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.