World's End Part 29

Aymer again thanked him, packed his modest little portmanteau, and taking with him his ma.n.u.script, went to The Towers to say farewell to Violet.

When Agnes understood the course he had decided on, she said that she thought he had done right. To any other she should have said differently; to any other of a less highly organised mind she should have said, "Why, you cannot find a better opening." But what would have been meat to others was poison to Aymer. Therefore she applauded his resolution, and told him to go forth and conquer, but first to stay a few days with Violet.

This language greatly cheered poor Aymer, and for a few days he was in a species of Paradise.

It was not even yet fully spring--the wind was cold at times, but still they could go out freely; and with Violet at his side, and Dando bounding along in front, it seemed almost like a return to the old joyous times at World's End.

The hours flew by, and when the last day came it seemed as if but a few minutes had elapsed. It happened to be a wet day--the spring showers were falling steadily, and, unable to go out, they rambled into the old mansion, and strolled from room to room.

The groom had been ordered to get the dog-cart out by a certain time to take Aymer seven miles to the nearest railway station. That station was but a small one, and two up-trains only stopped there in the course of the day--if he missed this he would not reach London that night.

Forgetful of time, perhaps half purposely forgetful, Aymer lingered on, and could not tear himself away.

At length the groom, tired of waiting in the rain, and anxious about the time, waived all ceremony, and came to seek his pa.s.senger.

Aymer pressed Violet's hand, kissed it, and was gone, not daring to look back.

The wheels grated on the gravel, and Violet remained where he had left her.

Agnes came presently and found her, and started. The farewell had been given in the Blue Room.

"You did not say farewell here?" said Agnes, with emphasis.

Violet admitted it.

"Good Heavens--what an evil omen!" muttered Agnes, and drew her from the spot.

From that very room De Warren had gone, forth to his fate: from that room Aymer had started to win himself a way in the world.

It was late at night when he reached London. Nothing could be done till the morning. As he had no experience of the ways of the metropolis, Aymer naturally paid about half as much again as was necessary, and reckoning up his slender stock of money, foresaw that he could not long remain in town at this rate.

Mr Broughton had given him a written introduction to a firm of law-publishers and stationers with whom he dealt--not that they would be of any use to him in themselves, but in the idea that they might have connections who could serve him.

Upon these gentlemen he waited in the morning, and was fairly well received. They gave him a note to another firm who were in a more popular line of business. Aymer trudged thither, and found these people very off-handed and very busy. They glanced at his ma.n.u.script--not in their line. Had he anything that would be likely to take with boys?-- ill.u.s.trated fiction sold best for boys and girls. Ah, well! they were sorry and very busy. Suppose he tried so-and-so?

This process, or pretty much the same process, was repeated for two or three days, until poor Aymer, naturally enough, lost heart.

As he left one publisher's shop, a clerk, who was writing at his desk near the door, noticed his careworn look, and having once gone through a somewhat similar experience, and seeing "gentleman" marked upon his features, asked him if he would show him the work.

Aymer did so. The clerk, an experienced man, turned over the ill.u.s.trations carefully, and then appeared to ponder.

"These are good," he said; "they would certainly take if they were published. But so also would a great many other things. The difficulty is to get them published, unless you have a name. Now take my advice-- It is useless carrying the MS from door to door. You may tramp over London without success. Your best plan will be to bring it out at your own cost; once out you will get a reputation, and then you can sell your next. I don't want to be personal, but have you any money? I see--you have a little. Well, you need not pay all the cost. Go to so-and-so-- offer them, let me see, such-and-such a sum, and not a shilling more, and your business is done."

Aymer, as he walked along busy Fleet Street and up into the Strand, thought over this advice, and it sounded reasonable enough--too reasonable. For he had so little money. When all he had saved from the gift of fifty pounds, his salary, and Broughton's present, were added together, he had but forty-seven pounds. Out of this he was advised to expend forty pounds in one lump; to him it seemed like risking a fortune. But Violet? His book? He could not help, even after all his disappointments, feeling a certain faith in his book.

Westwards he walked, past the famous bronze lions, and the idea came into his mind--How did the hero of Trafalgar win his fame? Was it not by courage only--simple courage? On, then. He went to the firm mentioned. They haggled for a larger sum; but Aymer was firm, for the simple reason that he had no more to give. Then they wanted a few days to consider.

This he could not refuse; and these days pa.s.sed slowly, while his stock of money diminished every hour. Finally they agreed to publish the work, but bound him down to such conditions, that it was hard to see how he could recover a tenth part of his investment, much less obtain a profit. He signed the agreement, paid the money, and walked forth.

He went up the steps to the National Gallery, barely knowing what he did. He stood and gazed down upon the great square, with the lions and the fountains, and the busy stream of human life flowing for ever round it. A proud feeling swelled up within. At last his book would be seen and read, his name would be known, and then--Violet!

Days and weeks went by, and yet no proofs came to his humble lodgings, or rather sleeping place, for all day he wandered to and fro in the great city. When he called at the publishers' office they treated him with supercilious indifference, and--"Really did not know that the immediate appearance of the little book was so important." There were other works they had had in hand previously, and which must have priority.

Aymer wandered about, not only into the great thoroughfares and the famous streets of the City and West End, but eastwards down to the docks, filled with curiosity, observing everything, storing his mind with facts and characteristics for future use, and meantime starving-- for it was rapidly coming to that; and the descent was facilitated by a misfortune which befell him in Sh.o.r.editch, where, as he was standing near a pa.s.sage or court in a crowd, a thief made off with three pounds out of his remaining five.

It is easy to say--Why did not Aymer get work? But how was he to do so with no money to advertise, no introductions, no kind of security to give, a perfect stranger? He did try. He called upon some firms who advertised in the _Telegraph_. The very first question was--Where do you come from? The country! That answer was sufficient. They wanted a man up to London work and to the ways of the City. Aymer modestly said he could learn. "Yes," they replied, "and we must pay for your education. Good morning."

Economise as much as he would, the two pounds left dwindled and dwindled, till the inevitable end came, and the last half sovereign melted into five shillings, the five shillings into half-a-crown, the half-a-crown into a single solitary shilling. Driven to the last extremity, Aymer hit upon the idea of manual labour. He was not a powerful man, he could not lift a heavy weight, but he could bear a great deal of fatigue. He looked round him, he saw hundreds at work, and yet there did not seem any place where he could go and ask for employment.

By a kind of instinct he wandered down to the river and along the wharves. There he saw men busy unloading the barges and smaller craft.

Summoning up courage, he spoke to one of the labourers, who stared, and then burst into a broad grin. Aymer turned away, but was called back.

The ganger looked him up and down and offered him half-a-crown a day; the others earned three shillings and sixpence and four shillings, but they were strong, strapping fellows. Aymer accepted it, for indeed he could not help himself and in a few minutes the poet, author, artist, with his coat off, was rolling small casks across the wharf. At first he was awkward, and hurt himself; the rest laughed at him, but good-humouredly. Some offered him beer.

At six o'clock he, with the rest, was called to a small office and received his day's wages--two shillings and sixpence. He made a meal, the first that day, at a cheap eating-house, and then set out to return to his wretched lodgings, tired, worn out, miserable, yet not despairing, for he had found a means which would enable him to live, and to wait--to wait till the book came out.

For a fortnight Aymer worked at the wharf, and had become a favourite with the men. Noting his handiness and activity, and seeing that he was well educated, he was now put into an office of some little trust, to check the goods as they were landed, and received an advance of eighteen-pence, making a daily wage of four shillings. This seemed an immense improvement; but he was obliged to borrow a week's extra salary in advance to buy a new pair of boots, and was therefore very little better off.

Strolling slowly one evening up Cannon Street, Aymer met the great stream of city men and merchants, clerks and agents, which at that time pours out of the warehouses and offices, setting across London Bridge towards the suburbs.

He walked slowly, all but despondently. It was already a week since he had written to Violet--that in itself was a strong proof of his condition of mind. It is very easy for those who have got everything, to pray each Sunday against envy, and to repeat with unction the response after the command not to covet thy neighbour's goods. It is a different matter when one is practically dest.i.tute, when the mere value of the chain that hangs so daintily from my lady's neck--ay, the price of the m.u.f.f that warms her delicate hands--would be as a fortune, and lift the heart up out of the mire.

He could not help thinking that if he had but the money, the value, of a single much-despised pony that drew a greengrocer's cart he should be almost a prince.

He pa.s.sed under Temple Bar, and entered the busy Strand, walking, as it happened--events always happen, and no one can say what that word really means--on the right hand pavement, facing westwards. Painfully and wearily walking, he came to the church where the pavement makes a detour, and hesitated for a moment whether to cross to the other side or go round the church, and decided, as the road was dirty, and his old boots thin and full of holes, to follow the pavement. "Circ.u.mstances over which we have no control"--these circ.u.mstances generally commence in the smallest, least noticeable trifles. It so happened--there it is again--will anyone explain why it so happened?--that as he reached the entrance to Holywell Street, he glanced up it, and saw for the first time that avenue of old books. The author's instinct made him first pause, and then go up it--he was tired, but he must go and look. Dingy and dirty, but tempting to a man whose library had been obtained by wiring hares. He thought, with a sigh, how many more books he could have bought with his money had he known of the existence of this cheap mart, or had he had any access to it. Here was Bohn's Plato--for which he had paid a hardly got thirty shillings--marked up at fifteen shillings, slightly soiled it was true, but what did that matter? Here was old Herodotus--Bohn's--marked at eighteen-pence, the very book which had cost him three hares, including carriage. The margins were all scribbled over--odd faces and odder animals rudely sketched in pen and ink, evidently some schoolboy's crib. But what did that matter, so long as the text was complete--he cared for nothing but the text. As he lingered and heard the bells chiming seven o'clock, his eye caught sight of a little book called "A Fortune for a Shilling."

It was a catching t.i.tle; he remembered seeing it lying upon the itinerant bookseller's stall in front of the Sternhold Hall. He looked at it, weighed it in his hand. He smiled sadly at his own folly. He had but fifteen pence in his pocket, and to think of throwing a whole shilling away upon such a lottery! It was absurd--childish; and yet the book fascinated him. The bookseller's a.s.sistant came out, ostensibly to dust the books--really to see that none were pocketed. Aymer ran his eye down the pages of the book, feeling all the while as if he were cheating the bookseller of his money. The a.s.sistant said, "Only one shilling, sir; a chance for everybody, sir, in that book." Aymer shut his eyes to his own folly, paid the money, and returned into the Strand with threepence left.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER SIX.

He repented his folly very speedily, for the landlady had advanced him half-a-crown two days before for some necessaries, and now asked him for the money.

Not all the hunger and thirst of downright dest.i.tution is so hard to bear to a proud spirit as the insults of a petty creditor. He could not taste his tea; the dry bread--he could not afford b.u.t.ter--stuck in his throat. If he had not spent that shilling, he might have paid a part at least of his debt.

He took up the book--the cause of his depression--and, still ashamed of himself, began to search it for any reference to his own name. In vain; Malet was not mentioned, there were no unclaimed legacies, no bank dividends acc.u.mulating, no estates without an owner waiting for him to take possession--it was an absolute blank. The shilling had been utterly wasted.

As he sat thinking over his position, the idea occurred to him to see what mention the book made of the great estate at Stirmingham.

There were pages upon pages devoted to Sibbolds and Baskettes, just as he expected. Aymer ran down the list, recalling, as he went, the scenes he had witnessed in the Sternhold Hall.

At the foot of one page was a short note in small type, and a name which caught his eye--"Bury Wick Church." He read it--it stated that it was uncertain what had become of Arthur Sibbold, the heir by the entail, and that inquiries had failed to elucidate his fate. There was a statement, made on very little authority, that he had been buried in Bury Wick Church, co. B--, but researches there had revealed nothing. Either he had died a pauper, and had been interred without a tombstone, or else _he had changed his name_. It was this last sentence that in an instant threw a flood of light, as it were, into Aymer's mind--_changed his name_.

Full of excitement, he rushed to his little portmanteau, tore out his note-book, and quickly found the memorandum made in the office of Mr Broughton, at Barnham.

There was the explanation of the disappearance of Arthur Sibbold--there was the advertis.e.m.e.nt in a small local newspaper of his intended marriage and change of name. Doubtless he had afterwards been known as Mr Waldron--had been buried as Waldron, and his death registered as Waldron. As Waldron of The Place, World's End! Then poor old Jason Waldron, the kindest man that ever lived, was in reality the true heir to the vast estate at Stirmingham.

Jason was dead, but Violet remained. Violet was the heiress. He sat, perfectly overwhelmed with his own discovery, of which he never entertained a moment's doubt. He ransacked his memory of what he had heard at the family council; tried to recall the evidence that had been produced at that memorable _fiasco_; but found it hard to do so, for at the time his mind was far away with Violet, and he had no personal interest in the proceedings. Had he only known--what an opportunity he would have had--he might have learnt the smallest particulars.

Thinking intently upon it, it seemed to him that the name of Arthur Sibbold was rarely, if ever, mentioned at that conference, it was always _James_ Sibbold; Arthur seemed to have dropped out of the list altogether.