Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-dayBesant, Walter
General
Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day
Besant, Walter
Fraud -- Fiction; Isles of Scilly (England) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
Now it was all over. For very shame Roland could make no longer any
excuses for staying. His sketch-book was crammed. There were materials
in it for a hundred pictures--most of them might be called Studies of
Armorel. She was in the boat holding the tiller, bare-headed, her hair
flying in the breeze, the spray dashing into her face, and the clear
blue water rushing past the boat: or she was sitting idly in the same
boat lying in Grinsey Sound, with Shipman's Head behind her: or she
was standing on the sea-weed at low water under the mighty rock of
Castle Bryher: or she was standing upright in the low room, violin in
hand, her face and figure crimsoned in the red firelight: or she was
standing in the porch between the verbena-trees, the golden
figure-head smiling benevolently upon her, and the old ships lanthorn
swinging overhead with an innocent air, as if it had never heard of a
wreck and knew not how valuable a property may be a cow, judiciously
treated--with a lighted lanthorn between its horns--on a stormy night.
There were other things: sketches of bays and coves, and headlands and
carns, gathered from all the islands--from Porthellick and Peninnis on
St. Mary's, which everybody goes to see, to St. Warna's Cove on St.
Agnes, whither no traveller ever wendeth.
A very noble time. No letters, no newspapers, no trouble of any kind:
yet one cannot remain for ever even in a house where such a permanent
guest would be welcomed. Now and then, it is true, one hears how such
a one went to a friend's house and stayed there. La Fontaine, Gay,
and Coleridge are examples. But I have never heard, before this case,
of a young man going to a house where a quite young girl, almost a
child, was the mistress, and staying there. Now the end had come: he
must go back to London, where all the men and most of the women have
their own shows to run, and there is not enough sympathy to go round:
back to what the young artist, he who has as yet exhibited little and
sold nothing, calls his Work--putting a capital letter to it, like the
young clergyman. Perhaps he did not understand that under the eyes of
a girl who knew nothing about Art he had done really better and finer
work, and had learned more, in those three weeks than in all the time
that he had spent in a studio. Well; it was all over. The sketching
was ended: there would be no more sailing over the blue waves of the
rolling Atlantic outside the islands: no more quiet cruising in the
Road: no more fishing: no more clambering among the granite rocks: no
more sitting in sunny places looking out to sea, with this bright
child at his side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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