Wylders Hand | Page 2

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