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.