Henry Lyle, or Life and Existence

Chapter I

" Henery !" screamed a sharp, shrill voice, from the top of a steep staircase ; and a little child Avho OAvned a name something similar in sound to the scream, started as he heard it, and flushing a deep red over his before pallid face, rose from the stool where he had been sitting, to obey the call. His haste was unfortunate in its results, for in rising he threw from his lap the pencil and paper and other drawing materials which it had held ; and he commenced hurriedly picking them VOL. I. B HENRY LYLE. up, when again the shrill sharp voice came down the stairs — " Henery !" The voice was followed by the OAvner of it, and poor little Henry turned very pale again, more than naturady pale, as he saAv the impersonation of the voice, his grand aunt, appear at the door. Miss Lyle was a rigid lady of fifty -five; very little indulgent to the weaknesses of childhood; very forgetful that she herself had once been a chdd — if indeed she ever had been, which was difficult to believe — and that probably, at that period, she had been a much more unpleasant child than it Avould be easy again to find, judging by the style of woman Avhich she had made.

" Henery!" she repeated, as she arrived at the door — for three syllables she always would make of poor little Henry's name — " why on earth don't you come when you are called ?" " I was coming, aunt," commenced the child; but the sentence was prematurely choked by a good sound shaking, it being Miss Lyle's method to inject morality into the mind by ejecting the breath out of the body. The child caught his breath as he was released from the lady's clutches, and offered no further remonstrance. He was used to it, and had become — the most painful of ad conditions for a child — callous to dl-usage. But Miss Lyle was not to be pacified by patient endurance. Her eye fell upon the scattered articles which had fallen from Henry's lap, and she exclaimed: "Ah! that's what you've been at again! I have told you before, I won't have any scribbling or daubing, making the house in a litter ; give them here !"

The child hesitated. " Give them here !" repeated the lady, im peratively. " I cannot, aunt," said Henry, gathering b2 HENRY LYLE. up the beloved instruments of art, which consisted only of a pencd and three or four common little cakes of paint. Miss Lyle snatched up the little drawing which the chdd had been occupied in making, and without troubling herself to glance at it, she tore it into pieces, and crumpled it into a ball. Little Henry sighed as he saw the labour of a morning destroyed so recklessly; but perhaps the thought occurred to him that he had yet in his possession the power of making many more such ; and he clutched the little hand in which the paints were held the tighter. " Give them here !" repeated Miss Lyle ; and the child answered again, " I cannot, aunt," as if the possibility of his complying with her request Avere beyond his concep tion.

They were all his earthly treasure. Henry Lyle had lost his father and his mother ; all his playthings had been taken from him and burnt by his aunt, on the plea that they made a litter ; but he had still his dear draAving materials, and these he could not part with. Miss Lyle was a woman of de termination, a woman of a strong mind, not caring for the absurd resistance of a child, and that a mere infant of five or six years old; so it took her very little time to twist the paints and pencil out of Henry's hand, which was by no means a strong one, and to toss them into the fire. This feat accom plished, and wound up by a box on the ears of Henry, the lady left the room. But the cry of agony little Henry gave when he fully understood his loss! The blow he endured patiently, but when the giddiness consequent upon it was over, and he saw the cruel fire instantaneously burn ing up the treasures of his heart, he clasped his little slight hands together, and it seemed to his baby imagination that thenceforth the world was to him a blank.

And who was Miss Lyle, who thus tor tured a little soul placed in her care? A woman grown old in vanity and sin ; tar nished by contact with the world, hardened by its evil influences. And the victim, over whom she had become self-constituted ty rant ? A gudeless miniature of the Al mighty Image, fresh from God's hands; a living and palpable reproach in its innocence to such as Miss Lyle for their fud-grown want of it ; the model which was given to ad to attain to, as being what they must resemble ere fit for that kingdom of which such as little Henry are. Henry Lyle had no childhood such as loving parents make for little children. And yet he was happy in his way. His aunt was his tyrant, but the child dreamed and fancied, and drew his fancies upon paper, and was not sad or desponding. Certainly at times, if he caught the eye of Miss Lyle fixed upon him scrutinisingly, the little face would draw down into a gravity most un babylike; but the gravity was soon forgotten when the cause was removed, and Henry was again a child — a thoughtless, uncareful, forgiving child — who would have kissed his tyrant the moment after she had maltreated him.

So innocent a spirit cannot hold un happiness. The occasional money which he received at odd times was by Henry again saved up, and fresh paints and pencils were bought, which were kept more closely than the last, and, spite of all opposition, the beloved occu pation was pursued. Had Miss Lyle been possessed of any taste, or indeed any sense, she would have looked more nearly at the little chdd's artistic pro ductions before so ruthlessly destroying them, although, after ad, perhaps, with such scru tiny, her ultimate acts might have been the same, for Miss Lyle despised anything that bordered upon a litter. Order was her idol ; which extended, however, no further than mere outward arrangements, for we reckon, had any one looked within that stiff erec tion of flesh and bones, there would have been found a great deal of disorderly work, both in the heart and mind of the lady, which was often evidenced outwardly by her ill treatment of the helpless child committed to her charge, and her non-appreciation of what a mind in order wr>uld delight in.

But the way in which Henry Lyle became the charge of this rigid lady ? As we have said, both his parents died when he was at an early age, and, as the child himself ex pressed it, "went to heaven, and left him be hind." Miss Lyle had been very fond of the little dear during her nepheAv's lifetime ; but then she saw the little dear only occasionally, and knew none of the trouble Avhich young children necessarily must give to those who take care of them. When her nephew Lyle died, his wife having gone before him, he entrusted his child to the care of his aunt, and thenceforth Miss Lyle adopted Henry as her own. She intended educating him ; indeed, had com menced doing so; for Avas not Henry be tAveen five and six, and therefore fully com petent to begin hard drudgery and endure the cares of life ?

With the adoption of course Miss Lyle acquired the right of cor poreal chastisement ; also a most necessary ingredient in the education of a very young child. Also with the adoption, for we must not forget the rights as well as the wrongs of the case, Miss Lyle intended making Henry her heir ; but this was dependent upon his own conduct. If he displeased her, of course he forfeited her will, and meanwhile, Miss Lyle had not only the approval of her own easily - satisfied conscience, but the loud encomiums for generosity on the part of the various toadies or satellites whom her income had made her devoted allies. Miss Lyle was possessed of a moderate fortune, and the chdd had nothing prospec tively: for his father had left but a smad sum, sufficient only for his education. This fact the lady impressed upon Henry's mind before he hardly understood the meaning of £ s. d. We have said that Miss Lyle was attended in her earthly rotation by satellites.

In their eyes she could do no wrong, or perhaps, speaking more strictly, according to their tvords, she was faultless ; and with them there was no appeal from the harshness of his grand-aunt for poor little Henry. There was one Avord which was associated Avith his earliest years, which was repeated in tones of warning to him constantly. It was a word which indicated a quality to be abhorred, or, to the child's imagination, a vice to be shunned. That word was Inde pendence. The child was told, at no age at all, that the besetting sin of his dead father had been this. Independently he had lived, married, suffered, and died. He had never complained, and never asked for anything, until he left his chdd unfriended, and asked for the infant what he would not have demanded for himself. Independence had been the ruin of the elder Lyle, and Miss Lyle determined, from the very commence ment of her authority over Henry, to curb into proper submission of spirit any such tendency as the child might display towards freedom of thought and opinion.

Miss Lyle had no knowledge of human nature ; not a particle. It is strange, how many there are living, with the great book hourly open before their eyes, and every ex perience of life calling to the study, who never to their last day learn the universally necessary lesson ; who seem to close their eyes wilfully, and stop their ears, lest obser vation should make them wise, as if fearing to be made more human, and fitter to live in a natural world. Certes, Miss Lyle might justly have started back, reluctant to commence, when the first page presented for her perusal was herself, had she better understood the meaning of it ; but she was unaAvare how repulsive such a commencement was, for by her circle of acquaintances she had been written in characters of Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin ; anything but plain English.

The quality we have alluded to Avas inherent in Henry Lyle, as it had been in his father, in all its native nobility, but it Avas undeveloped, unknoAvn to Henry himself untd his grand-aunt coerced his gentle spirit into the very path she strove to force him from attempting.

Chapter II

Miss Lyle was in the habit of considering herself a lady, yet she was not careful of the language that she used ; and Henry, from his earliest days, had Arivid pictures passing through his mind of unfeminine violence and displays of temper, painful to associate with what should have been the type of gentleness and grace. " Look, aunt, look at the clouds ! they are red, like blood. Is God angry?" asked Henry, at a very early stage of his acquaint ance with Miss Lyle ; and the latter ansAvered sharply: "Don't talk of such ridiculous things, child ;" and, turning to Miss Wigginson, her most constant attendant, she remarked to that spinster, " I ready believe the boy is an idiot." "Yes, indeed, 'm; he talks like it, 'm.r Now Miss Wigginson had never thought for a moment whether little Henry was an idiot or otherwise, but as Miss Lyle suggested such might be the case, of course Miss Wigginson coincided in the opinion, and reaped the benefit of the admission in being allowed to disentangle some knots which had contracted in Miss Lyle's netting by that lady's own carelessness.

"What is an idiot?" asked Henry Lyle, some hours afterwards, of one of the ser vants; and the explanation given set him wondering. Henry did not venture any hypothetical opinions as to the clouds again in his aunt's presence, but he did not there fore escape her imputations. His slate was almost always returned to him with the sum half effaced to be re-added up, accompanied by the monosyllable " Fool !" " I do not think I am a fool," ventured the child, the first time he was so addressed ; but he received a cuff on the head for the contradiction of his superior, and an extra number of the sums he hated. Miss Lyle was too stultified by the rebellion of her charge to make any reproof in words, but she was supported by an indignant chorus of attendant spirits. " Henry, for shame ! If your good aunt says you 'are a fool, you are a fool."

When Miss Lyle's heavy hand was raised to strike the fragile chdd, who looked as if he might have been broken in two by that gaunt woman, did no memory ever rise be fore her mind to check the blow, and make her harshness appear in its true light, as an impiety ? Had she quite forgotten that darkened room wherein she stood, not more than a twelvemonth since, where lay the shadow of the handsome Lyle, who she had ever prophesied Avould " come to a bad end?" Of the badness of his end we will not question. Such a term means, with persons like Miss Lyle, that the one so prophesied of shall meet with an early death — death being the greatest imaginable evd, as indeed it may probably be, to them. That room, relieved alone by the subdued burning of a shaded lamp, Avhich seemed to fall only upon the face of the young man, and throw the grim figure of his aunt into greater gloom, giving to him so spiritual a look that Miss Lyle, who was of the earth earthly, shrank, she knew not Avhy, from contact Avith the half angel, from the glance of those great lustrous eyes, and felt a cold shudder pass through her frame as she took the damp thin hand held out to her, and listened to the voice so changed since last she had heard it, buoyant with manliness and health.

Yet, when Miss Lyle had been summoned to her nepheAv's death-bed unexpectedly — for he had but a few days since landed in Eng land — she had fortified herself to meet a scene of tears and lamentations, of vain regrets for youth suddenly snapped asunder, and hope less mournings at the approach of Death. Death Avas a thing which Miss Lyle ever avoided thinking of. She would not associate it with herself. She hated to hear that her friends were dead, not because of their loss, but it made the whole thing unpleasantly real. She always had avoided sick houses : a death-bed she had hoped never to see, and now it was forced upon her. But Lyle made no such display of alarm as his aunt thought must necessarily be experienced. The visionary and ridiculous ideas, as Miss Lyle had ever considered them, which from boyhood her nepheAv had entertained against the oppositions of worldly policy, seemed strangely to have VOL. I. C acquired solidity, and to have grown into sure bases upon which to rest.

Miss Lyle understood none of these things : she had looked upon them as poetical ab surdities. She detested poetry, and now she could not but blindly, yet silently, wonder at the calm assurance of her nephew as he pressed to his dying breast the boy who was his sole remaining earthly treasure, after the formally given promise of Miss Lyle that she would protect the child. Lyle had a claim upon his aunt to demand thus much for his child at her hands, and so she knew. " And you will never forget your father, and will think of his last words to you, Harry," said Lyle, earnestly looking into the face of his son. " You will strive to lead the life of a Christian, and wrestle man fully and independently with the difficulties of the world ; for it is a painful world, my boy. Your father has found it so, and I fear with your father's blessing you will in herit his cares."

And little Harry, Avith the soft action of a woman, smoothed the hair from off his father's forehead, and kissed him, and pro mised, with his blue eyes wide open, with solemnity, while Miss Lyle did not knoAv exactly Avhat to do ; she felt herself out of place — and she, wearing the form of a Avo man ! — as she looked at the prostrate figure of the dying young man, with the little fair haired, graceful child bending over it, and she wondered that the infant was not afraid. The child was not afraid, even when he saw his father die, but he followed the direc tion of his eyes upAvards, and unconsciously clasped his OAvn little hands as the elder Lyle did so. Miss Lyle found it very difficult to answer the numerous questions put to her most lo gically by her new charge, as to why he still, as he thought, saw his father, and yet was told he had gone to heaven.

She became tired after a time, and ceased attempting to c2 answer them at all, so that Henry Lyle was left to draw upon his own poetical resources for a solution of all these things, and, per haps, came to more correct conclusions with his own angel-taught childishness than he would have done from the explanations of his grand-aunt. Thus the death of Henry's father grew a thing to be remembered only formally as an event, excepting by his chdd, who dwelt upon that evening of his life as the great spot between his careless happiness and his grand-aunt — the division between his being allowed to ask questions and their always meeting with replies, and his yearning for information being cooled. Miss Lyle never reiterated to the boy the dying words of his father, yet they were distinctly remembered with a chivalrous feeling on the part of the child, that his father's principles had dif fered from the feelings of those now around him, and that it was his duty to defend them.

So that when Miss Wigginson once took upon herself to lecture little Henry, he bore the scolding very patiently until the lady made an allusion to the dead Lyle, as " your poor papa, who never would take advice, and therefore suffered for it ; and if you are not careful, Henry, you also wdl come to a bad end." Henry inquired why his father was obliged to take the advice of others when he was doing rightly ? and why was he to be called poor? and what did Miss Wigginson mean by coming to a bad end? and did she intend to say that his father had done wrong in going to heaven? All which questions were asked with such volubdity that the lecturer scarcely knew how to answer, and took refuge in telling Henry that he was a very naughty boy, which latter charge her opponent denied flatly, standing with his legs very far apart, not being endued with respect for the satel lite : and afterwards that bright particular star retailed to Miss Mangles, her familiar, the whole of the conversation, observing that she could make nothing ofthe child, he was so queer that she was half afraid of him, and was sure he Avould never live, particularly as he had a blue vein across his forehead ; in which opinion Miss Mangles, being sub-toady to Miss Wigginson, cordially and enthusiastically agreed.

Chapter III

Henry Lyle received an excellent school education, and from early youth worked in earnest at every study which was presented to him. He was ambitious and energetic in every mental race, and carried off the prizes apparently so easdy, that his competi tors were astonished, but withal so unassum ingly, that he did not lose his friends, but changed them into admirers besides — all, excepting one. He gained the age of seventeen, and his chief desire, his longing ambition, was to go to college. But Miss Lyle understood no such feelings on the part of her protege. He had learnt to read, write, and arithmeticise ; what more was requisite ? Not that poor Henry, with all his love of learning, was much of an arithmetician — figures Avere not in his line ; and so Miss Lyle determined upon Henry's adopting, at the age of seventeen, a position of her choosing.

He should be a banker's clerk. It was a most respectable situation, a rising situation, one which Avould become lucra tive. So, one day, after concluding his last quarter at school, when Henry returned home, yet uncertain what was to be his next circumstance, he was informed by Miss Lyle of the profession to which she intended bind ing him. " So," concluded the lady, " you will have to abandon all your scribbling " — for Henry Lyle was addicted to covering foolscap paper — " and your painting and Avhat not, and be come a steady young man. I have arranged everything already for you. You have only to " " To mount the three-legged stool," inter rupted Henry. " Have you really settled it already, aunt ?" Miss Lyle looked sharply at him. " What now ?" said she, " do not you like your profession ?

I suppose you Avould wish to be a gentleman at large — eh ?" " No," he answered, " Avere I to choose my employment, I Avould be a painter." "A painter!" echoed his aunt,contemptu ously, " don't be a fool ; I should like to see you a painter, indeed ; you had better try it." "When am I to commence ?" asked Henry, submissively. " Next month ; next week, if you can. In fact, I see no reason why you should make any delay. You had best commence at once. But mind you, Henery, I expect you to keep to your employment. I'll have no chopping and changing, if you please." " I Avdl if I can, certainly," the boy an swered. " I just wish to say to you beforehand," resumed Miss Lyle, " that as this is the pro fession I have chosen for you, I expect you to remain steadily at it. You will have, of course, to give up all your present absurd fancies.

You are aware that your father did not leave you much money ; in fact, no more than sufficient to educate you untd now, and to place you in a profession." " I know it," said Henry, rather haughtily. " I ought to knoAv it," he added, probably thinking of the oftentimes he had by his aunt been taunted with the fact. " That no av will be expended when the premium for your new office is paid. There is now left sufficient only to set you going. After that, your course in the Avorld will be dependent upon your own exertions ; for it Avill be according to your future conduct that I make you my heir or not remember." Henry Lyle's face flushed, perhaps his lip curled, and he asked : "Am I not then yet indebted to you for any thing but your protection of me whde a child ?" "I do not know what you mean, sir," answered his aunt.

" You have as yet been educated with the money which your father left for that purpose." He had risen as he spoke, but, upon her answer, reseated himself and sighed, as if relieved. " I Avill enter upon my neAV situation whenever you please, aunt," said he. " When does Mr. Grant expect me ?" Miss Lyle looked a little surprised at the reaction in her nepheAv's manner, but she was satisfied with his acquiescence, and re plied : " Well, Henery, I think you had better begin next week. I see no use in wasting time; I will myself write to Mr. Grant this evening, and next Monday — let me see, this is Wednesday — yes, next Monday you will be ready." Henry bowed his head in compliance, and placing his hands in his pockets, sauntered out of the house. SomehoAV, Miss Lyle felt a little in awe of the child whom she used to knock about and slap.

It Avas not entirely because, though still a boy in years, he had "roAvn to the height of a man — it was not that there was anything imperious, or un yielding, or authoritative in Henry's man ner — he was none of these. He was too quiet, too gentle, and too reflective. These were what galled Miss Lyle. When he raised his eyes and fixed them on her, after a tirade of Avords on her part, she knew that she was loAvered by the contrast, she felt un comfortable, and fidgeted about the room. When he spoke, though his voice Avas Ioav, and his manner gentle and self-possessed, she would not have cared to have interrupted him. She felt it a relief Avhen her nephew left the house, even though he had been perfectly silent whilst in it. Miss Lyle could battle with the most wordy, and fight it out Avith the most vixenish ; but she could neither argue nor listen to reason.

She knew her nephew to be her superior in every respect, and she felt afraid of him. One might see it by the compressed lip, by the nervous tAvitching of the mouth, even when sitting silently in the room with him. Miss Lyle Avas an uneducated wonian, who had, by her woman's tact, contrived to pass through life without any unusual manifestation of ignorance. To most she appeared but an ordi nary person, not distinguishable certainly for mental acquirements, but in no way de ficient. But of her real deficiency she was herself aware. She had native cleverness enough to know it, but not energy sufficient to remove her ignorance. Henry Lyle, boy as he was, was her superior in acquirements, in education, but much more in capacity. She could have forgiven his being better instructed, but not his better judgment, his higher standard of thought.

She could not forget his superiority of moral culture, and feeling herself sink in his presence, even by the calm silence and reflec tive look of the student, Miss Lyle began to hate the boy she had promised to protect and cherish : the more as now she dared not treat him with rudeness or contempt. If Henry Lyle had at random draAvn his profession, as he might have drawn a ticket out of Fortune's wheel, he could not ha\7e gained a more entirely unsuitable one to him. It was not in his nature to sit upon a three-legged stool. Yet day after day he went to town — for Miss Lyle lived in a cot tage in the suburbs of London — day after day he copied rows of figures, with his thoughts wandering away, very recreant to his employment. His face greAv graver, but not more business-like. There was an utter Avant of calculation in the formation of that head ; and often his work was doubled to him by the confusion in which his brains were sent whirling by the maddening little crooked pieces of importance which drive so many to their ruin, and harden the hearts of more.

Messrs. Garrett and Grant were not half satisfied with their neAV clerk. Several times Mr. Grant discovered him leaning ab stractedly over the desk, the ledger-book thrust aside, and the pen busily employed doing what office pens were never meant to do — sketching imaginary scenes; while young Lyle's face wore an expression of animation which no pounds, shillings, and pence would ever have communicated to it. At such times Mr. Grant Avould speak sharply to the young man to recal his atten tion to his orthodox employment, and Lyle would start, having quite forgotten for the moment that it was an office desk he leaned against, an office pen he drew with, and that he was etching on the office paper. He would then, with a checked sigh, return to his dreary employment, but Mr. Grant would shake his head, and inwardly augur or out wardly prophesy to his partner, Mr. Garrett, that young Lyle would never make a man.

To look at him, as he grew paler every day, so tall for his age and so much too slight, many others also might have prophesied the same, although meaning differently to the sense of Mr. Grant. Miss Lyle never noticed it though. She had gained Henry's compliance with her plan, and she saAv very little of him, and ever seemed possessed Avith a fear he should be too late, so that she employed herself every morning in hurrying his departure. One day Mr. Grant, during an interview with Miss Lyle, upon that lady's inquiring of him how her grand-nephew progressed in his situation, expressed his opinion that the office was very unsuited to young Lyle's turn of mind, and his fear that he would never succeed in business-life so long as his mind. was so preoccupied, as it evidently was, with other subjects.