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.
