Wylders Hand | Page 3

cousin despatched
it to my head-quarters in town, where from the table it looked up in my
face, with a broad red seal, and a countenance scarred and marred all
over with various post-marks, erasures, and transverse directions, the
scars and furrows of disappointment and adventure.
It had not a good countenance, somehow. The original lines were not
prepossessing. The handwriting I knew as one sometimes knows a face,
without being able to remember who the plague it belongs to; but, still,
with an unpleasant association about it. I examined it carefully, and laid
it down unopened. I went through half-a-dozen others, and recurred to
it, and puzzled over its exterior again, and again postponed what I
fancied would prove a disagreeable discovery; and this happened every
now and again, until I had quite exhausted my budget, and then I did
open it, and looked straight to the signature.
'Pooh! Mark Wylder,' I exclaimed, a good deal relieved.
Mark Wylder! Yes, Master Mark could not hurt me. There was nothing

about him to excite the least uneasiness; on the contrary, I believe he
liked me as well as he was capable of liking anybody, and it was now
seven years since we had met.
I have often since thought upon the odd sensation with which I
hesitated over his unopened letter; and now, remembering how the
breaking of that seal resembled, in my life, the breaking open of a
portal through which I entered a labyrinth, or rather a catacomb, where
for many days I groped and stumbled, looking for light, and was, in a
manner, lost, hearing strange sounds, witnessing imperfectly strange
sights, and, at last, arriving at a dreadful chamber--a sad sort of
superstition steals over me.
I had then been his working junior in the cause of Wylder _v._ Trustees
of Brandon, minor--Dorcas Brandon, his own cousin. There was a
complicated cousinship among these Brandons, Wylders, and
Lakes--inextricable intermarriages, which, five years ago, before I
renounced the bar, I had at my fingers' ends, but which had now
relapsed into haze. There must have been some damnable taint in the
blood of the common ancestor--a spice of the insane and the diabolical.
They were an ill-conditioned race--that is to say, every now and then
there emerged a miscreant, with a pretty evident vein of madness.
There was Sir Jonathan Brandon, for instance, who ran his own nephew
through the lungs in a duel fought in a paroxysm of Cencian jealousy;
and afterwards shot his coachman dead upon the box through his
coach-window, and finally died in Vienna, whither he had absconded,
of a pike-thrust received from a sentry in a brawl.
The Wylders had not much to boast of, even in contrast with that
wicked line. They had produced their madmen and villains, too; and
there had been frequent intermarriages--not very often happy. There
had been many lawsuits, frequent disinheritings, and even worse doings.
The Wylders of Brandon appear very early in history; and the Wylder
arms, with their legend, 'resurgam,' stands in bold relief over the great
door of Brandon Hall. So there were Wylders of Brandon, and
Brandons of Brandon. In one generation, a Wylder ill-using his wife
and hating his children, would cut them all off, and send the estate

bounding back again to the Brandons. The next generation or two
would amuse themselves with a lawsuit, until the old Brandon type
reappeared in some bachelor brother or uncle, with a Jezebel on his left
hand, and an attorney on his right, and, presto! the estates were back
again with the Wylders.
A 'statement of title' is usually a dry affair. But that of the dynasty of
Brandon Hall was a truculent romance. Their very 'wills' were spiced
with the devilment of the 'testators,' and abounded in insinuations and
even language which were scandalous.
Here is Mark Wylder's letter:--
'DEAR CHARLES--Of course you have heard of my good luck, and
how kind poor Dickie--from whom I never expected anything--proved
at last. It was a great windfall for a poor devil like me; but, after all, it
was only right, for it ought never to have been his at all. I went down
and took possession on the 4th, the tenants very glad, and so they might
well be; for, between ourselves, Dickie, poor fellow, was not always
pleasant to deal with. He let the roof all out of repair, and committed
waste beside in timber he had no right to in life, as I am told; but that
don't signify much, only the house will cost me a pretty penny to get it
into order and furnish. The rental is five thousand a-year and some
hundreds, and the rents can be got up a bit--so Larkin tells me. Do you
know anything of him? He says