“Yes, old Winnie, they will, very happy, I’m sure; and now I’ll bid you good-night, I’m so tired, very tired; it’s a long tedious way, and I’m always wishing to come back to you, and dear old grannie, and poor old Gilroyd, where we were all so happy, where I always feel so safe—but I believe we always fancy the old times the pleasantest—when I was a child. Good-night, old Winnie.”
CHAPTER XLVI.
VANE TREVOR AT THE WINDOW
William Maubray liked the appointment which his kind friend, Doctor Sprague, had virtually secured for him. It was not a great deal in salary, but opening abundant opportunities for that kind of employment which he most coveted, and for which, in fact, a very little training would now suffice to accomplish him. Literary work, the ambition of so many, not a wise one perhaps for those who have any other path before them, but to which men will devote themselves, as to a perverse marriage, contrary to other men’s warnings, and even to their own legible experiences of life—in a dream.
For three years he would sojourn in Paris. He preferred that distant exile to one at the gates of the early paradise from which he had been excluded. From thence he would send to his good friend, Doctor Sprague, those little intimations of his doings and his prosperings, which he, according to his wisdom, might transmit, for inspection to the old lady at Gilroyd, who might, if she pleased, re-open a distant correspondence with the outcast.
Doctor Sprague, at William’s desire, had written to accept and arrange, and would hear by the return of post, or nearly, and then William might have to leave at a day’s notice. Three years! It was a long time, and Aunt Dinah old! He might never see her or Gilroyd more, and a kind of home sickness fell upon him.
At Gilroyd that morning, Aunt Dinah and Vi sat at breakfast tête-à-tête. The spirits of the old lady were not altogether so bright, the alacrity was gone, and though she smiled there was a sadness and a subsidence. William was banished. The pang of that sharp decision was over. Some little help he should have circuitously through Doctor Sprague; but meet again on earth they never should. So that care was over: and now her other tie, pretty Violet Darkwell, she, too, was going: and although she sat beside her at the little breakfast-table, prattling pleasantly, and telling her all the news of her friends, the Mainwarings and their new neighbours, yet her voice sounded already faint in distance, and the old lady’s cares were pretty well over. Our business here is work of some sort, and not for ourselves; and when that is ended it is time, as Fuller says, to put out the candle and go to bed.
“I’m going to see old Mrs. Wagget to-day. I promised her the day before I went to the Mainwarings,” said Vi, recalling this engagement.