United States or Sri Lanka ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It happened that there were only two of us at Aveley at the time, Kaye, and a younger man, Raven, who had just joined. We determined to say nothing about it till the following morning: the day passed heavily enough. I found I could do nothing with the dread of what it might all mean overhanging me.
I was walking with Father Payne one hot summer day upon a field-path he was very fond of. There was a copse, through the middle of which the little river, the Fyllot, ran. It was the boundary of the Aveley estate, and it here joined another stream, the Rode, which came in from the south.
I must confess that I was much excited about my visit; the whole thing seemed to me to be almost too good to be true, and I hardly dared hope that I should be allowed to return. I went back to town and rejoined Vincent, and we talked much about the delights of Aveley. The following morning we each received a letter in Father Payne's firm hand. That to Vincent was very short.
I was met by an old groom or coachman, with a little ancient open cart, and we drove sedately along pleasant lanes, among woods, till we entered a tiny village, which he told me was Aveley, consisting of three or four farmhouses, with barns and ricks, and some rows of stone-built cottages.
So the night passed, thick with recollections and regrets, deepening into a horror of loss and darkness, and then slowly brightening into the calm prelude of a day of farewell. The birds began to chirp and twitter in the ivy; the thrush uttered her long-drawn notes, sweetly repeated and sustained in the dusky bushes. That sound was much connected in my mind with Aveley.
It was a soft and delicious spring morning when I left Aveley and I have never had the heart to visit it again. I had had a sleepless night, with the thought of Father Payne continually in my mind.
If the critic really believed what he said, Aveley was no place for him. Let him go to Chicago! I forget what led up to the subject; perhaps I did not hear; but Father Payne said, "It isn't for nothing that 'the fearful' head the list of all the abominable people murderers, sorcerers, idolaters; and liars who are reserved for the lake of fire and brimstone!
The path went through the copse, dense with hazels, and there was always a musical sound of lapsing waters hidden in the wood. The birds sang shrill in the thicket, and Father Payne said, "This is the juncture of Pison and Hiddekel, you know, rivers of Paradise. Aveley is Havilah, where the gold is good, and where there is bdellium, if we only knew where to look for it.
"'The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Let it stay at that!" I little thought how much I should grow to connect that fairy gavotte with Aveley. It always seemed to me like a choir of spirits. I would awake sometimes on summer nights and hear it chiming in the silent house, or at noon it would come faintly through the passages.
Vincent went first. He spent a night at Aveley Hall, as the place was called. I continued my visit to his people, and awaited his return with great interest. He told me what had happened. He had been met at the station by an odd little trap, had driven up to the house a biggish place, close to a small church, on the outskirts of a tiny village.
Word Of The Day