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WYLDER'S HAND
A NOVEL
by
J. SHERIDAN LE FANU
First published 1864
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I.--RELATING HOW I RODE THROUGH THE VILLAGE OF GYLINGDEN WITH MARK
WYLDER'S LETTER IN MY VALISE
II.--IN WHICH I ENTER THE DRAWING-ROOM
III.--OUR DINNER-PARTY AT BRANDON
IV.--IN WHICH WE GO TO THE DRAWING-ROOM AND THE PARTY BREAKS UP
V.--IN WHICH MY SLUMBER IS DISTURBED
VI.--IN WHICH DORCAS BRANDON SPEAKS
VII.--RELATING HOW A LONDON GENTLEMAN APPEARED IN REDMAN'S DELL
VIII.--IN WHICH CAPTAIN LAKE TAKES HIS HAT AND STICK
IX.--I SEE THE RING OF THE PERSIAN MAGICIAN
X.--THE ACE OF HEARTS
XI.--IN WHICH LAKE UNDER THE TREES OF BRANDON, AND I IN MY CHAMBER, SMOKE
OUR NOCTURNAL CIGARS
XII.--IN WHICH UNCLE LORNE TROUBLES ME
XIII.--THE PONY CARRIAGE
XIV.--IN WHICH VARIOUS PERSONS GIVE THEIR OPINIONS OF CAPTAIN STANLEY
LAKE
XV.--DORCAS SHOWS HER JEWELS TO MISS LAKE
XVI.--"JENNY PUT THE KETTLE ON"
XVII.--RACHEL LAKE SEES WONDERFUL THINGS BY MOONLIGHT FROM HER WINDOW
XVIII.--MARK WYLDER'S SLAVE
XIX.--THE TARN IN THE PARK
XX.--CAPTAIN LAKE TAKES AN EVENING STROLL ABOUT GYLINGDEN
XXI.--IN WHICH CAPTAIN LAKE VISITS HIS SISTER'S SICK BED
XXII.--IN WHICH CAPTAIN LAKE MEETS A FRIEND NEAR THE WHITE HOUSE
XXIII.--HOW RACHEL SLEPT THAT NIGHT IN REDMAN'S FARM
XXIV.--DORCAS BRANDON PAYS RACHEL A VISIT
XXV.--CAPTAIN LAKE LOOKS IN AT NIGHTFALL
XXVI.--CAPTAIN LAKE FOLLOWS TO LONDON
XXVII.--LAWYER LARKIN'S MIND BEGINS TO WORK
XXVIII.--MARK WYLDER'S SUBMISSION
XXIX.--HOW MARK WYLDER'S DISAPPEARANCE AFFECTED HIS FRIENDS
XXX.--IN BRANDON PARK
XXXI.--IN REDMAN'S DELL
XXXII.--MR. LARKIN AND THE VICAR
XXXIII.--THE LADIES OF GYLINGDEN HEATH
XXXIV.--SIR JULIUS HOCKLEY'S LETTER
XXXV.--THE HUNT BALL
XXXVI.--THE BALL ROOM
XXXVII.--THE SUPPER-ROOM
XXXVIII.--AFTER THE BALL
XXXIX.--IN WHICH MISS RACHEL LAKE COMES TO BRANDON, AND DOCTOR BUDDLE
CALLS AGAIN
XL.--THE ATTORNEY'S ADVENTURES ON THE WAY HOME
XLI.--IN WHICH SIR FRANCIS SEDDLEY MANIPULATES
XLII.--A PARAGRAPH IN THE COUNTY PAPER
XLIII.--AN EVIL EYE LOOKS ON THE VICAR
XLIV.--IN WHICH OLD TAMAR LIFTS UP HER VOICE IN PROPHECY
XLV.--DEEP AND SHALLOW
XLVI.--DEBATE AND INTERRUPTION
XLVII.--A THREATENING NOTICE
XLVIII.--IN WHICH I GO TO BRANDON, AND SEE AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN THE
TAPESTRY ROOM
XLIX.--LARCOM, THE BUTLER, VISITS THE ATTORNEY
L.--NEW LIGHTS
LI.--A FRACAS IN THE LIBRARY
LII.--AN OLD FRIEND LOOKS INTO THE GARDEN AT REDMAN'S FARM
LIII.--THE VICAR'S COMPLICATIONS, WHICH LIVELY PEOPLE HAD BETTER NOT READ
LIV.--BRANDON CHAPEL ON SUNDAY
LV.--THE CAPTAIN AND THE ATTORNEY CONVERSE AMONG THE TOMBS
LVI.--THE BRANDON CONSERVATORY
LVII.--CONCERNING A NEW DANGER WHICH THREATENED CAPTAIN STANLEY LAKE
LVIII.--MISS RACHEL LAKE BECOMES VIOLENT
LIX.--AN ENEMY IN REDMAN'S DELL
LX.--RACHEL LAKE BEFORE THE ACCUSER
LXI.--IN WHICH DAME DUTTON IS VISITED
LXII.--THE CAPTAIN EXPLAINS WHY MARK WYLDER ABSCONDED
LXIII.--THE ACE OF HEARTS
LXIV.--IN THE DUTCH ROOM
LXV.--I REVISIT BRANDON HALL
LXVI.--LADY MACBETH
LXVII.--MR. LARKIN IS VIS-A-VIS WITH A CONCEALED COMPANION
LXVIII.--THE COMPANION DISCLOSES HIMSELF
LXIX.--OF A SPECTRE WHOM OLD TAMAR SAW
LXX.--THE MEETING IN THE LONG POND ALLEY
LXXI.--SIR HARRY BRACTON'S INVASION OF GYLINGDEN
LXXII.--MARK WYLDER'S HAND
LXXIII.--THE MASK FALLS
LXXIV.--WE TAKE LEAVE OF OUR FRIENDS
WYLDER'S HAND.
CHAPTER I.
RELATING HOW I DROVE THROUGH THE VILLAGE OF GYLINGDEN WITH MARK WYLDER'S
LETTER IN MY VALISE.
It was late in the autumn, and I was skimming along, through a rich
English county, in a postchaise, among tall hedgerows gilded, like all
the landscape, with the slanting beams of sunset. The road makes a long
and easy descent into the little town of Gylingden, and down this we were
going at an exhilarating pace, and the jingle of the vehicle sounded like
sledge-bells in my ears, and its swaying and jerking were pleasant and
life-like. I fancy I was in one of those moods which, under similar
circumstances, I sometimes experience still--a semi-narcotic excitement,
silent but delightful.
An undulating landscape, with a homely farmstead here and there, and
plenty of old English timber scattered grandly over it, extended mistily
to my right; on the left the road is overtopped by masses of noble
forest. The old park of Brandon lies there, more than four miles from end
to end. These masses of solemn and discoloured verdure, the faint but
splendid lights, and long filmy shadows, the slopes and hollows--my eyes
wandered over them all with that strange sense of unreality, and that
mingling of sweet and bitter fancy, with which we revisit a scene
familiar in very remote and early childhood, and which has haunted a long
interval of maturity and absence, like a romantic reverie.
As I looked through the chaise-windows, every moment presented some
group, or outline, or homely object, for years forgotten; and now, with a
strange surprise how vividly remembered and how affectionately greeted!
We drove by the small old house at the left, with its double gable and
pretty grass garden, and trim yews and modern lilacs and laburnums,
backed by the grand timber of the park. It was the parsonage, and old
bachelor Doctor Crewe, the rector, in my nonage, still stood, in memory,
at the door, in his black shorts and gaiters, with his hands in his
pockets, and a puckered smile on his hard ruddy countenance, as I
approached. He smiled little on others I believe, but always kindly upon
me. This general liking for children and instinct of smiling on them is
one source of the delightful illusions which make the remembrance of
early days so like a dream of Paradise, and give us, at starting, such
false notions of our value.
There was a little fair-haired child playing on the ground before the
steps as I whirled by. The old rector had long passed away; the shorts,
gaiters, and smile--a phantom; and nature, who had gathered in the past,
was providing for the future.
The pretty mill-road, running up through Redman's Dell, dank and dark
with tall romantic trees, was left behind in another moment; and we were
now traversing the homely and antique street of the little town, with its
queer shops and solid steep-roofed residences. Up Church-street I
contrived a peep at the old gray tower where the chimes hung; and as we
turned the corner a glance at the 'Brandon Arms.' How very small and low
that palatial hostelry of my earlier recollections had grown! There were
new faces at the door. It was only two-and-twenty years ago, and I was
then but eleven years old. A retrospect of a score of years or so, at
three-and-thirty, is a much vaster affair than a much longer one at
fifty.
The whole thing seemed like yesterday; and as I write, I open my eyes and
start and cry, 'can it be twenty, five-and-twenty, aye, by Jove!
five-and-thirty, years since then?' How my days have flown! And I think
when another such yesterday shall have arrived, where shall I be?
The first ten years of my life were longer than all the rest put
together, and I think would continue to be so were my future extended to
an ante-Noachian span. It is the first ten that emerge from nothing, and
commencing in a point, it is during them that consciousness, memory--all
the faculties grow, and the experience of sense is so novel, crowded, and
astounding. It is this beginning at a point, and expanding to the immense
disk of our present range of sensuous experience, that gives to them so
prodigious an illusory perspective, and makes us in childhood, measuring
futurity by them, form so wild and exaggerated an estimate of the
duration of human life. But, I beg your pardon.
My journey was from London. When I had reached my lodgings, after my
little excursion up the Rhine, upon my table there lay, among the rest,
one letter--there generally _is_ in an overdue bundle--which I viewed
with suspicion. I could not in the least tell why. It was a broad-faced
letter, of bluish complexion, and had made inquisition after me in the
country--had asked for me at Queen's Folkstone; and, _vised_ by my
cousin, had presented itself at the Friars, in Shropshire, and thence
proceeded by Sir Harry's direction (there was the autograph) to Nolton
Hall; thence again to Ilchester, whence my fiery and decisive old aunt
sent it straight back to my cousin, with a whisk of her pen which seemed
to say, 'How the plague can I tell where the puppy is?--'tis your
business, Sir, not mine, to find him out!' And so my cousin despatched it
to my head-quarters in town, where from the table it looked up in my
face, with a broad red seal, and a countenance scarred and marred all
over with various post-marks, erasures, and transverse directions, the
scars and furrows of disappointment and adventure.
It had not a good countenance, somehow. The original lines were not
prepossessing. The handwriting I knew as one sometimes knows a face,
without being able to remember who the plague it belongs to; but, still,
with an unpleasant association about it. I examined it carefully, and
laid it down unopened. I went through half-a-dozen others, and recurred
to it, and puzzled over its exterior again, and again postponed what I
fancied would prove a disagreeable discovery; and this happened every now
and again, until I had quite exhausted my budget, and then I did open it,
and looked straight to the signature.
'Pooh! Mark Wylder,' I exclaimed, a good deal relieved.
Mark Wylder! Yes, Master Mark could not hurt _me_. There was nothing
about him to excite the least uneasiness; on the contrary, I believe he
liked me as well as he was capable of liking anybody, and it was now
seven years since we had met.
I have often since thought upon the odd sensation with which I hesitated
over his unopened letter; and now, remembering how the breaking of that
seal resembled, in my life, the breaking open of a portal through which I
entered a labyrinth, or rather a catacomb, where for many days I groped
and stumbled, looking for light, and was, in a manner, lost, hearing
strange sounds, witnessing imperfectly strange sights, and, at last,
arriving at a dreadful chamber--a sad sort of superstition steals over
me.
I had then been his working junior in the cause of Wylder _v._ Trustees
of Brandon, minor--Dorcas Brandon, his own cousin. There was a
complicated cousinship among these Brandons, Wylders, and
Lakes--inextricable intermarriages, which, five years ago, before I
renounced the bar, I had at my fingers' ends, but which had now relapsed
into haze. There must have been some damnable taint in the blood of the
common ancestor--a spice of the insane and the diabolical. They were an
ill-conditioned race--that is to say, every now and then there emerged a
miscreant, with a pretty evident vein of madness. There was Sir Jonathan
Brandon, for instance, who ran his own nephew through the lungs in a duel
fought in a paroxysm of Cencian jealousy; and afterwards shot his
coachman dead upon the box through his coach-window, and finally died in
Vienna, whither he had absconded, of a pike-thrust received from a sentry
in a brawl.
The Wylders had not much to boast of, even in contrast with that wicked
line. They had produced their madmen and villains, too; and there had
been frequent intermarriages--not very often happy. There had been many
lawsuits, frequent disinheritings, and even worse doings. The Wylders of
Brandon appear very early in history; and the Wylder arms, with their
legend, 'resurgam,' stands in bold relief over the great door of Brandon
Hall. So there were Wylders of Brandon, and Brandons of Brandon. In one
generation, a Wylder ill-using his wife and hating his children, would
cut them all off, and send the estate bounding back again to the
Brandons. The next generation or two would amuse themselves with a
lawsuit, until the old Brandon type reappeared in some bachelor brother
or uncle, with a Jezebel on his left hand, and an attorney on his right,
and, presto! the estates were back again with the Wylders.
A 'statement of title' is usually a dry affair. But that of the dynasty
of Brandon Hall was a truculent romance. Their very 'wills' were spiced
with the devilment of the 'testators,' and abounded in insinuations and
even language which were scandalous.
Here is Mark Wylder's letter:--
'DEAR CHARLES--Of course you have heard of my good luck, and how kind
poor Dickie--from whom I never expected anything--proved at last. It was
a great windfall for a poor devil like me; but, after all, it was only
right, for it ought never to have been his at all. I went down and took
possession on the 4th, the tenants very glad, and so they might well be;
for, between ourselves, Dickie, poor fellow, was not always pleasant to
deal with. He let the roof all out of repair, and committed waste beside
in timber he had no right to in life, as I am told; but that don't
signify much, only the house will cost me a pretty penny to get it into
order and furnish. The rental is five thousand a-year and some hundreds,
and the rents can be got up a bit--so Larkin tells me. Do you know
anything of him? He says he did business for your uncle once. He seems a
clever fellow--a bit too clever, perhaps--and was too much master here, I
suspect, in poor Dickie's reign. Tell me all you can make out about him.
It is a long time since I saw you, Charles; I'm grown brown, and great
whiskers. I met poor Dominick--what an ass that chap is--but he did not
know me till I introduced myself, so I must be a good deal changed. Our
ship was at Malta when I got the letter. I was sick of the service, and
no wonder: a lieutenant--and there likely to stick all my days. Six
months, last year, on the African coast, watching slavers--think of that!
I had a long yarn from the viscount--advice, and that sort of thing. I do
not think he is a year older than I, but takes airs because he's a
trustee. But I only laugh at trifles that would have riled me once. So I
wrote him a yarn in return, and drew it uncommon mild. And he has been
useful to me; and I think matters are pretty well arranged to disappoint
the kind intention of good Uncle Wylder--the brute; he hated my father,
but that was no reason to persecute me, and I but an infant, almost, when
he died, d-- him. Well, you know he left Brandon with some charges to my
Cousin Dorcas. She is a superbly fine girl. Our ship was at Naples when
she was there two years ago; and I saw a good deal of her. Of course it
was not to be thought of then; but matters are quite different, you know,
now, and the viscount, who is a very sensible fellow in the main, saw it
at once. You see, the old brute meant to leave her a life estate; but it
does not amount to that, though it won't benefit me, for he settled that
when I die it shall go to his right heirs--that will be to my son, if I
ever have one. So Miss Dorcas must pack, and turn out whenever I die,
that is, if I slip my cable first. Larkin told me this--and I took an
opinion--and found it is so; and the viscount seeing it, agreed the best
thing for her as well as me would be, we should marry. She is a
wide-awake young lady, and nothing the worse for that: I'm a bit that way
myself. And so very little courtship has sufficed. She is a splendid
beauty, and when you see her you'll say any fellow might be proud of such
a bride; and so I am. And now, dear Charlie, you have it all. It will
take place somewhere about the twenty-fourth of next month; and you must
come down by the first, if you can. Don't disappoint. I want you for best
man, maybe; and besides, I would like to talk to you about some things
they want me to do in the settlements, and you were always a long-headed
fellow: so pray don't refuse.
'Dear Charlie, ever most sincerely,
'Your old Friend,
'MARK WYLDER.
'P.S.--I stay at the Brandon Arms in the town, until after the marriage;
and then you can have a room at the Hall, and capital shooting when we
return, which will be in a fortnight after.'
I can't say that Wylder was an old _friend_. But he was certainly one of
the oldest and most intimate acquaintances I had. We had been for nearly
three years at school together; and when his ship came to England, met
frequently; and twice, when he was on leave, we had been for months
together under the same roof; and had for some years kept up a regular
correspondence, which first grew desultory, and finally, as manhood
supervened, died out. The plain truth is, I did not _very_ much like him.
Then there was that beautiful apathetic Dorcas Brandon. Where is the
laggard so dull as to experience no pleasing flutter at his heart in
anticipation of meeting a perfect beauty in a country house. I was
romantic, like every other youngish fellow who is not a premature
curmudgeon; and there was something indefinitely pleasant in the
consciousness that, although a betrothed bride, the young lady still was
fancy free: not a bit in love. It was but a marriage of convenience, with
mitigations. And so there hovered in my curiosity some little flicker of
egotistic romance, which helped to rouse my spirits, and spur me on to
action.