World's End Part 13

Aymer could not have a.n.a.lysed her then--if asked, he could have barely recounted the colour of her hair. Yet she dwelt with him--hovered about him; he fed upon the remembrance of her until he had seen her again. By slow degrees he grew to understand the reason of her surpa.s.sing loveliness--to note the separate features, to examine the colours and the lines that composed this enchanting picture. A new life dawned upon him--a new worship, so to say.

It happened that Martin Brown had some business to transact with Jason Waldron. Waldron bore the reputation of being a "scholard;" he was known to be comparatively wealthy; he did not mix with the society of World's End; and he was held in some sort of awe by the rude and uneducated residents in the locality.

Much as he despised that useless Aymer Malet, Martin in his secret heart felt that he was better fitted to meet and talk with Mr Waldron than himself. Aymer was, therefore, accredited to The Place. He went with no little trepidation, knowing that it was Violet's home, and sharing to some extent the local hesitation to meet Waldron, who, being an invalid, he had never seen. Mr Waldron received him with a cordial courtesy, which quickly put him at his ease. When the grey-haired, handsome old man, sitting in his Bath-chair in the shadow of a sycamore tree, extended his hand and said: "I had some slight knowledge of your father, Mr Malet--he came of a good family," poor Aymer forgot his coa.r.s.e dress, and exhibited the bearing of a born gentleman. He could not help admiring the garden in which he found his host. This evidently genuine admiration pleased Waldron extremely, for the garden had been the solace of his retired manhood, and of his helpless age. He began to talk about it directly.

"It is the trees," he said; "it is the trees that make it look well.

Trees are really far more beautiful than flowers. I planted most of them; you have heard the Eastern saying, Mr Malet--that those who plant trees live long. That yew-hedge?--no; I did not plant that. Such hedges are rare now--that hedge has been growing fully a hundred years-- the stems, if you will look, are of immense size. To my mind, the old English yew is a greater favourite than the many foreign evergreens now introduced. The filbert walk?--yes; I planted that. Come and see me in a few months' time, and you shall crack as many as you choose. The old house picturesque?--it is: I wish I had a sketch of it. You draw?--a little; now try. Take out your pocket-book--ah! I see you have a regular artist's sketchbook."

To tell the honest truth, Aymer was not a little pleased to have the opportunity of exhibiting his skill before some one who could appreciate it. He was a natural draughtsman. I do not think he ever, even in later and more fortunate days, attempted colours; but with pencil and crayon, or pen and ink, he was inimitable. Once at work with his pencil, Aymer grew absorbed and forgot everything--even the presence of the invalid, who watched him with interest. The gables and the roof, the curious mullioned windows, the chimney-stacks, the coat of arms and fantastic gargoyles, then the trees and arbours grew upon the paper.

"Ah! that's my window," said a low voice.

His pencil slipped and made a thick stroke--he looked round, it was Violet.

For the first time he looked into her eyes and met her face to face. He could not draw. His hand would not keep steady; he blamed it to the heat of the summer sun. Violet declared it was her fault.

Mr Waldron seized the incomplete sketch, and insisted upon Mr Malet (the t.i.tle, humble as it was, was pleasant to Aymer's ears) returning to finish it next day.

In his confusion Aymer somehow got away, and then remembered that the sketchbook he had left behind was full of drawings, and amongst them there were two that brought a flush to his brow as he thought of them.

One was Violet on horseback; the other a profile of her face. He wished to return and claim his book, and yet he hesitated. A sweet uncertainty as to what she would think mastered him. He dared not venture back.

The next day pa.s.sed, and the next--still he did not go--a week, a fortnight.

He could not summon up courage. Then came a note for "A. Malet, Esq"-- that "Esq" subjected him to bitter ridicule from rude old Martin--from Mr Waldron, inquiring if he had been ill, and begging him to visit at The Place, according to promise.

There was no escape. He went; and from that hour the intimacy increased and ripened till not a day pa.s.sed without some part of it being spent with the Waldrons. Violet had seen her portrait in the sketchbook, but she said not a word. She made Aymer draw everything that took her fancy. Once he was bold enough to ask to sketch her hand. She blushed, and became all dignity; Aymer cowered. He was not bold enough. How could he be? With barely a shilling in his pocket, rough corduroy trousers, an old battered hat, a black coat almost green from long exposure to sun and rain;--after years of ridicule and jeering how could he face her?

His heart was full, but his lips dared not speak. His timidity and over-sensitiveness made him blind to signs and tokens that would have been instantly apparent to others of harder mould. He never saw the overtures that the growing love in Violet's breast compelled her to offer. He tormented himself day and night with thinking how to compa.s.s and obtain her love, when it was his already.

The one great difficulty was his poverty. Think how he would, he could discover no method by which it could be remedied. He had no means of obtaining employment, and employment would imply absence from her. How could he make her love him? He turned to his faithful friend and adviser, dear old Will. The tiny volume of poems was carefully scanned, and he lit upon those verses commencing--

When as thine eye hath chose the dame And stall'd the deer that thou shouldst strike.

He asked himself if he had done as the lover was advised--

And when thou com'st thy tale to tell Smooth not thy tongue with filed talk.

Certainly he had not attempted to beguile her with insinuating flattery--

But plainly say thou lov'st her well, And set her person forth to sale.

This he had not done. How dare he say he loved her well? He had not the courage to praise her person.

And to her will frame all thy ways.

This he was willing and ready enough to do. He believed he had done so already; but read on--

Spare not to spend, and chiefly there Where thy desert may merit praise By ringing in thy lady's ear.

Here he was at a standstill. He could not spend; he could not even dress as a gentleman. He could not make her rich and beautiful presents.

The strongest castle, tower, and town The golden bullet beats it down.

He had no golden bullets--to him the castle was therefore impregnable.

Serve always with a.s.sured trust, And in thy suit be humble, true--

Advice such as this last he could and did follow conscientiously.

Have you not heard it said full oft, A woman's nay doth stand for nought?--

Encouraging to those who could press the question, but he had not even courage to get the first nay. It was the "golden bullet"--the lack of the power to spend--the miserable poverty which pressed upon him with a leaden weight. He did his best to follow infallible Will's advice. He snared twenty hares and sold them; he had still a small gold pencil-case left--it had belonged to his mother. He sold that also.

On foot he walked forty miles to Reading, and spent the whole proceeds in the purchase of a pair of fine jet bracelets, which his instinct told him would look well upon Violet's white wrist. When he had got them, came the difficulty--how could he give them to her? At last he employed a shepherd lad to leave a parcel for Miss Waldron.

He kept away several days, but love was more powerful than shame. He went.

With Violet he strolled up the long shady filbert walk, with the cl.u.s.ters, now ripe, hanging overhead. His heart beat fast, but he said nothing. On her part she was silent. Suddenly she lifted up her arm and reached after a cl.u.s.ter of the nuts high up. Her sleeve fell down; the beautiful arm was bare to the elbow, and there was the bracelet!

Her eyes met his; a lovely colour suffused her cheek. An uncontrollable impulse seized him. He caught her hand and kissed it. Why linger? No one can tell how these things come about. Their lips met, and it is enough.

That was the happiest autumn Aymer ever knew. Even now he looks back at its sweetness with a species of regret. The sunshine was warmer, the blue of the sky richer, the yellow mist that hung over the landscape softer, the bee went by with a joyous hum, the crimson-and-gold of the dying leaves was more brilliant than ever it had been before or since.

Love lent his palette to Nature, and the world was aglow with colour.

How delicious it is to see everything through the medium, and in the company of a n.o.ble girl just ripening into womanhood! I remember one such summer--

But age with his stealing steps Has clawed me in his clutch.

She was very beautiful; it is hard to describe her. It was not perhaps so much the features, the hue of the hair, the colour of the eye, the complexion, or even the shape, as the life, the vitality, the wonderful freshness which seemed to throw a sudden light over her, as when the sunshine falls upon a bed of flowers:--

Idalian Aphrodite, beautiful, Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells, With rosy, slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom, her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder: from the violets her light foot Shone rosy-white, and o'er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vine-bunches Floated the glowing sunlights as she moved.

The modern taste for catalogues compels me to name the colour of her eye and hair. Her eye was full, large, and l.u.s.trous; that deep black so rarely seen--an eye that gave quick expression to the emotions of the heart--that flashed with laughter, or melted with tenderness. Her hair was not quite golden; it was properly brown, but so near the true golden that a little sunlight lit it up with a glossy radiance impossible to express in words. The complexion was that lovely mingling of red and white, which the prince in the fairy tale prayed his lady-love might have, when he saw the crimson blood of a raven he had slain, staining the translucent marble slab upon which it had fallen. The nose was nearly straight; the lips full and scarlet. She was tall, but not too tall. It is difficult for a woman to have a good carriage unless she be of moderate height. Enough of the catalogue system.

They visited all the places in the neighbourhood where Aymer's pencil could find a subject. Now it was a grand old beech tree; now only a grey stone, set up centuries and centuries since as a "stone of memorial" by races long reduced to ashes; now The Towers, the home of Lady Lechester. With them always went Dando, Waldron's favourite dog, a huge mastiff, who gambolled about in unwieldly antics at Violet's feet.

Aymer listened to her as she played. He sat by the invalid under the shadow of the sycamore tree near the open window, where he could see her sitting at the piano, pouring forth the music of Mendelssohn in that peculiar monotonous cadence which marks the master's works and fills the mind with a pleasant melancholy. Now and then her head turned, a glance met his, and then the long eyelashes drooped again. Presently out she would come with a rush, making old Dando (short for Dandolo) bound and bark with delight as he raced her round the green, tearing her flowing dress with his teeth, and whisking away when she tried to catch him.

The grace of her motions, the suppleness of her lithe form, filled Aymer's heart with a fierce desire to clasp her waist and devour her lips, while the invalid laughed aloud at the heavy bounds of his dog.

The old man saw clearly what was going forward, yet he did not put forth his hand to stay it. They were a happy trio that summer and autumn at World's End.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER THREE.

The summer pa.s.sed away, as all things do, the winter, and the spring blossomed afresh, and still the course of true love ran smooth with Aymer and Violet.

The winter had been only one degree less pleasant than the summer.

Violet had a beautiful voice; Aymer's was not nearly so fine: still, it was fairly good, and scarcely an evening pa.s.sed without duets and solos on the pianoforte, while old Waldron, animated for the time beyond his wont, accompanied them upon the violin. He had an instrument which, next to his daughter and his dog Dando, he valued above all things. It was by Guarnerius, and he handled it with more care than a mother does her infant, expatiating upon the quality of the wood, the sycamore and pine, the beauty of the varnish, the peculiar, inimitable curl of the scroll, which had genius in its very twist.

Aymer was a ready listener. In the first place, he had grown to look upon Waldron in the light that he would have regarded an affectionate and beneficent father. Then he was, above all things, anxious to please Violet, and he knew that she adored the Silver Fleece, as she called him, in laughing allusion to his odd Christian name, Jason, and to his grey hairs. And, lastly, he really did feel a curiosity and a desire to learn.