A week afterwards Dando came, and at once recognised Violet. He had grown considerably larger, and was a fine, noble animal.
As Violet had hoped, Agnes took a great fancy to him, and the dog returning it, they became inseparable companions. This relieved Violet of much of her anxiety.
Chapter Five.
A fortnight after Dando’s establishment at The Towers, Aymer came. He looked ill, pale, and careworn, and at once announced that he had left Mr Broughton, and was going to London, literally to seek his fortune.
The monotony had at last proved too much for him, and worse than that was the miserable thought that, after all this work and patience, he was no nearer to Violet. Perhaps after ten or fifteen years of unremitting labour, nine-tenths of which time must be spent at a distance from her, he might, if his health lasted and no accident happened, be in receipt of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum; and how much more forward would he be then?
Not all the poverty and restraint of the years upon Wick Farm at World’s End, not all the terrible disappointment on the very day when every hope seemed on the point of realisation; nothing could dull his vivid imagination, or make him abate one iota of the future which he had marked out for Violet.
In truth, she wondered why he had never asked her to come to him—to be married and live with him in his humble lodgings at Barnham. She would have been happy and content. But to Aymer the idea was impossible. All the romance of his life was woven around her head; he would not bring her to miserable back rooms, to a confined narrow life in a third-class street. It would have been to admit that his whole being was a failure; that he had formed hopes and dreamed dreams beyond his power ever to grasp, and his spirit was not yet broken to that. No, he would struggle and work, and bear anything for Violet’s sake. Anything but this miserable monotony without progress. Had there been progress, however slow, he might have tamed his impatient mind and forced himself to endure it.
Day after day passed, the nights came and went, and each morning found him precisely in the same position as before. His organisation was too sensitive, too highly wrought, eager, nervous, for the dull plodding of daily life. He chafed against it, till dark circles formed themselves under his eyelids—circles which sleep would not remove. These were partly caused by overwork.
Broughton, on returning from Stirmingham, found his affairs at Barnham had got into a fearful state of muddle, and Aymer had to assist him to clear the Augean stable of accumulated correspondence, and satisfy neglected clients. Often, after a long day’s work, he had to carry accounts or correspondence home with him and finish it there, and then after that he would open his own plain simple desk—much such a desk as the one that had belonged to poor Cornet De Warren—and resume his interrupted MS.