who is certainly desperately in love with her. What
are Lucy's feelings on the subject I have never inquired; because both
her father and myself were resolved, from the first, to set our face
against such a marriage; and, having determined to reject it without
any appeal to her, judged it would be unkind and unjust to enter upon
the subject with her at all, as nothing that she could have said, or
any one else could have said, could by any chance have shaken our
resolution."

"Some person, I suppose," said Lady Tyrrell, "inferior to herself in
circumstances and station?"

"Not exactly," replied Mrs. Effingham; "at least, not so inferior as
to have proved an objection in her father's eyes or mine, had it not
been for other circumstances. His father, Colonel Hargrave, is a man
of small fortune, and, I believe, not very high connexions; but he is
a gentleman, and a good though a weak man. His eldest son, who is
married, is a clergyman; but his second son, who is in the navy, is in
every respect objectionable; rash, wild, licentious, unprincipled. He
was early sent to sea, from his ungovernableness at home; but the
experiment only made bad worse. However, he was absent from our part
of the country, and we did not hear of many of his proceedings till
his return. Before we were aware of all the facts, he had seen Lucy
frequently, both at his mother's house, at ours, and at other houses
in the neighbourhood. But his reputation speedily followed him into
Northumberland. We found that he had been in no place without leaving
a bad character behind him; and that not alone of a wild and heedless
young man of strong passions, but of a heartless, unfeeling debauchee;
who was, besides, without any principle in affairs where money was
concerned. He could not be exactly called a swindler, but approached
as near that character as possible without bringing himself under the
arm of the law, and he had very nearly ruined his father to free him
from the consequences of his own extravagances and misconduct."

"But surely," said Lady Tyrrell, "your daughter, who seems so gentle
and amiable, could never love a man of such a character."

"I do not know, Lady Tyrrell," said Mrs. Effingham, shaking her head;
"women frequently love the people most opposite to themselves, not
alone in person and tastes, but often, too often, in moral qualities.
He is very handsome, too, and extremely prepossessing in his manners.
To listen to his conversation, you would think him an angel of light,
though I have heard that now and then, in all societies, the evil
spirit breaks forth and shows himself. He took care, however, of
course, to conceal his real character as far as possible from Lucy;
but I find that even then he could not govern his evil propensities so
far as not to behave in such a manner in one of the neighbouring
houses as to get himself heartily cudgelled by a servant, whose sister
he attempted to seduce. One could not offend Lucy's ears by entering
into all the particulars of such affairs, and, consequently, the means
Mr. Effingham took were to shut the doors of our house against him. He
then demanded an explanation, which you can conceive was complete and
final; but he behaved in so violent and outrageous a manner, that Mr.
Effingham, who was even then very ill, was obliged to ring and order
the servants to show him to the door.

"Of this latter part Lucy was aware; but her father's illness rapidly
increased, and his death soon followed, so that she had sufficient
matter of a painful kind to occupy all her thoughts. The young man was
absent from the neighbourhood at the time, afraid, in fact, of being
arrested for a debt. His father has since paid it, and he returned
about a month ago. He has since been seen hovering round the house,
and one time even left a card and inquired for the family. Lucy has
never mentioned his name to me since; but I was at all events, very
glad to quit that part of the country. When, however, my dear Lady
Tyrrell, I came here and found your son so much older than I had
thought, I felt instantly that it would not be just to you to remain
without letting you know exactly how we are circumstanced. Even making
deduction for a mother's fondness, it cannot be denied that Lucy is
very beautiful, and it seems to me that she is very engaging also. It
by no means follows, indeed, that any evil consequences should result;
but I have but done what is right in laying the facts exactly before
you."

Lady Tyrrell thanked her a thousand times: she saw that Mrs. Effingham
had acted a generous and honourable part towards her; that she was one
of those in whom she might repose the fullest confidence, and that all
her preconceived opinions regarding her were wrong. She was most happy
now that Mrs. Effingham had come to their neighbourhood. She felt that
there was a person near of whom she could make a friend; who could
give her solace, consolation, and advice; but yet, in the present
instance, she could not immediately respond to the frank and candid
statement of her guest in the way she would have wished; for, to say
the truth, she was in doubt as to what her own conduct ought to be,
and she plunged into a train of thought without making any reply; a
habit which very naturally grows upon persons accustomed to seclusion,
and frequently cast back upon their own reflections for guidance and
support.

Her conviction, from the conversation which had taken place, was, that
Mrs. Effingham felt perfectly sure that Lucy's heart had been engaged
by this young man of whom she had spoken, and there was something in
her maternal pride and love for her son--the only object of her pride
and affection for many years--which made her unwilling that her
Charles should be the second in any one's affection, even supposing
that Lucy's first love for this young man could be utterly
obliterated. From what she knew of her son also, from the character
and appearance of Lucy Effingham, and from the near proximity in which
they were placed, she believed that that young lady was the person, of
all others she had ever seen, to whom Charles was most likely to
become attached; and after pondering for several minutes in silence,
all that she could say to Mrs. Effingham was, that, if it were
possible, she should much like to give her son intimation of the fact
which she had just learned.

Mrs. Effingham in turn thought for a minute or two, and then replied,
"Do so, Lady Tyrrell; tell him all that I have told you, but pray tell
him nothing more; for I have spoken exactly as I mean, and given you a
true picture of my own impressions on the subject."

Lady Tyrrell did tell him that very afternoon, not long after Mrs.
Effingham had left her; but she certainly went beyond what Mrs.
Effingham had intended; for, impressed with the full conviction that
Lucy was attached to Arthur Hargrave, she conveyed that impression to
her son as a matter of certainty.

The effect of this communication upon Charles Tyrrell was not such as
his mother expected, or the reader may expect to find. It seemed to
take a load from him; to relieve his mind from a burden, and his
manners from a restraint. So long as he had imagined that Lucy was
brought there for him to fall in love with, he had felt fettered in
every word and in every action, lest he should convey to herself a
false impression of his views and motives. But the moment he was told
that she was attached to another, all such impressions were done away.
He resumed his usual character and conduct, and all he felt towards
Lucy was admiration for her beauty, fondness for her society, and a
sort of tender compassion for the disappointment of one so young and
so deserving. But he thought to himself as he had often thought
before, "I could never be content with a heart, the first fresh
feelings of which have been given to another."




CHAPTER VI.


We must allow two or three days for the imagination of the reader to
fancy all that took place in the development of the various characters
of those assembled at Harbury Park to the eyes of each other. In those
two or three days considerable progress had been made in showing to
Mrs. Effingham and Lucy the state of existence of Sir Francis Tyrrell,
his wife, and his son. The father, though he still put some restraint
upon himself, had lost the first effect of the presence of strangers,
and given full way, both towards Lady Tyrrell and Charles, to the
bitter and sarcastic spirit which showed itself at all times, even
when the more violent excesses of his passionate nature were under
control. The tears were too much accustomed to rush into Lady
Tyrrell's eyes not to find their way there easily, and she had two or
three times quitted the room to prevent them from overflowing in the
presence of her guests.

Charles, on every account, had restrained himself as far as possible,
and had done so always when he himself was assailed; but when the
attack was levelled at his mother, even the presence of others could,
not prevent his eyes from flashing and his lip from quivering, in a
manner that startled and alarmed both Lucy and Mrs. Effingham.

When he was alone with them he was all that was kind and gentle,
without making any effort whatsoever to conceal the quick and hasty
disposition which was certainly his. Lucy then seemed well pleased in
his society; for she was gay and cheerful, though with an occasional
degree of gravity, which never suffered him to forget what Lady
Tyrrell had told him. When they were all in the society of his father,
however, the very apprehension which she entertained of some quarrel,
seemed to make her regard him with greater interest. Her eyes were
frequently upon him, and she appeared in those moments, when he was
excited by, and struggling with, the strong passions of his nature, to
look upon him with a degree of awe.

Thus the matter had proceeded till the party had been assembled at
Harbury Park for four days. On the evening of that day it was
determined, that on the following morning, if fine, as Sir Francis was
to be engaged with his Court Baron, Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Effingham,
neither of whom were competent to much exertion, should go down to the
manor-house and make various arrangements there; while Lucy,
accompanied by Charles, and under the safe conduct of Mr. Driesen,
should proceed on horseback to the seaside (the nearest point of which
lay at about four miles from the house), and take a canter along the
sands.

The morning, when it arrived, was as beautiful as it could be, and
everything was prepared to set out, when it was found that one of the
horses wanted shoeing, and the delay of nearly an hour took place. Mr.
Driesen consoled himself with some of his favourite studies, while
Charles and Lucy stood in the conservatory, whiling away the time by
talking over what the Latin poet, with a sort of prophetical
inspiration of an Irish bull, has happily expressed by words which may
be rendered "everything in the universe and a little besides." At
length the impediment was obviated, the horses brought round, and the
party set out for the seaside.

Charles was an excellent horseman; and Mr. Driesen, though in figure
resembling the prongs of a carving fork, was by no means otherwise
than a good rider. Indeed, he excelled in most exercises. He was a
skilful fisherman, and a good shot; and whatever he did, was done with
such quiet ease, that it was evidently the result of long and early
practice. Lucy also rode uncommonly well, and the whole party felt the
exhilaration of beautiful weather, rapid motion, and command over the
noblest beast in the creation.

The seashore was soon reached, and the sands were still uncovered,
although a slight mistake about the time of tide, and the delay which
had occurred ere they set out, had kept them so late that the sea was
beginning to flow in. The coast, however, was by no means a dangerous
one, so that there was no chance whatsoever of such an awful scene
occurring as is depicted in the most beautiful and interesting of
modern novels, called "Reginald Dalton." The sands were hard and firm,
and you might gallop over them in safety, even with the water dancing
round your horse's feet. There were high cliffy banks above the shore,
it is true, in general crowned with dark masses of wood, which there
approached fearlessly even to the very edge of the sea. But there were
constant gaps in this cliffy barrier leading up into sweet inland
valleys beyond, and through most of these gaps there wound away a path
not fitted indeed for a carriage, but perfectly practicable for
persons on horseback or on foot. A few lonely houses belonging to
fishermen, in general covered for a roof with an inverted boat, were
the only habitations for some way along the coast, except where a
solitary martello tower marked the end of a headland at about two
miles distance.

By the time they reached the seashore, a light summer haze had come
over the blue sky. It could by no means be called a mist, for the
earth and air around were all pure and clear. Nor did it properly
deserve the name of a cloud, for the sun shone through it, though
softened. But it was like a thin white veil drawn over the blue, and
where a thin line or two of cloud did really appear and cross the disk
of the sun, they became like streaks of gold, as we often see at the
rising and setting of the great orb of day.

The beautiful weather was rendered all the more enjoyable by the
absence of fiercer light and greater heat, for there was not a single
breath of wind upon the waters, which, instead of dashing upon the
shore with a roar and a bound, rippled calmly up with a low, peaceful
rustle, as if afraid of breaking the silence.

Lucy Effingham declared that to her ear the waves seemed to say
"Hush;" and Mr. Driesen begun a dissertation upon the real and
fanciful affinities of sounds and objects in the external world to the
feelings, and thoughts, and actions, and fortunes of man. It was a
fine and a high theme; and though, perhaps, upon that subject he
thought not right or wisely, he spoke eloquently, nay, poetically.

Charles Tyrrell was almost angry that he displayed himself to so much
advantage in the eyes of Lucy Effingham; but he knew not what was
going on in Lucy's bosom, and therefore did not comprehend, that
although the flow of words, the choice, the beautiful, and the
appropriate expressions which Mr. Driesen might use, could not but
have some effect; yet Lucy felt, as it were by instinct, that there
was an art in the whole; that it was a composition which Mr. Driesen
spoke, not an outpouring of the simple heart in the grand presence of
Nature. She would rather a thousand times have heard a few words less
polished, less refined, from the lips of Charles Tyrrell; but he
remained very nearly silent, more struck with the observations of
their companion than she was; for men in general do not perceive the
want of nature and simplicity in such things so easily as women do,
and appreciate metaphysical refinements more highly.

They rode on along the sands, however, for a considerable way,
enjoying themselves much; and if Charles Tyrrell was at all angry that
a man, whose real character and views he understood so completely as
he did those of Mr. Driesen, should set himself in a different light
towards Lucy Effingham to that which he really merited, the worthy
gentleman soon contrived to cure the evil himself. The conversation
gradually turned to the subject of human motives in general. It was
one of which Mr. Driesen was remarkably fond, and he could by no means
resist his inclination to plunge at once into his usual course of
reasoning on the subject. He was something more than even a disciple
of La Rochefoucault. With him selfishness was everything. It was the
great predominant spirit which moved all nature. There was nothing he
did not refer to it, nothing that he did not derive from it.

Lucy was now silent in turn. She neither liked the doctrine nor
believed it. She saw there must be sophistry, though she could not see
where. She believed that there was either a confusion or a laxity of
terms, which enabled Mr. Driesen to confound one thing with another;
and as she could not detect where it existed, she wisely held her
tongue.

Charles Tyrrell, who had heard the same doctrines before, did not
choose to enter into a dispute upon the subject, but contented himself
with throwing in a word or two every now and then to counteract Mr.
Driesen's reasonings by reducing them to an absurdity. He broke in
upon them too, from time to time, to call Lucy's attention to some
beautiful spot or some curious object, and for almost all of them he
had some little anecdote to tell, some little legend to narrate, or
some observation to make, which showed that he had not frequented the
scenes of his youth with eyes or ears shut, or heart or mind idle.

When they had passed the martello tower some way, and as the day was
beginning to decline, he pointed out a road which led between two of
the cliffs to the left, saying, "Now, which way shall we go? That
takes us back to the Park, and is about two miles shorter than the way
we came; but I do not know that it is so pleasant."

"Oh, the longest way, by all means, Mr. Tyrrell," replied Lucy
Effingham, looking up in his face with a bright smile. "Such a
pleasant ride as this can hardly be too long."

Often have we harangued upon the important results which spring from
the smallest trifles. Those few words decided the fate of Charles
Tyrrell and Lucy Effingham for ever. It was not that the bright smile
with which they were accompanied lighted up in Charles Tyrrell's bosom
any feelings which were not there before; for he fully believed
afterward, as he had previously thought, that the first affections of
her heart were given to another; but it was, that the very moment in
which they stood there to decide on the one road or the other, was the
very critical moment of their fate; that every after-moment through
all time and eternity was affected by it; and that the consequences of
Lucy's decision, by the concatenation of a thousand fine, small
incidents, brought events to pass that no one then did calculate or
ever could have calculated.

This is, in fact, the place where our story should have begun; but,
notwithstanding the maxim of the poet of old Rome, we cannot help
thinking that it is better to begin a little too soon than a little
too late, in histories as in other things.

Charles Tyrrell instantly turned his horse's head on the road for
which Lucy had decided; but they rode back more slowly than they had
come; for it seemed as if the two younger of the party, at all events,
wished to linger on as long as possible by the side of that calm grand
sea. More than once they pulled in the rein and stood to gaze, though
the ocean presented little for their contemplation beyond the sublime
of its own immensity; except, indeed, where a distant sail skimmed
along the waters, or a white bird dipped its long pinions in the dark
bosom of the deep.

They had returned very nearly to the spot where they had first reached
the seashore, when they came to a little cottage at about the distance
of a mile from the martello tower, and about twenty yards apart from
another, which stood close to the cliff. There was nobody visible at
the cottage-door, and a boat, which had lain high and dry as they had
passed before, was now beginning to float with the tide, which was
rolling rapidly in. The sea on that part of the coast, as I have often
witnessed, goes out as gently and softly as a fine summer's day; but,
even in the calmest weather, rushes in with great rapidity and force.
There was no other boat near, though, from the appearance of the
ground, and a spar or two which lay upon the beach, there appeared to
have been a larger one somewhat higher up not long before, and it was
natural to conclude that the fishermen, on that fine day, had put out
to sea.

Charles and Lucy drew up their horses not far from the boat to gaze
once more over the sea; but at that moment Charles Tyrrell saw the
little bark begin to slip down the sand as the water flowed round it,
and it instantly struck him that by some accident it had become
detached from whatever it had been moored to.

"They'll lose their boat," he exclaimed, "if they do not mind what
they are about;" and he turned his horse's head in order to tell the
people at the cottage; but Mr. Driesen, who had remarked the same fact
before him, and had turned for the same purpose, exclaimed, "I'll go,
I'll go. You and Miss Effingham are picturesque and contemplative; an
old fellow like I am can afford to have his reveries broken into."

Thus saying, he rode up to the cottage first, but found nobody. He
then rode on leisurely to the second, and called in at the door: "Good
woman, are there no men about? You'll lose your boat to a certainty,
for it's adrift there--afloat."

A loud, shrill cry was the woman's only answer; and rushing out to the
spot where Charles and Lucy stood, with an infant at her breast, she
exclaimed, in a voice of agony, "Oh, the child, the child!" and at the
same moment, though the boat had drifted out some way, the whole party
could see a little pair of hands stretched over the gunwale of the
boat, and part of the head and face of a child of about three or four
years old.

The woman uttered another loud scream when she saw it; but Charles
Tyrrell was off his horse in a moment, and casting down his coat and
waistcoat on the sand, he plunged at once into the sea.

The ground, for a space of about ten yards from the spot where the
line of the rising water was rippling over the sand, was very nearly
level, but the boat was considerably beyond that by this time; and
after rushing across that first space, with the sea scarcely above his
knees, Charles Tyrrell found the ground rapidly shelved down beneath
him, while some low black rocks, slippery with seaweed, impeded his
way and made him fall twice. The second time he cut his knee so
severely as to cause him great pain; but, nevertheless, exerting all
his strength as he saw the boat getting farther and farther out, he
dashed on till he was clear of the rocks and out of his depth; and
then, swimming as rapidly as he could, approached the boat and
endeavoured to catch hold of the rope by which it had been attached.

In the mean time, two, at least, of those who stood upon the seashore
watched with terrible anxiety for his success, and saw with pain and
apprehension that twice, as he attempted to catch hold of the rope, a
slight turn of the boat drew it out of his reach.

The child, by this time aware of its danger, was leaning over the side
towards the person who sought to deliver it, and they saw Charles
Tyrrell, unable to catch the rope, and apparently fatigued by swimming
in his clothes, place his hands on the gunwale of the boat as if to
get in and guide it back to the shore. The boat, however, which was
small and light, heeled under his weight and nearly capsized; the
child, thrown off its balance, pitched out, and for a moment both
Charles and the boy were lost to the sight. The next instant, however,
Charles appeared again, holding the child firmly with his left hand
and striking towards the shore with his right; and Lucy Effingham and
the mother saw him reach the rocks, sit down for a moment as if to
recover strength, and appear to sooth the terrors of the child,
placing it so as to be able to carry it more conveniently to land. He
waved with his hand at the same moment to show that all was safe, and
then slowly and carefully rose and made the best of his way back to
the sands with the child.

Three various impulses seized upon the fisherman's wife as soon as she
found that her boy was safe. The first was to clasp him to her breast
with all the vehemence of maternal affection; the next was to scold
him angrily for getting into the boat at all; the next was to pour
forth a torrent of grateful thanks to Charles Tyrrell for saving the
child. The principal force of her gratitude seemed to be excited by
the fact that such a gentleman as he seemed should have gone into the
sea and spoiled his clothes for the purpose of saving her Johnny.

Mr. Driesen grinned a cynical smile at the turns taken by the woman's
emotion; but the eyes of Lucy Effingham, she could not tell why,
filled with tears, ay, and overflowed. She felt a little ashamed of
being so much moved, and, having no other refuge but a jest, she laid
her hand upon Charles's arm, saying, "Pray come home, Mr. Tyrrell, and
change your clothes as fast as possible! You have been quite selfish
enough, according to Mr. Driesen's opinion, already." And her eye
lighted up with a gay smile, though not enough to dry up the tears
through which it shone.

Charles Tyrrell thought her very lovely indeed at that moment; but
though he was not only wet, but suffering great pain from a bleeding
gash on his knee, he did not follow her counsel of returning home till
he had asked several questions of the fisherman's wife. He found that
her husband was partner in the fishing boats with the master of the
next cottage and his son, and that they had gone away early that
morning to try their fortune, with other boats, at some distance. They
had at first proposed to go in the boat which had now drifted out, and
had pushed her down nearly into the water, when some circumstance,
which the wife did not know, had caused them to change their mind and
take the larger boat. By some carelessness they had forgotten to moor
the boat they left to anything; and while the little boy who was saved
played about at the door, as she thought, the poor woman had remained
within, nursing the child at her breast, and tending an elder child
than either, who was sick in the cottage.

By the time that he had learned these particulars, Charles Tyrrell had
resumed the clothes he had cast off and was ready again to mount his
horse.

"I am sorry, my good woman," he said, seeing her eyes turn with a look
of hopeless and bewildered anxiety towards the little bark, "that
there is no other boat near, to enable me to bring back the one that
is drifting out; but it is too far, I am afraid, for me to attempt to
swim to it. There are other boats, however, at those cottages about
half a mile on, and we saw men near the doors as we passed about an
hour ago. As I ride by now I will tell them to put out after your
boat, and I dare say they will do it willingly."

"Oh, that they will, sir," answered the woman. "My husband's brother
lives in the second cottage, and he is at home, I know."

Charles then mounted his horse, though with difficulty; and riding on
with Lucy and Mr. Driesen along the seashore, they came to the
cottage, where they found plenty of people willing to put out
immediately after the boat that had gone adrift. They then returned
home as fast as they could.

Were we writing a romance instead of a true history, this might be a
favourable opportunity for plunging our hero into a severe fit of
illness, and casting him almost entirely upon the society of Lucy
Effingham for resource and consolation. Such, however, we are forced
to admit, was not the case. Charles Tyrrell changed his clothes
indeed; but, farther than that, he had no occasion to think of his
having been in the water any more. He caught not the slightest cold;
the cut on his knee got well as rapidly as possible, and two days
after he drove down with Lucy, Lady Tyrrell, and Mrs. Effingham, as
far as the carriage could proceed on its way towards the fisherman's
cottage. They then walked the rest of the way, and found both the
boats drawn up upon the shore.

Three men were hanging about on the sands, two mending some nets and
cordage, and another, a stout, weather-beaten, thick-set seaman, of
the middle age, standing with a telescope at his eye, gossiping in his
own mind with a ship that appeared hull-down in the offing. As he was
the nearest to them, and as, situated in that little remote nook,
Charles Tyrrell judged that the inhabitants of the two cottages must
be looked upon as almost one family, the young gentleman applied
himself at once to the personage with the telescope.

To the first words, however, the man replied nothing but "Ay, ay,
sir," keeping the glass still to his eye; but when Charles Tyrrell
proceeded to say, "We want to hear, my good sir, how the little fellow
gets on whom we saw nearly carried out to sea in the boat the other
day. Was he any the worse for his wetting?" the man instantly dropped
the glass by his side, as if he had been grounding arms, and
exclaiming, "I'm sure you're the gentleman that saved poor Johnny!--me
if I am not glad to see you!" confirming it with an oath which it is
unnecessary to repeat.

"Why, sir," he continued, "the boy's as well as can be, and a good boy
he is too; and though my wife has scolded me ever since for not
mooring the boat, I thank you, and am obliged to you, with all my
heart; and there's John Hailes's hand." And he held out to Charles
Tyrrell a broad, brown, horny hand, as large as the crown of his hat.

Charles took the honour as it was meant, feeling that the man intended
to imply, and perhaps with justice, that the hand of John Hailes was
that of an honest and an upright man, not given to everybody without
consideration. He therefore took it, as we have said, and shook it
frankly, saying, "I am very glad to hear that the little fellow has
received no hurt; and how is the other young one who was ill?"

"Why, he's better, sir, he's better," replied the man; "I think the
fright did him good, for he heard all about his little brother that
he's so fond of, and he couldn't budge out to help him himself, poor
fellow. Won't the ladies come in? I'm sure my wife will be very glad
to see them. There's nothing catching about the child's illness. It's
only that the pot of hot tar fell down off the fire over his feet and
burned him badly."

Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Effingham very willingly agreed to go into the
cottage, for they were both tired; and here new thanks awaited Charles
Tyrrell; for the mother, having recovered from the first overpowering
emotions of the moment, was now voluble, and even eloquent, in her
gratitude. Lady Tyrrell was pleased and affected, as well as Mrs.
Effingham, and Lucy turned to the window and looked out upon the sea,
which for some reason looked dull and indistinct to her eyes. Charles,
however, was overpowered, and would willingly have escaped; but he was
relieved, as well as the whole party, in some degree, by the good
father, John Hailes, cutting across his wife, as if he suddenly
recollected something, and planting himself abruptly before Charles,
with the words, "I'll thank you, sir, to tell me what's your name."

This speech caused a general smile, and the fisherman proceeded to
comment upon it in explanation, saying, "You see, sir, the reason why
I ask is, that I had forgotten it, and so had my wife, when you were
here before, and I was afraid that we should both forget it again, and
you should go away without our knowing who it was that saved our poor
boy from the worst luck that can happen to any one, being turned
adrift in an empty boat."

"My name is Tyrrell," replied Charles; "and I am the son of your
neighbour here, Sir Francis Tyrrell; but you really owe me nothing, my
good friend, for no one could see a child in such a situation without
helping him."

"That don't matter, sir," replied Hailes; "the man that did it's the
man for me; so I am very much obliged to you; and if ever it should be
that even you should want a helping hand in your turn, why, here's
John Hailes."

While this conversation had been going on, the poor boy that was sick
had been looking up in Charles Tyrrell's face with a pair of large,
intelligent, dark eyes, as if he sought to catch his every look. He
was apparently about ten years old, and a good-looking boy, but very
pale from what he had suffered; and Charles, to put an end to all
farther expressions of gratitude, went up and spoke to him about the
accident he had met with. The boy answered sensibly and clearly; but
when he had done, he added, in a low voice, "Thank you, sir, for
saving poor little Johnny. I am sure I should have died if he'd gone
out to sea and nobody with him."

By this time the people from the other cottage had brought in the
little boy, who was, it seems, as much a pet of theirs as of his own
family: and the two sturdy fishermen were standing leaning against the
lintels of the door, looking into the cottage, which was by this time
wellnigh full.

There was nothing, perhaps, very moving in the scene which she had
witnessed; but yet it had agitated Lady Tyrrell, who was weak in
health; and now, finding the numbers too much for her, she rose and
wished the cottagers "good-by," giving the little boy some money, with
a friendly warning never to go and play in the empty boat again. They
then returned home, and, for the time, this little adventure--and an
adventure is always, abstractedly, a desirable thing in a country
house out of the sporting season--produced nothing but matter for
conversation and amusement while Mrs. Effingham and Lucy remained at
the Park.

Their departure, however, was now speedily approaching, and the
greater insight which Mrs. Effingham daily obtained of the temper and
disposition of Sir Francis Tyrrell made her hasten her preparations as
far as possible, to settle herself in the manor-house with all speed.




CHAPTER VII.


In the ordinary commerce of one human being with another, which takes
place in the every-day routine of that dull machine which is called
society, especially in large cities, we pass on through life, knowing
little or nothing of the human beings with whom we are brought in
temporary contact. A cynic said, that language was made to conceal our
ideas; and he might have added, with equal truth, that the expression
of the human countenance was intended to convey false impressions. A
great part of the truth is not spoken, because there is no necessity
for speaking it; another great part is swallowed up by conventional
falsehoods; and the rest, or very nearly the rest, is buried under
lies that the liars think cannot be discovered.

Thus, when we think of the great part of our ordinary acquaintance,
and ask ourselves what are their views, purposes, opinions, thoughts,
feelings, dispositions, characters, we may well say with the moralist,
poet, and philosopher, "We know nothing." It is much to be feared,
that if from society in general we were to take away all that is false
in word, look, and action, we should have nothing but a pantomime in
dumb show, performed by very stiff automatons.

Such, however, cannot be the case entirely with those who spend ten
days together in a country house. There will come moments when the
machinery is somewhat deranged; when the springs will appear; when the
piece of mechanism will want winding-up; in short, I believe it to be
very difficult for the most habitual actor on the world's stage to
pass the whole of many days with an observant companion without some
trait appearing, some slight indication taking place of the real man
within, of the heart that beats, and the character that acts
underneath the mask of our ordinary communications with the world.

At the end of ten days Mrs. Effingham was settled at the manor-house,
and she was perfectly satisfied in regard to every point of the
character of Sir Francis Tyrrell. She saw and knew, as she had before
believed, that he was a man who would on no account commit a base,
dishonourable, or dishonest action; that in everything appertaining to
money, when separated and apart from other motives and passions, he
was generous and liberal. But the violence, the irritability, the
exasperating nature of his temper and disposition, it must be owned,
went far beyond anything that she had expected or even believed
possible. For Lady Tyrrell she was deeply sorry; and though she did
not always think that lady acted wisely towards her husband, yet she
was evidently the suffering party, and therefore engaged all Mrs.
Effingham's best feelings in her behalf.

Some doubts in regard to her estimate of Charles Tyrrell's character
would occasionally insinuate themselves into the mind of Mrs.
Effingham. She saw that he possessed all his father's good qualities,
and almost all his mother's, improved and directed by a mind of a
higher tone, and by mingling, as a young man only can mingle, with the
world. But she perceived, also, that no small portion of the fierce
and fiery character of his father had descended to him. She marked it
in the flashing of his eye; she heard it in the quivering of his
voice; and she distinguished it in the sharp, uncompromising reply
which burst from his lips when his mother was assailed; and she felt
sure that in that noble and commanding form, already full of high and
manly graces, there dwelt a passionate and eager spirit, difficult to
control, and which might or might not, by habit and indulgence, assume
a character like that of his father.

She hoped and trusted, indeed, that it was not so; for she saw that
Charles was continually engaged in a struggle with himself, and she
fully appreciated the powers of his mind and the feelingness of his
heart. She doubted, however; she was not sure; and she thought of
Lucy, and the chance that existed of her daughter, sweet, amiable, and
gentle as she was, acting again the part of Lady Tyrrell, and
withering like a flower scorched by the lightning.

When, however, she reflected and compared which of the two she would
rather have for the husband of her daughter, Charles Tyrrell or Arthur
Hargrave, she was inclined to clasp her hands together, and exclaim
without hesitation, "Oh, Charles, by all means! With him there is
always some hope; with him there is always some resource. It would be
difficult, I should think, for a well-intentioned person to miss the
means of either moving him by his feelings or convincing him by his
reason. No, no," she added, "he can never become like his father; but
I fear, I very much fear, lest the intense and fiery disposition which
I see is so ungovernable within him, may lead him to acts which will
bring misery on himself and on those that love him."

What were the feelings of Lucy Effingham herself, and what the view
which she took of the characters of Sir Francis Tyrrell's family, we
shall not pause to inquire. She had attached herself greatly to Lady
Tyrrell, and with her winning sweetness had wound herself so closely
round that lady's heart, that, ere she left Harbury Park, its mistress
looked upon her almost as a daughter.

The fourth personage which formed the society that Mrs. Effingham and
her daughter left behind when they proceeded to take up their abode at
the manor-house, was abhorred and disliked by both; but Mr. Driesen
did not, or would not, or could not, find it out. He was plentifully
furnished, as we have had occasion to show, with that most serviceable
and comforting of properties, self-conceit. People might disagree with
him in all his views, oppose him in argument, or frankly acknowledge
their dislike for the principles he inculcated, without affecting his
opinion of himself in the least. He believed, in general, that the
only thing for which anybody argued was victory. He thought, with the
utmost confidence, that he was always victorious, and believed (as was
indeed the case) that he was always more or less eloquent, and
therefore concluded that his opponents must be convinced, and admire,
even if they did not like him.

At all events, his love of himself was an impregnable citadel which
nothing could storm. He had seldom, if ever, ventured out of it, it is
true, to attack any one else violently, though once or twice he had
done so in younger days, and had shown himself decidedly a man of
courage: valuing the life of this world very little, though he
believed that there was none other beyond the grave, and not at all
scrupulous of risking it for the purpose of punishing any one who very
deeply offended him.

These were rare cases, however, and, on the whole, Mr. Driesen was
considered a good-tempered and placable man; and those who did not see
very deeply had been heard to observe, that it was a pity such a
good-humoured fellow as Driesen, so talented and so amusing, should be
utterly unprincipled. However, one great source of his good humour was
his self-conceit, which seldom, if ever, suffered him to take offence,
and this, therefore, prevented him from seeing that Lucy Effingham
shrank from him whenever it was possible to do so without rudeness,
and that Mrs. Effingham received all the civilities and attentions
that he paid her with coldness which would have repelled any other
man.

We must now come to inquire into the most important point of all,
namely, with what feelings Charles Tyrrell saw Lucy Effingham quit his
father's house. He had thought her exquisitely beautiful from the
first. The grace which marked all her movements, and which seemed to
spring from a graceful mind, had not been lost to him either. There
had been also constant traits appearing of a kind and gentle heart;
and without attempting anything like display--for one of the most
marked and distinguishing characteristics of Lucy's mind was a
retiring, though not, perhaps, a timid modesty--she had suffered so
much to appear during her stay at Harbury Park, that Charles could not
doubt her mind had been as highly cultivated by her parents as it had
been richly endowed by Heaven. All this he had seen as a mere
observer; and, never forgetting what his mother had said in regard to
Arthur Hargrave, he fancied that he looked upon the whole merely as a
spectator, and that he examined, appreciated, and admired Lucy
Effingham merely as his father's guest and his mother's affectionate
friend.

Thus it went on till she had quitted the Park and taken up her abode
at the manor-house, and then Charles felt a vacancy and a want far
more strongly than he had expected. The house seemed to have lost its
sunshine; the Park, beautiful as it was, appeared cold and damp; the
melodious sound of her voice, too, which he had not thought of while
she was there, was now remembered when it was no longer heard.

All these, and a thousand other feelings, came upon him at the
breakfast-table on the morning after their departure. He recollected,
however, before breakfast was over, that it would be but civil to go
down and inquire for Mrs. Effingham and her daughter, and to ascertain
whether they were comfortable in their new abode. He accordingly did
so, and by some strange combination of circumstances, which Sir
Francis Tyrrell, and Mr. Driesen, and Lady Tyrrell all observed it so
happened that not a day passed without there being some very valid
motive and excellent good reason why Charles Tyrrell should go down to
the manor-house, unless it happened to be on a day when he was aware
that Mrs. Effingham and her daughter, or Lucy alone, were to be with
Lady Tyrrell.

Once Charles thought of it himself, and for a single instant a doubt
crossed his bosom as to what his feelings might become; but he laughed
it off in a moment. The causes that took him to the manor-house seemed
so natural, that there was no fear, he thought, of his feelings
becoming anything but what they were already. Indeed, there was no
great necessity that they should; for by this time Charles Tyrrell was
as much in love with Lucy Effingham as he well could be. The very
consequence of his being so much in love was, that he went on,
confident he was not so at all; and how long he would have remained in
this state of ignorance would be difficult to determine, if the period
of his return to Oxford had not rapidly approached, bringing with it
thoughts and reflections which made him look more accurately into his
own heart.

He put off the hour of examination, indeed, till the very evening
before the day fixed for his departure. But on that evening Mrs.
Effingham and Lucy dined at the Park; and although there occurred not
one event which we could take hold of to write it down as a legitimate
cause why Charles Tyrrell should feel differently after that evening,
yet upon the whole the passing of it had the effect of making him
determine to sift his own sensations to the bottom. Of course, there
was a certain impression upon the whole party at the Park, caused by
his approaching departure. Lady Tyrrell felt it very bitterly, as she
always did, and did not scruple to suffer that feeling to appear.

But it was the effect upon Lucy Effingham that principally moved
Charles Tyrrell. She said not a word but such as she was accustomed to
say: no one single incident took place to show that there was a
difference in her feelings; and yet a certain softness, a degree of
sadness coloured her thoughts, and was heard in the tone of her voice,
which Charles Tyrrell did remark. He was anything but vain, and would
never, probably, have applied what he did remark to himself, had not
hope been busy with imagination, and imagination with Lucy Effingham.
But, as it was so, he did remark, in addition to the softness and
sadness of Lucy's tone and manner, that the softness and sadness were
always somewhat increased after his approaching departure had been
mentioned.

As he gazed upon her, too, he thought that she was lovelier than ever.
As he stood beside her while she sang, her voice seemed to him melody
itself; and when he put her into the carriage which was to bear her
away, the thrill which ran through his heart as she shook hands with
him and bade him farewell, made him pause for a moment in the
vestibule ere he returned to the rest of the world.

As soon as he had retired to his own room, Charles began his commune
with his own heart. The interrogatory, as far as the actual facts were
concerned, was soon at an end; for when he asked himself if he loved
Lucy Effingham really, truly, and sincerely, his heart answered "yes"
at once.

There were other questions, however, to be asked, referring only to
probabilities. The first question was whether there existed any chance
of obtaining het love in return, notwithstanding the previous
attachment which she entertained towards Arthur Hargrave. This was a
difficult problem to solve; for though there were hopes, from the
friendship with which Lucy Effingham seemed to regard him, and from
her demeanour during that evening, which made his heart beat high, yet
there had been nothing so decided in word, or even in manner, as to
justify him in any very sanguine expectations. Love and hope, however,
are almost inseparable: and the smiling goddess first produced one
argument from her store, and then another, to show him that there was
no reason to despair. In the first place, Lucy had seen this young
man, this Lieutenant Hargrave, not very often, according to his
mother's account; in the next place, she knew that he was disapproved,
disliked, and contemned by all whom she had cause to esteem; and, in
the third place, she had made no resistance to the will of her
parents, nor proffered a word of opposition. In short, he settled it
in his own mind that there was hope for him; but then came the
question, could he be satisfied with that portion of affection which
he could hope to gain from a heart that had loved before. He asked
himself if it were possible that any heart could love really twice;
and he felt inclined to answer in words almost equally strong, but not
so beautiful, as those of Walter Savage Landor, when the great poet
says:


    "Tell me: if ever, Eros! are revealed
     Thy secrets to the earth: have they been true
     To any love who speak about the first?
     What! shall these holier lights, like twinkling stars
     In the few hours assigned them, change their place,
     And, when comes ampler splendour, disappear?
     Idler I am; and pardon, not reply,
     Implore from thee, thus questioned. Well I know
     Thou strikest, like Olympian Jove, but once."


But Charles Tyrrell loved, and though he would have given worlds that
Lucy Effingham had never felt one feeling of attachment to another;
though he knew, if he would have owned it, that her having done so
would be a bitter drop in his cup through life, even if she accepted
him willingly; though he could not have denied, if he had still gone
on to question himself closely, that no signs of affection to himself,
in after life would ever convince him that she loved him as fully, as
truly, as entirely as if she had never loved another, yet Charles
Tyrrell loved, and the hope of possessing Lucy Effingham was
sufficient to make him stride over every objection.

All this being settled, and his determination taken, the next thing to
be considered was the course which he should pursue. He was not yet of
age; but a few months only were wanting, and he felt that, when they
were past, he should be in a different position, and enabled to treat
the matter in a different manner. He was sure that there was a certain
perversity in the disposition of Sir Francis, which would make his
expressed wish to marry Lucy Effingham the very reason why the baronet
would throw obstacles in the way, though he had been himself the first
to seek the alliance.

In regard to his mother, after all that had passed between them, upon
the subject, after what had been said of Lucy Effingham's first
attachment, and their both agreeing that he never could be satisfied
with anything but affection in its first young strength, he felt a
degree of shame, a sort of shyness as to mentioning his changed views
and purposes.

Under these circumstances he determined to set out for Oxford without
informing either his father or his mother of the state of his
feelings. He was too upright and straightforward to affect towards his
father any dislike to one whom he loved and admired as he did Lucy,
although he well knew that such would be the means to hurry on Sir
Francis into some irrevocable step towards the promotion of their
marriage; but he felt himself quite justified in saying nothing on the
subject, and returning to Oxford as if with unconcern, and he
consequently determined to do so the next day.

At the same time, however, his was by far too eager a nature to leave
the affections of Lucy Effingham to be lost or won during his absence
without an effort; and he therefore resolved to acquaint his mother by
letter with feelings which he did not choose to speak, and to induce
her to make known those feelings to Lucy, and to endeavour to
ascertain more accurately the state of her affection in return.

All those resolutions and determinations were formed with great and
calm deliberation before he lay down to rest; but, unfortunately,
while he had been resolving one way, Fate had been resolving another,
and not one single thing that he determined upon that night did he
succeed in executing.

Thoughts such as those that occupied him are very matutinal in their
activity, and before five o'clock on the following morning Charles
Tyrrell was up and dressed. The vehicle that was to convey him did not
pass the gates of the Park till about eleven o'clock, and he would
have had time, if he had chosen so to act; to go down and see Lucy
once more, and learn his fate from her own lips. He did not choose to
do so, however; but, to fill up the hours till breakfast time, he
determined to wander about the park, and in the spots where he had
more than once passed some of the sweetest moments of existence in her
society, to call up the delicious dream of the past, now that he was
just about to place between it and hope's bright vision of the future
an interval which seemed to him a long, long lapse of weary hours and
dull realities.

Opening the doors for himself--for, though it was daylight, none of
the servants were yet up--he went out upon the lawn and gazed around
him on the sparkling aspect of reawakening nature. Beauty, and peace,
and harmony were over all the scene; many a glossy pheasant was
strutting about here and there within the precincts of a spot where
guns were never heard, and only jostled from their path by some old
familiar hare, grown fat and gray on immunity and abundant food, or
else startled to a half flight by the rush of the rapid squirrel
darting across the lawn to some opposite tree.

The opening of the door, the aspect even of man, the great destroyer
of all things, did not disturb the tenants of the wood. One or two of
the hares crouched down as if asleep indeed; but those who had passed
many years there undisturbed showed no farther sign of apprehension
than by standing up high on their hind feet, and with their ears
projecting in all sorts of ways, seeming to inquire who it was that
had got up as early as themselves. Having satisfied themselves of that
fact, the utmost that they condescended to do was to hop a few steps
farther from the house; and Charles Tyrrell was proceeding on his
walk, when a window above was opened, and the voice of Mr. Driesen
pronounced his name.

Now of all people on earth, perhaps Mr. Driesen was the last whom
Charles Tyrrell would have chosen to be his companion at a moment when
such feelings as those that agitated him then were busy in his bosom,
he therefore affected a deafness to Mr. Driesen's call, and, without
taking the slightest notice, walked on quietly into the wood. Ere he
had been absent from the house half an hour, however, and while he was
yet walking up that long straight walk of beeches, from which, as we
have said, Harbury Hill was visible, and which we have fully described
in the first or second chapter of this book, he was joined by Mr.
Driesen, who, coming straight up to him, gave him no opportunity of
escaping.

"I called to you, Charles, from the window," said the modern
philosopher, "and you would not hear me, as is always the case when
one wants to do a man a service. There is nothing on earth so deaf as
a man that you wish to assist or to counsel; a post, why a post is all
ears compared to it."

"I really did not know," replied Charles Tyrrell, "that you had any
particular wish to assist or to counsel me, as I was not at all aware
that I was in need either of counsel or assistance. However, if you
will advise me as to what ought to be the price of small beer, I shall
be obliged to you, as the wine I got at Oxford during the last term
was so bad that I shall have no more of it."

"Why, the value of small beer," replied Mr. Driesen, curling his
snout, "is just equal to the value of small jokes multiplied by four;
a quart of one to a gallon of the other, Charles, eh? Why, you are
emulous of your father, which I certainly did not think to see in your
harmonious little family. But, to put aside all such sour and bitter
figures, you do want both counsel and assistance; and though I do not
mean to say that ninety-nine people out of a hundred would not be
better calculated to give it to you than I am, because our views and
opinions upon so many subjects differ, yet, as you have nobody else in
the world near you who has anything like experience or judgment, wit,
wisdom, or common sense, except, indeed, persons whom I know you do
not choose to apply to, you had better take up with mine than none. I
did not expect you to ask it; but, when it is offered, you can take it
or reject it, as you think best."

He spoke with a degree of frankness that Charles Tyrrell had seldom
heard him use, and he replied, "I am really very much obliged to you,
Mr. Driesen, and will, of course, hear with respect and attention
whatever advice you think fit to give me; but you must take the
trouble of telling me upon which subject it is to be, for I confess
myself ignorant."

"Of course I will, of course I will," replied Mr. Driesen; "for I
intend it to be what the ancients used to call a free gift: now, if I
were to expect you to give me your confidence in return, it would be a
matter of trade, traffic, barter, commerce. You would value it more,
doubtless, but I care nothing about that. I will, in the first place,
set out then by telling you the points of your situation on which you
require advice and assistance, some of which you know, and some of
which you don't. But let us go up and down the walk, for my old blood
does not run so quickly as once it did, and I am rather chilly."

Charles Tyrrell followed his suggestion; and having made his pause
just sufficiently long to be impressive, Mr. Driesen went on.

"In the first place, Charles, you are in love." Charles Tyrrell
coloured a little, more from surprise than any other feeling; but the
other proceeded: "In the next place, you know your father, and are
puzzled how to act in the business. I saw it all in your face last
night when you came in from handing Miss Effingham into the carriage;
so do not say a word, but let me go on. In the next place," continued
Mr. Driesen, "you are not going to Oxford to-day--"

"Indeed," replied Charles Tyrrell, "you are quite mistaken. Everything
is packed up and ready, and, whenever the coach passes, I intend to
get up and go to Oxford."

"You intend," said Mr. Driesen, with a grim smile; "I never said you
did not intend, I only said you are not going; and the very fact of
your fully intending it is one of the reasons why you won't go. Your
father thinks that you are getting too fond of Oxford; that you like
being away from home. Here you are going two days before it is
necessary; I am quite sure you would like to remain those two days
here now, only you are ashamed of saying so, because you fixed the day
for going back on the very day you came. However, your father won't
let you go. He thinks you wish it, and the consequence, you know, is
certain. He will take hold of the very first excuse for making you
stay. See if he does not. I am not very sure that he will let you go
at all; but that is doubtful. However, you can prevent it at once, if
you like, by strongly pressing to go."

"You mistake, my good sir," replied Charles Tyrrell; "such means I
will never consent to use with my father, even supposing I did not
wish to go; but certainly, on the contrary, I do wish to go, and to
remain till I have taken a degree of some kind."

"Well, so be it then," replied Mr. Driesen; "and though in love and
war all things are fair, I suppose you will be equally scrupulous
about the means of obtaining your father's consent to your marriage."

"Certainly, equally scrupulous," replied Charles, "inasmuch as not
affecting to oppose the very things that I desire."

"Well, well," answered Mr. Driesen, "I have told you the facts, and
now I come to give you the advice. In the first place, never dream of
saying one word to Sir Francis about your attachment till he proposes
the marriage to you himself, which he will do ere long, depend upon
it."

"I do not intend to mention anything upon the subject to him," replied
Charles Tyrrell. "As you are come so clearly to the point, Mr.
Driesen, in regard to my father's conduct towards myself, I do not
scruple to acknowledge that I know no cause for placing in my father
that implicit confidence, which, under any other circumstances, I
should be most anxious to do. If he should think fit to propose to me
a marriage with a person I love, of course, such an event would be
doubly pleasing. But should he not do so, I shall not, of course,
consider myself bound to speak with him at all upon the subject till
the time arrives when it may be fit for me to marry at all, which, of
course, I do not regard as the case at present."

"So far, so well," replied his companion; "but take my advice, my
young friend; do not let him see the slightest inclination on your
part towards such a marriage; an inclination which was somewhat too
evident last night. If you will but be careful till you go to
Oxford--that is, if your father lets you go at all--and will leave the
rest to me, I will undertake that, before a month is over, your father
shall have so committed himself in regard to your marriage with Lucy
Effingham, that his sense of honour will prevent him from ever
retracting."

"Pray, how long do you intend to remain here, Mr. Driesen?" demanded
Charles, considering only what the worthy gentleman proposed to
perform, without in the slightest degree recollecting that the
question might be an awkward one.

Whether Mr. Driesen took it up in an unpleasant sense or not, it did
not in the least put him out of countenance, as, indeed, nothing ever
did. He replied, however:

"Why, you see, Charles, your father's cook is an excellent one; his
mutton very fine; excellent fish from the sea and from the river;
better wine nowhere in Europe; and as comfortable a bed as one would
wish to sleep in: all these are circumstances to be considered when
one is asked how long one intends to stay. I should think that my
adhesiveness might last another month."

Charles Tyrrell could not help smiling at the great coolness with
which Mr. Driesen treated the matter; but he replied, "I did not mean
at all to put an impertinent question, but only to know how much time
you would nave to give to the object you proposed. In anything you may
think fit to do, of course, I cannot interfere, and I will not deny,
as I know that you have very great influence with my father, that
nothing would give me so much gratification as if my father did
propose this affair to me himself, and in such terms as would bind him
to give it his speedy sanction."

"Much more reasonable, indeed, than could be expected of a Tyrrell,"
cried Mr. Driesen; "why, Charles, you will discredit your family.
However, put your mind at ease. I will undertake that your father
shall do what you wish, and that very speedily, if you will but be
careful, and for the next two or three days let him remain in
ignorance of your feelings upon the subject."

"Depend upon it, my dear sir," replied Charles Tyrrell, "depend upon
it, you are mistaken; and that I shall go to Oxford to-day without
opposition."

"Poo, poo, Charles!" said Mr. Driesen; "I have known your father for
thirty years too well to be mistaken in what he intends to do. You
will soon see, and judge by that how right I am regarding all the
rest. As far as we have gone yet, Charles, I have been acting quite
disinterestedly, and out of regard for my friend's son, as well as for
my friend himself, who does not always know his own interests. I do
not mean to say that the day will not come when I may ask a favour of
you in return; but that period, I should think, is far distant.
However, if ever it should, you will remember what I do for you on the
present occasion, and, if I know you right, you will be very willing
to return it."

"That I will, Mr. Driesen," replied Charles, warmly, for the other had
touched exactly the right point; but before he could proceed any
farther, either in thanks or professions, he saw a servant at the
other end of the walk apparently seeking him, and in a minute or two
after the man came up and told him that Sir Francis wished to see him
immediately, as there had occurred important business which he feared
might prevent the journey to Oxford that day. Mr. Driesen grinned
slightly, and, with the servant following, accompanied Charles into
the house.




CHAPTER VIII.


We must now leave the party of Harbury Park for a short period; ay!
and the party at the manor-house also, and go to a somewhat humbler
scene, though not without its comforts and even elegances. We must
also go back in point of time for somewhat more than one day, and yet
not quite two, and ask the gentle reader to accompany us to a small
but neat white stone house, situated among the woods, which we have
mentioned as crowning the summits of the high cliffs that guarded the
seashore. The house was perched upon the top of one of the highest of
these, which overhung the group of small fishermen's cottages, in
which the brother of good John Hailes dwelt, and at the distance of
about a mile from John's own abode. Through the wood and down to the
shore was practised a small, well-trimmed path, from the gate of the
little garden over the face of the cliff, guarded in the precipitous
parts by neat wooden balustrades, from which a pleasant scene of ocean
and seacoast was visible at various points to the walker who chose to
pause, and, leaning his folded arms upon the railing, gaze over at the
view below.

There was no carriage-way through the wood up to the house, and for
about a quarter of a mile there did not appear even a cart-road; but
there was an excellent, well-beaten footpath, wide enough for a horse
or two abreast, which led out into the way made for the wood-carts,
and thence to a small by-road, by which the fishermen sent up their
fish to the county town. Those were not days when everything on earth
went to London.

The house itself was neat, the garden kept in beautiful order, and, in
a warm situation upon a genial coast, was prolific of every kind of
flower that had been at that time introduced into England; but
although these were signs of a landsman's tastes, there were not
wanting indications of nautical habits and associations. There was a
tall pole, with a vane at the top, carried sufficiently high above the
neighbouring trees to indicate truly what wind was blowing at the
time. A difficulty having been found in carrying this pole up to the
proper height in one piece, it had been managed as a mast, with a step
and sort of topmast; and, to make the whole sure, various stays and
braces had been carried down and made fast to the roof of the house;
so that, seen over the tops of the trees, it appeared exactly like the
mast of a ship rising out of the wood. In the garden was seen a little
summer-house, formed from a large boat sawn in two; and at the other
end of the house, opposite to the mast, was raised a flagstaff, with a
block and pulley, for running up and down a flag upon occasion.

As far as description goes, this will be enough; and we will now
immediately proceed to the dwellers in that house, and those with whom
they were in communication about six-and-thirty hours previously to
the period at which we last left Charles Tyrrell.

The evening sunshine was at that time bright over the world; but it
reached not the house or the gardens around it, the trees throwing
them at that period into shadow. The door, however, was open, and
leaning against one of the doorposts was a stout, elderly man, strong
in limb, rather bulky in size, and with a form apparently better
adapted for the exertion of slow but vigorous efforts, than for
anything like grace or activity. His features were good, though
somewhat heavy; except, indeed, the eyes, which were keen and even
sharp in expression. His complexion was of that dark brown hue which
is generally called weather-beaten, and his hair was gray and rather
short, except, indeed, behind, where it was gathered into an
enormously long, thin queue, as was not uncommon among seamen at that
time. This queue was bound tightly up with black riband, and in
colour, form, and length resembled very much a lady's riding-whip of
the present day.

He was raised upon the step of the door, and was, consequently,
looking down upon another person, whom he spoke to, standing on the
little gravel semicircle before the house, and who was also somewhat
shorter than himself. His companion, however, was apparently not less
endowed with corporeal vigour, and though not a young man by any
means, was two or three years younger than the master of the house. He
was broadly built, with large, strong limbs, a rough, hale
countenance, and a frank, clear blue eye. There were one or two deep
scars upon his face, which somewhat disfigured him; but in every other
respect his countenance was good and pleasing, though there was about
it, at the moment, a sort of thoughtfulness and sternness which
betokened occupation with matters of importance and moment.

While talking to the other, he remained with his large brawny hands
behind his back, looking up in the face of his companion with the
queue, and the subject they spoke upon was marked as one of
considerable interest, more by the pauses for reflection which took
place between every sentence and its rejoinder, than by any great
changes of expression called up in the speakers' countenances. They
evidently understood each other perfectly, so that whatever was to be
said was only, in fact, half expressed, and that in a particular slang
of their own, eked out by a shrug of the shoulders, a lifting up of
the eyebrows, or an occasional ejection of tobacco-juice from the
mouth, which seemed to be looked upon as very expressive.

"Well, good-night, Master Longly," said the shorter of the two, taking
a step back from the door and shaking hands with the other: "I'll do
as you think fit, you know; but I think myself--the sooner gone the
better."

"So do I, so do I," answered the other. "Good-night, old Will."

But, though they mutually wished each other good-night, they by no
means parted, nor, indeed, seemed to have the slightest idea that they
were going to part; for Master Longly, or, as the people about the
country used generally to call him, Captain Long, descended from his
doorway as the other turned away, and sauntered after him through the
garden; while Old Will, as he termed him, perfectly sure that the
other was following, continued his observations in rejoinder to what
had taken place at the door.

Thus they walked on, putting one slow step before another till they
reached the top of the cliff, where they again came to a pause and
another discussion, and then breaking off again, old Will began to
descend the zigzag towards the shore, while Longly, after taking two
or three steps farther, leaned over the railing as he had done forty
times before in the same circumstances, and continued talking with the
other till he was half way down. Then came the quicker and final
good-night, and Captain Long took his way back with a somewhat more
rapid step.

The history of Captain Long, or, as he is more accurately described in
some of his official papers, Mr. Thomas Longly, Master Mariner, is
soon told: and it was a history then very common among the inhabitants
of the seacoast of England. He had been a somewhat wildish youth in
the nearest seaport town; had received a good plain education; but,
smitten with a love of adventure, had volunteered on board a king's
ship; for which his father, who was a dealer in marine stores, had
instantly disinherited him, and declared he would cut him off with a
shilling, in imitation of his betters. The boy was clever and active,
bold and enterprising, but by no means fond of any kind of restraint,
and with a strong spice of obstinacy in his nature, which,
notwithstanding the subordination of a ship of war, made him set out
with resisting and attempting to run as soon as he found that his
majesty's service was not quite so easy and joyous a life as he had
expected. He was not easily broken of such bad propensities; but the
cat-o'nine-tails was applied, and not in vain, the youth soon finding
that it was less disagreeable to obey and exert himself, than to make
in effectual efforts at resistance and be flogged for his pains.

His commander was a smart officer, but a just man. Occasions of
difficulty and danger soon presented themselves, for England was then
in the midst of a hot war; and the boy proving active as a squirrel
and bold as a lion, gained attention and distinction; was noticed by
the captain, and after a few years' service turned out one of the best
seamen in the ship. After a certain period of time, when he was
returning to England from the West Indies, and it was supposed the
crew were to be paid off, he was suddenly raised to the rank of a
warrant officer, probably with a view of keeping him in the service.

On returning to his native town, however, he found his father at the
point of death; a point at which men are not fond of executing all
that they have threatened against their refractory children. The
consequence was, as might have been expected, a full share of the
worthy dealer's money came to his son Thomas; and, with a capital of a
few thousand pounds, he thought it would be much better to set up in
command of a ship of his own, than to continue any longer in the
king's service when there was no war going on. He therefore bought
shares in a large cutter, with the understanding that he was to
command her, and set out as a trader, in which capacity, to say the
truth, he was not particularly fortunate. He did not lose, indeed, but
his gains at the end of four or five years had only been sufficient to
enable him, in conjunction with the other shareholders, to abandon the
cutter, and buy a handsome, well-built schooner.

Just about the same time, however, a fresh war broke out. Longly
applied for letters of marque, mounted some handsome brass guns on the
deck of his schooner, with some heavy caronades for close quarter, and
set sail from the port with the determination of doing the enemy's
commerce as much harm as possible. This sort of trade he understood
much better than the other, and, consequently, he was far more
fortunate. Captain Long became known upon the whole coast of France
and England; and while the traders of Bourdeaux looked out with
considerable apprehension for fear of meeting Captain Long on the high
seas, the corsairs of St. Malo despatched some of their gallant
skimmers of the ocean to look out for him, with the vain hope of
bringing Captain Long into the French port. It is true, they caught
him; but they formed, in their hunt for Captain Long, a strong
resemblance to the old story in regard to catching a Tartar; for in
one instance he sunk his adversary with every soul on board, and in
another he brought his pursuer into the nearest English port.

He thus acquired a very comfortable little independence; but, at the
same time, acquired habits of a somewhat marauding nature, mixing up
in a strange compound the ideas of the merchant, and, with reverence
be it spoken, the ideas of the pirate.

Two things, however, occurred to sober him at about the age of fifty;
one was, a very severe fall, which left him stiff and less active for
the rest of his life, and the other was the death of his wife, whom he
loved as well as he could love anything, except his daughter. These
circumstances induced him to give up the sea; and having nothing
farther to care about or to provide for, he retired to the spot where
we have introduced him to the reader, built the house that we have
described, and gave himself up to rural life, with occasional little
indications of his former habits and propensities breaking out, of a
more serious kind indeed than his fondness for looking over the sea
with a telescope, or having his own boat upon the shore below. He was
very much loved and liked by all the neighbouring fishermen; and
though he was a great man in their estimation, and not a little one in
his own, yet he was too frank, and free, and open-hearted, to treat
his neighbours as anything but messmates.

Leaving him, then, to return to his own dwelling, we shall take leave
to walk into the little neat parlour thereof, and see who and what it
contained. It was nicely and tastefully fitted up, with two or three
detestably bad portraits of persons who might be Captain and Mrs.
Longly in their best clothes, or any other person on earth that the
spectator might choose to imagine; and besides these was a neat, small
pianoforte, with a number of books, pretty little jars for flowers,
various curiosities brought over by Longly himself from foreign
countries in which he had carried on his various occupations, together
with a number of minor objects, denoting taste and refinement.

The living beings whom Longly had left behind when he walked down with
old Will, were three in number, the first of which lay upon the
hearth-rug in the form of an immense tabby cat. The next that we shall
specify was a remarkably pretty girl of about eighteen years of age,
upon whose character, naturally wild, lively, and sportive, but
sincere, affectionate, and generous, a couple of years spent at a
boarding-school had grafted a certain degree of coquetry and
affectation which certainly did not improve her, but which spoiled her
less than might be imagined. This is very nearly enough of the
character of Hannah Longly. She was, as we have said, remarkably
pretty, full of grace and warm colouring, with dark eyes much larger
than her father's, and deep brown hair, slightly approaching to
auburn. She had in most things a natural good taste, and,
notwithstanding having been at school, was not in reality vulgar,
except inasmuch as the least approach to affectation of any kind is
vulgar in itself.

The third person in the room is one whom we may have quitted rather
too long, and who, on many accounts, deserved more particular and
constant attention; this was no other than Everard Morrison, the old
school companion of Charles Tyrrell. He was now sitting with Hannah
Longly, well dressed, improved in health, and by no means a
bad-looking young man, though still short, and apparently not very
robust. He was just out of his articles as a lawyer's clerk, and in
partnership with his father, and it was in his legal capacity that he
had made acquaintance with Captain Longly, who, about a year before,
had, by some unpleasant mistake, become embroiled with the officers of
his majesty's customs. So confident were those officers that Longly
had been engaged in some of the smuggling transactions which took
place so frequently in the good old times, when no such thing as a
coastguard was known, and which have somewhat decreased since its
adoption, that nothing would prevent them from proceeding against him
at law, and he was obliged to have recourse to Messrs. Morrison to do
the best they could in his defence. Young Morrison exerted himself
strenuously, and two or three times visited Captain Longly at his own
dwelling. His visits t

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