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

by G. P. R. James

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.