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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Amaryllis at the Fair, by Richard Jefferies

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: Amaryllis at the Fair

-

-Author: Richard Jefferies

-

-Commentator: Edward Garnett

-

-Release Date: September 25, 2009 [EBook #30087]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: ASCII

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ***

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-

-Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Emmy and the Online Distributed

-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

-

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-

-

-

-

-

-

-AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR

-

-

-

-THE READERS' LIBRARY

-

-Uniform with this Volume

-

-

-BELLOC, H.

-

-  AVRIL. Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance

-

-

-BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE

-

-  ORBITER DICTA

-

-

-BOURNE, GEORGE

-

-  MEMOIRS OF A SURREY LABOURER

-

-

-BROOKS, STOPFORD A.

-

-  STUDIES IN POETRY. Essays on Blake, Scott, Shelley, Keats, etc.

-

-

-EVERETT, W.

-

-  ITALIAN POETS SINCE DANTE

-

-

-GALSWORTHY, JOHN

-

-  A COMMENTARY

-

-

-HUDSON, W. H.

-

-  GREEN MANSIONS. A Romance of the Tropical Forest

-

-  THE PURPLE LAND. Descriptive Romance

-

-

-JEFFERIES, RICHARD

-

-  AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR

-

-  BEVIS. The Story of a Boy

-

-  AFTER LONDON

-

-

-MCCABE, JOSEPH

-

-  ST. AUGUSTINE AND HIS AGE

-

-

-NEVINSON, H. W.

-

-  ESSAYS IN FREEDOM

-

-

-STEPHEN, SIR LESLIE

-

-  ENGLISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY

-

-  IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

-

-  STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER. First Series. Two Volumes

-

-  STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER. Second Series. Two Volumes

-

-

-WITTE, DR. CARL

-

-  ESSAYS ON DANTE

-

-

-ROOSEVELT, THEODORE

-

-  THE STRENUOUS LIFE. Essays and Addresses

-

-

-ECKENSTEIN, LINA

-

-  COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN NURSERY RHYMES: Essays in a Branch of Folklore

-

-

-CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM, R. B.

-

-  PROGRESS, and other Sketches

-

-

-Additional Volumes will be announced from time to time

-

-

-

-

-

-AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR

-

-BY

-

-RICHARD JEFFERIES

-

-AUTHOR OF "THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME," "AFTER LONDON," "WOOD MAGIC; A

-FABLE," "BEVIS," ETC.

-

-          "Our day is but a finger: bring large cups."

-                                                  ALCAEUS.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-          LONDON

-          DUCKWORTH AND CO.

-          3, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.

-

-

-          Reissued 1904

-          Reprinted in Readers Library 1911

-          _All rights reserved_

-

-

-                 =Dedicated=

-

-                     TO

-

-          CHARLES PRESTWICH SCOTT.

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-INTRODUCTION.[1]

-

-

-"THE book is not a novel" is a phrase often in the mouth of critics, who

-on second thoughts might, perhaps, add with less emphasis, "It does not

-conform to the common type of novel." Fortified, however, with that

-sense of rectitude that dictates conformity to our neighbours and a safe

-acquiescence in the mysterious movements of public taste, the critics

-have exclaimed with touching unanimity--"What a pity Jefferies tried to

-write novels! Why didn't he stick to essays in natural history!"

-

-What a pity Jefferies should have given us "Amaryllis at the Fair," and

-"After London"!--this opinion has been propagated with such fervency

-that it seems almost a pity to disturb it by inquiring into the nature

-of these his achievements. Certainly the critics, and their critical

-echoes, are united. "He wrote some later novels of indifferent merit,"

-says a critic in "Chambers' Encyclopaedia." "Has anyone ever been able to

-write with free and genuine appreciation of even the later novels?"

-asks or echoes a lady, Miss Grace Toplis, writing on Jefferies. "In

-brief, he was an essayist and not a novelist at all," says Mr. Henry

-Salt. "It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will

-dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of

-descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their

-particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stands Gilbert White

-and Gray," says Mr. George Saintsbury. "He was a reporter of genius, and

-he never got beyond reporting. Mr. Besant has the vitalising imagination

-which Jefferies lacked," says Mr. Henley in his review of Walter

-Besant's "Eulogy of Richard Jefferies"; and again, "They are not novels

-as he (Walter Besant) admits, they are a series of pictures. . . . That

-is the way he takes Jefferies at Jefferies' worst." Yes, it is very

-touching this unanimity, and it is therefore a pleasure for this critic

-to say that in his judgment "Amaryllis at the Fair" is one of the very

-few later-day novels of English country life that are worth putting on

-one's shelf, and that to make room for it he would turn out certain

-highly-praised novels by Hardy which do not ring quite true, novels

-which the critics and the public, again with touching unanimity, have

-voted to be of high rank. But what is a novel? the reader may ask. A

-novel, says the learned Charles Annandale, is "a fictitious prose

-narrative, involving some plot of greater or less intricacy, and

-professing to give a picture of real life, generally exhibiting the

-passions and sentiments, in a state of great activity, and especially

-the passion of love." Well, "Amaryllis at the Fair" is a fictitious

-prose narrative professing to give a picture of real life, and involving

-a plot of little intricacy. Certainly it exhibits the passions and

-sentiments in a state of great activity. But Mr. Henry Salt, whose

-little book on Jefferies is the best yet published, further remarks:

-"Jefferies was quite unable to give any vivid dramatic life to his

-stories . . . his instinct was that of the naturalist who observes and

-moralizes rather than that of the novelist who penetrates and

-interprets; and consequently his rustic characters, though strongly and

-clearly drawn, do not live, as, for example, those of Thomas Hardy

-live. . . . Men and animals are alike mere figures in his landscapes."

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-So far the critics. Jefferies being justly held to be "no ordinary

-novelist," it is inferred by most that something is wrong with

-"Amaryllis the Fair," and the book has been passed over in silence. But

-we do not judge every novel by the same test. We do not judge "Tristram

-Shandy," for example, by its intricate plot, or by its "vivid drama," we

-judge it simply as an artistic revelation of human life and by its

-humorous insight into human character. And judged by the same simple

-test "Amaryllis at the Fair," we contend, is a living picture of life, a

-creative work of imagination of a high order. Iden, the unsuccessful

-farmer who "built for all time, and not for the circumstances of the

-hour," is a masterly piece of character drawing. But Iden is a personal

-portrait, the reader may object, Well, what about Uncle Toby? From what

-void did he spring? Iden, to our mind, is almost as masterly a

-conception, as broadly human a figure as Uncle Toby. And Mrs. Iden,

-where will you find this type of nervous, irritable wife, full of

-spiteful disillusioned love for her dilatory husband better painted than

-by Jefferies? But Mrs. Iden is a type, not an individual, the reader may

-say. Excellent reader! and what about the Widow Wadman? She is no less

-and no more of an individual than is Mrs. Iden. It was a great feat of

-Sterne to create so cunningly the atmosphere of the Shandy household,

-but Jefferies has accomplished an artistic feat also in drawing the

-relations of the Idens, father, mother, and daughter. How true, how

-unerringly true to human nature is this picture of the Iden household;

-how delicately felt and rendered to a hair is his picture of the

-father's sluggish, masculine will, pricked ineffectually by the waspish

-tongue of feminine criticism. Further, we not only have the family's

-idiosyncrasies, their habits, mental atmosphere, and domestic story

-brought before us in a hundred pages, easily and instinctively by the

-hand of the artist, but we have the whole book steeped in the breath of

-English spring, the restless ache of spring that thrills through the

-nerves, and stirs the sluggish winter blood; we have the spring feeling

-breaking from the March heavens and the March earth in copse, meadow,

-and ploughland, as it has scarcely been rendered before by English

-novelist. The description of Amaryllis running out into the March wind

-to call her father from his potato planting to see the daffodil; the

-picture of Iden pretending to sleep in his chair that he may watch the

-mice; the description of the girl Amaryllis watching the crowd of plain,

-ugly men of the countryside flocking along the road to the fair; the

-description of Amadis the invalid, in the old farm kitchen among the

-stalwart country folk--all these pictures and a dozen others in the book

-are painted with a masterly hand. Pictures! the critical reader may

-complain. Yes, pictures of living men and women. What does it matter

-whether a revelation of human life is conveyed to us by pictures or by

-action so long as it is conveyed? Mr. Saintsbury classes Jefferies with

-Gray, presumably because both writers have written of the English

-landscape. With Gray! Jefferies in his work as a naturalist and observer

-of wild life may be classed merely for convenience with Gilbert White.

-But this classification only applies to one half of Jefferies' books. By

-his "Wild Life in a Southern County" he stands beside Gilbert White; by

-his "Story of My Heart" he stands by himself, a little apart from the

-poets, and by "Amaryllis at the Fair" he stands among the half-dozen

-country writers of the century whose work is racy of the English soil

-and of rural English human nature. We will name three of these writers,

-Barnes, Cobbett, Waugh, and our attentive readers can name the other

-three.

-

-To come back to "Amaryllis at the Fair," why is it so masterly, or,

-further, wherein is it so masterly, the curious reader may inquire? "Is

-it not full of digressions? Granted that the first half of the 'novel'

-is beautiful in style, does not Jefferies suddenly break his method,

-introduce his own personality, intersperse abrupt disquisitions on food,

-illness, and Fleet Street? Is not that description of Iden's dinner a

-little--well, a little unusual? In short, is not the book a disquisition

-on life from the standpoint of Jefferies' personal experiences? And if

-this is so, how can the book be so fine an achievement?" Oh, candid

-reader, with the voice of authority sounding in your ears (and have we

-not Mr. Henley and Mr. Saintsbury bound in critical amity against us), a

-book may break the formal rules, and yet it may yield to us just that

-salt of life which we may seek for vainly in the works of more faultless

-writers. The strength of "Amaryllis at the Fair" is that its beauty

-springs naturally from the prosaic earthly facts of life it narrates,

-and that, in the natural atmosphere breathed by its people, the prose

-and the poetry of their life are one. In the respect of the artistic

-naturalness of its homely picture, the book is very superior to, say

-"The Mayor of Casterbridge," where we are conscious that the author has

-been at work arranging and rearranging his charming studies and

-impressions of the old-world people of Casterbridge into the pattern of

-an exciting plot. Now it is precisely in the artificed dramatic story of

-"The Mayor of Casterbridge"--and we cite this novel as characteristic,

-both in its strength and weakness, of its distinguished author,--that we

-are brought to feel that we have not been shown the characters of

-Casterbridge going their way in life naturally, but that they have been

-moved about, kaleidoscopically, to suit the exigencies of the plot, and

-that the more this is so the less significance for us have their

-thoughts and actions. Watching the quick whirling changes of Farfrae and

-Lucetta, Henchard and Newson in the matrimonial mazes of the story, and

-listening to the chorus of the rustics in the wings, we perceive indeed

-whence comes that atmosphere of stage crisis and stage effect which

-suddenly introduces a disillusioning sense of unreality, and mars the

-artistic unity of this charming picture, so truthful in other respects

-to English rural life. Plot is Mr. Hardy's weakness, and perfect indeed

-and convincing would have been his pictures, if he could have thrown his

-plots and his rustic choruses to the four winds. May we not be thankful,

-therefore, that Jefferies was no hand at elaborating a plot, and that in

-"Amaryllis at the Fair," the scenes, the descriptions, the conversations

-are spontaneous as life, and that Jefferies' commentary on them is like

-Fielding's commentary, a medium by which he lives with his characters.

-The author's imagination, memory, and instinctive perception are,

-indeed, all working together; and so his picture of human life in

-"Amaryllis" brings with it as convincing and as fresh a breath of life

-as we find in Cobbett's, Waugh's and Barnes' country writings. When a

-writer arrives at being perfectly natural in his atmosphere, his style

-and his subject seem to become one. He moves easily and surely. Out of

-the splintered mass of ideas and emotions, out of the sensations, the

-observations and revelations of his youth, and the atmosphere familiar

-to him through long feeling, he builds up a subtle and cunning picture

-for us, a complete illusion of life more true than the reality. For what

-prosaic people call the reality is merely the co-ordination in their own

-minds of perhaps a thousandth part of aspects of the life around them;

-and only this thousandth part they have noticed. But the creative mind

-builds up a living picture out of the thousands of aspects most of us

-are congenitally blind to. This is what Jefferies has done in "Amaryllis

-at the Fair." The book is rich in the contradictory forces of life, in

-its quick twists and turns: we feel in it there is nature working alike

-in the leaves of grass outside the Idens' house, in the blustering winds

-round the walls, and in the minds of the characters indoors; and the

-style has the freshness of the April wind. Everything is growing,

-changing, breathing in the book. But the accomplished critics do not

-notice these trivial strengths. It is enough for them that Jefferies was

-not a novelist! Indeed, Mr. Saintsbury apparently thinks that Jefferies

-made a mistake in drawing his philosophy from an open-air study of

-nature, for he writes: "Unfortunately for Jefferies his philosophic

-background was not like Wordsworth's clear and cheerful, but wholly

-vague and partly gloomy." It was neither vague nor gloomy, we may

-remark, parenthetically, but we may admit that Jefferies saw too deeply

-into nature's workings, and had too sensuous a joy in life to interpret

-all Nature's doings, a la Wordsworth, and lend them a portentously moral

-significance.

-

-The one charge that may with truth be brought against "Amaryllis at the

-Fair" is that its digressions damage the artistic illusion of the whole.

-The book shows the carelessness, the haste, the roughness of a sketch, a

-sketch, moreover, which Jefferies was not destined to carry to the end

-he had planned, but we repeat, let us be thankful that its artistic

-weaknesses are those of a sketch direct from nature, rather than those

-of an ambitious studio picture. And these digressions are an integral

-part of the book's character, just as the face of a man has its own

-blemishes: they are one with the spirit of the whole, and so, if they

-break somewhat the illusion of the scenes, they do not damage its

-spiritual unity. It is this spiritual unity on which we must insist,

-because "Amaryllis" is indeed Jefferies' last and complete testament on

-human life. He wrote it, or rather dictated it to his wife, as he lay in

-pain, slowly dying, and he has put into it the frankness of a dying man.

-How real, how solid, how deliciously sweet seemed those simple earthly

-joys, those human appetites of healthy, vigorous men to him! how intense

-is his passion and spiritual hunger for the beauty of earth! Like a

-flame shooting up from the log it is consuming, so this passion for the

-green earth, for the earth in wind and rain and sunshine, consumes the

-wasted, consumptive body of the dying man. The reality, the solidity of

-the homely farmhouse life he describes spring from the intensity with

-which he clings to all he loves, the cold March wind buffeting the face,

-the mating cries of the birds in the hot spring sunshine. Life is so

-terribly strong, so deliciously real, so full of man's unsatisfied

-hungry ache for happiness; and sweet is the craving, bitter the

-knowledge of the unfulfilment. So, inspiring and vivifying the whole, in

-every line of "Amaryllis" is Jefferies' philosophy of life. Jefferies

-"did not understand human nature," say the accomplished critics. Did he

-not? "Amaryllis at the Fair" is one of the truest criticisms of human

-life, oh reader, you are likely to meet with. The mixedness of things,

-the old, old human muddle, the meanness and stupidity and

-shortsightedness of humanity, the good salty taste of life in the

-healthy mouth, the spirituality of love, the strong earthy roots of

-appetite, man's lust of life, with circumstances awry, and the sharp

-wind blowing alike on the just and the unjust--all is there on the

-printed page of "Amaryllis at the Fair." The song of the wind and the

-roar of London unite and mingle therein for those who do not bring the

-exacting eye of superiority to this most human book.

-

-                                                    EDWARD GARNETT.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-FOOTNOTE:

-

-[1] Reprinted in part from "The Academy" of April 4th, 1903.

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER I.

-

-

-AMARYLLIS found the first daffodil flowering by the damask rose, and

-immediately ran to call her father to come and see it.

-

-There are no damask roses now, like there used to be in summer at Coombe

-Oaks. I have never seen one since I last gathered one from that very

-bush. There are many grand roses, but no fragrance--the fragrance is

-gone out of life. Instinctively as I pass gardens in summer I look under

-the shade of the trees for the old roses, but they are not to be found.

-The dreary nurseries of evergreens and laurels--cemeteries they should

-be called, cemeteries in appearance and cemeteries of taste--are

-innocent of such roses. They show you an acre of what they call roses

-growing out of dirty straw, spindly things with a knob on the top,

-which even dew can hardly sweeten. "No call for damask roses--wouldn't

-pay to grow they. Single they was, I thinks. No good. These be cut every

-morning and fetched by the flower-girls for gents' button-holes and

-ladies' jackets. You won't get no damask roses; they be died out."

-

-I think in despite of the nurseryman, or cemetery-keeper, that with

-patience I could get a damask rose even now by inquiring about from

-farmhouse to farmhouse. In time some old farmer, with a good old taste

-for old roses and pinks, would send me one; I have half a mind to try.

-But, alas! it is no use, I have nowhere to put it; I rent a house which

-is built in first-rate modern style, though small, of course, and there

-is a "garden" to it, but no place to put a damask rose. No place,

-because it is not "home," and I cannot plant except round "home." The

-plot or "patch" the landlord calls "the garden"--it is about as wide as

-the border round a patch, old style--is quite vacant, bare, and contains

-nothing but mould. It is nothing to me, and I cannot plant it.

-

-Not only are there no damask roses, but there is no place for them

-now-a-days, no "home," only villas and rented houses. Anything rented in

-a town can never be "home."

-

-Farms that were practically taken on a hundred and twenty, or fifty, or

-perhaps two hundred years' leases were "homes." Consequently they had

-damask roses, bees, and birds about them.

-

-There had been daffodils in that spot at least a century, opening every

-March to the dry winds that shrivel up the brown dead leaves of winter,

-and carry them out from the bushes under the trees, sending them across

-the meadow--fleeing like a routed army before the bayonets of the East.

-Every spring for a century at least the daffodils had bloomed there.

-

-Amaryllis did not stay to think of the century, but ran round the corner

-of the house, and came face to face with the east wind, which took her

-with such force as to momentarily stay her progress. Her skirts were

-blown out horizontally, her ankles were exposed, and the front line of

-her shape (beginning to bud like spring) was sketched against the red

-brick wall. She laughed, but the strong gale filled her throat as if a

-hand had been thrust down it; the wind got its edge like a knife under

-her eyelids, between them and the eyeballs, and seemed as if it would

-scoop them out; her eyes were wet with involuntary tears; her lips dried

-up and parched in a moment. The wind went through her thick stockings as

-if the wool was nothing. She lifted her hand to defend her eyes, and the

-skin of her arm became "goosey" directly. Had she worn hat or bonnet it

-would have flown. Stooping forwards, she pushed step by step, and

-gradually reached the shelter of the high garden wall; there she could

-stand upright, and breathe again.

-

-Her lips, which had been whitened by the keen blast, as if a storm of

-ice particles had been driven against them, now resumed their scarlet,

-but her ears were full of dust and reddened, and her curly dark hair was

-dry and rough and without gloss. Each separate hair separated itself

-from the next, and would not lie smooth--the natural unctuous essence

-which usually caused them to adhere was dried up.

-

-The wind had blown thus round that corner every March for a century, and

-in no degree abated its bitter force because a beautiful human child,

-full of the happiness of a flower, came carelessly into its power.

-Nothing ever shows the least consideration for human creatures.

-

-The moss on the ridge of the wall under which she stood to breathe

-looked shrivelled and thin, the green tint dried out of it. A sparrow

-with a straw tried hard to reach the eaves of the house to put it in his

-nest, but the depending straw was caught by the breeze as a sail, and

-carried him past.

-

-Under the wall was a large patch recently dug, beside the patch a grass

-path, and on the path a wheelbarrow. A man was busy putting in potatoes;

-he wore the raggedest coat ever seen on a respectable back. As the wind

-lifted the tails it was apparent that the lining was loose and only hung

-by threads, the cuffs were worn through, there was a hole beneath each

-arm, and on each shoulder the nap of the cloth was gone; the colour,

-which had once been grey, was now a mixture of several soils and

-numerous kinds of grit. The hat he had on was no better; it might have

-been made of some hard pasteboard, it was so bare. Every now and then

-the wind brought a few handfuls of dust over the wall from the road, and

-dropped it on his stooping back.

-

-The way in which he was planting potatoes was wonderful, every potato

-was placed at exactly the right distance apart, and a hole made for it

-in the general trench; before it was set it was looked at and turned

-over, and the thumb rubbed against it to be sure that it was sound, and

-when finally put in, a little mould was delicately adjusted round to

-keep it in its right position till the whole row was buried. He carried

-the potatoes in his coat pocket--those, that is, for the row--and took

-them out one by one; had he been planting his own children he could not

-have been more careful. The science, the skill, and the experience

-brought to this potato-planting you would hardly credit; for all this

-care was founded upon observation, and arose from very large abilities

-on the part of the planter, though directed to so humble a purpose at

-that moment.

-

-So soon as Amaryllis had recovered breath, she ran down the grass path

-and stood by the wheelbarrow, but although her shadow fell across the

-potato row, he would not see her.

-

-"Pa," she said, not very loud. "Pa," growing bolder. "Do come--there's a

-daffodil out, the very, very first."

-

-"Oh," a sound like a growl--"oh," from the depth of a vast chest

-heaving out a doubtful note.

-

-"It is such a beautiful colour!"

-

-"Where is your mother?" looking at her askance and still stooping.

-

-"Indoors--at least--I think--no----"

-

-"Haven't you got no sewing? Can't you help her? What good be you on?"

-

-"But this is such a lovely daffodil, and the very first--now do come!"

-

-"Flowers bean't no use on; such trumpery as that; what do'ee want

-a-messing about arter thaay? You'll never be no good on; you ain't never

-got a apron on."

-

-"But--just a minute now."

-

-"Go on in, and be some use on."

-

-Amaryllis' lip fell; she turned and walked slowly away along the path,

-her head drooping forward.

-

-Did ever anyone have a beautiful idea or feeling without being repulsed?

-

-She had not reached the end of the path, however, when the father began

-to change his attitude; he stood up, dropped his "dibbler," scraped his

-foot on his spade, and, grumbling to himself, went after her. She did

-not see or hear him till he overtook her.

-

-"Please, I'll go and do the sewing," she said.

-

-"Where be this yer flower?" gruffly.

-

-"I'll show you," taking his ragged arm, and brightening up immediately.

-"Only think, to open in all this wind, and so cold--isn't it beautiful?

-It's much more beautiful than the flowers that come in the summer."

-

-"Trumpery rubbish--mean to dig 'em all up--would if I had time,"

-muttered the father. "Have 'em carted out and drowed away--do for ashes

-to drow on the fields. Never no good on to nobody, thaay thengs. You

-can't eat 'em, can you, like you can potatoes?"

-

-"But it's lovely. Here it is," and Amaryllis stepped on the patch

-tenderly, and lifted up the drooping face of the flower.

-

-"Ah, yes," said Iden, putting his left hand to his chin, a habit of his

-when thinking, and suddenly quite altering his pronunciation from that

-of the country folk and labourers amongst whom he dwelt to the correct

-accent of education. "Ah, yes; the daffodil was your great-uncle's

-favourite flower."

-

-"Richard?" asked Amaryllis.

-

-"Richard," repeated Iden. And Amaryllis, noting how handsome her

-father's intellectual face looked, wandered in her mind from the flower

-as he talked, and marvelled how he could be so rough sometimes, and why

-he talked like the labourers, and wore a ragged coat--he who was so full

-of wisdom in his other moods, and spoke, and thought, and indeed acted

-as a perfect gentleman.

-

-"Richard's favourite flower," he went on. "He brought the daffodils down

-from Luckett's; every one in the garden came from there. He was always

-reading poetry, and writing, and sketching, and yet he was such a

-capital man of business; no one could understand that. He built the

-mill, and saved heaps of money; he bought back the old place at

-Luckett's, which belonged to us before Queen Elizabeth's days; indeed,

-he very nearly made up the fortunes Nicholas and the rest of them got

-rid of. He was, indeed, a man. And now it is all going again--faster

-than he made it. He used to take you on his knee and say you would walk

-well, because you had a good ankle."

-

-Amaryllis blushed and smoothed her dress with her hands, as if that

-would lengthen the skirt and hide the ankles which Richard, the

-great-uncle, had admired when she was a child, being a man, but which

-her feminine acquaintances told her were heavy.

-

-"Here, put on your hat and scarf; how foolish of you to go out in this

-wind without them!" said Mrs. Iden, coming out. She thrust them into

-Amaryllis' unwilling hands, and retired indoors again immediately.

-

-"He was the only one of all the family," continued her father, "who

-could make money; all the rest could do nothing but spend it. For ten

-generations he was the only money-maker and saver, and yet he was as

-free and liberal as possible. Very curious, wasn't it?--only one in ten

-generations--difficult to understand why none of the others--why----" He

-paused, thinking.

-

-Amaryllis, too, was silent, thinking--thinking how easily her papa could

-make money, great heaps of money. She was sure he could if he tried,

-instead of planting potatoes.

-

-"If only another Richard would rise up like him!" said Iden.

-

-This was a very unreasonable wish, for, having had one genius in the

-family, and that, too, in the memory of man, they could not expect

-another. Even vast empires rarely produce more than one great man in all

-the course of their history. There was but one Caesar in the thousand

-years of Rome; Greece never had one as a nation, unless we except

-Themistocles, or unless we accept Alexander, who was a Macedonian;

-Persia had a Cyrus; there was a Tamerlane somewhere, but few people know

-anything of the empire he overshadows with his name; France has had two

-mighty warriors, Charlemagne and Napoleon--unfortunate France! As for

-ourselves, fortunate islanders! we have never had a great man so

-immensely great as to overtop the whole, like Charlemagne in his day.

-Fortunate for us, indeed, that it has been so. But the best example to

-the point is the case of the immense empire of Russia, which has had one

-Peter the Great, and one only. Great-uncle Richard was the Peter the

-Great of his family, whose work had been slowly undone by his

-successors.

-

-"I wonder whether any of us will ever turn out like Richard," continued

-Iden. "No one could deny him long; he had a way of persuading and

-convincing people, and always got his own will in the end. Wonderful

-man!" he pondered, returning towards his work.

-

-Suddenly the side door opened, and Mrs. Iden just peered out, and cried,

-"Put your hat and scarf on directly."

-

-Amaryllis put the hat on, and wound the scarf very loosely about her

-neck. She accompanied her father to the potato patch, hoping that he

-would go on talking, but he was quickly absorbed in the potatoes. She

-watched him stooping till his back was an arch; in fact, he had stooped

-so much that now he could not stand upright, though still in the prime

-of life; if he stood up and stretched himself, still his back was bowed

-at the shoulders. He worked so hard--ever since she could remember she

-had seen him working like this; he was up in the morning while it was

-yet dark tending the cattle; sometimes he was up all night with them,

-wind or weather made no difference. Other people stopped indoors if it

-rained much, but it made no difference to her father, nor did the deep

-snow or the sharp frosts. Always at work, and he could talk so cleverly,

-too, and knew everything, and yet they were so short of money. How could

-this be?

-

-What a fallacy it is that hard work is the making of money; I could show

-you plenty of men who have worked the whole of their lives as hard as

-ever could possibly be, and who are still as far off independence as

-when they began. In fact, that is the rule; the winning of independence

-is rarely the result of work, else nine out of ten would be well-to-do.

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER II.

-

-

-PRESENTLY Amaryllis wandered indoors, and was met in the hall by her

-mother.

-

-"What has he been talking to you about?" she said, angrily. "Don't

-listen to him. He will never do any good. Just look at his coat; it's a

-disgrace, a positive disgrace. Telling you about the old people? What's

-the use of talking of people who have been dead all this time? Why

-doesn't he do something himself? Don't listen to his rubbish--wasting

-his time there with potatoes, it is enough to make one wild! Why doesn't

-he go in to market and buy and sell cattle, and turn over money in that

-way? Not he! he'd rather muddle with a few paltry potatoes, as if it

-mattered an atom how they were stuck in the ground."

-

-Not liking to hear her father abused, Amaryllis went upstairs, and when

-she was alone lifted her skirt and looked at the ankles which

-great-uncle Richard had admired. Other girls had told her they were

-thick, and she was ashamed of them.

-

-Instead of the slender things which seem as if a sudden strain would

-snap them, and are nothing but mere bone, she had a pair of well-shaped

-ankles, justly proportioned to what would soon be a fine form; strong,

-but neither thick, nor coarse, nor heavy, ankles that would carry her

-many a mile without weariness, that ended good legs with plenty of flesh

-on them. The stupidity of calling such coarse or heavy! They were really

-ideal ankles, such as a sculptor would carve. Yet these ill-instructed

-girls called them coarse! It was not their fault, it was the lack of

-instruction; as they did not know what was physically perfect, of course

-they could not recognize it.

-

-Let every girl who has such ankles be proud of them, for they will prove

-a blessing to her for the whole of her life.

-

-Amaryllis could not get her hair smooth, though she brushed it for some

-time; it would not lie close, so much had the east wind dried it. She

-opened a drawer, and took out a little bottle of macassar, and held it

-in her hand, balancing probabilities. Would her father see it if she

-used it, or might he, perhaps, fail to notice? She dared not leave the

-bottle on the dressing-table, for if he had chanced to pass through the

-room he would certainly have thrown it out of window, so bitter was his

-antagonism to all oils and perfumes, scents, pomades, and other

-resources of the hairdresser, which he held defiled the hair and ruined

-it, to the deception of woman and the disgust of man. Not one drop of

-scent did Amaryllis dare to sprinkle on her handkerchief, not one drop

-of oil did she dare put on her beautiful hair unless surreptitiously,

-and then she could not go near him, for he was certain to detect it and

-scorch her with withering satire.

-

-Yet, however satirized, feminine faith in perfumes and oils and so forth

-is like a perennial spring, and never fails.

-

-Such splendid hair as Amaryllis possessed needed no dressing--nothing

-could possibly improve it, and the chances therefore were that whatever

-she used would injure--yet in her heart she yearned to rub it with oil.

-

-But the more she considered the more probable it seemed that her father

-would detect her; she had better wait till he went out for the afternoon

-somewhere, an event that seldom occurred, for Iden was one of those who

-preferred working at home to rambling abroad. He was, indeed, too

-attached to his home work. So she returned the bottle to the drawer, and

-hid it under some stockings.

-

-Immediately afterwards it was dinner-time. At all meals the rule was

-that there must be no talking, but at dinner the law was so strict that

-even to ask for anything, as a piece of bread, or to say so much as

-"Give me the salt, please," was a deadly sin. There must be absolute

-silence while the master ate. The least infringement was visited with a

-severe glance from his keen and brilliant blue eyes--there are no eyes

-so stern as blue eyes when angry--or else he uttered a deep sigh like a

-grunt, and sat rigidly upright for a moment. For he usually stooped,

-and to sit upright showed annoyance. No laws of the Medes and Persians

-were ever obeyed as was this law of silence in that house.

-

-Anything that disturbed the absolute calm of the dinner hour was worse

-than sacrilege; anything that threatened to disturb it was watched

-intently by that repressive eye. No one must come in or go out of the

-room; if anyone knocked at the door (there are no bells in old country

-houses) there was a frown immediately, it necessitated someone answering

-it, and then Mrs. Iden or Amaryllis had to leave the table, to go out

-and open and shut the sitting-room door as they went, and again as they

-returned. Amaryllis dreaded a knock at the door, it was so awful to have

-to stir once they had sat down to dinner, and the servant was certain

-not to know what reply to give. Sometimes it happened--and this was very

-terrible--that the master himself had to go, some one wanted him about

-some hay or a horse and cart, and no one could tell what to do but the

-master. A dinner broken up in this way was a very serious matter indeed.

-

-That day they had a leg of mutton--a special occasion--a joint to be

-looked on reverently. Mr. Iden had walked into the town to choose it

-himself some days previously, and brought it home on foot in a flag

-basket. The butcher would have sent it, and if not, there were men on

-the farm who could have fetched it, but it was much too important to be

-left to a second person. No one could do it right but Mr. Iden himself.

-There was a good deal of reason in this personal care of the meat, for

-it is a certain fact that unless you do look after such things yourself,

-and that persistently, too, you never get it first-rate. For this cause

-people in grand villas scarcely ever have anything worth eating on their

-tables. Their household expenses reach thousands yearly, and yet they

-rarely have anything eatable, and their dinner-tables can never show

-meat, vegetables, or fruit equal to Mr. Iden's. The meat was dark brown,

-as mutton should be, for if it is the least bit white it is sure to be

-poor; the grain was short, and ate like bread and butter, firm, and yet

-almost crumbling to the touch; it was full of juicy red gravy, and cut

-pleasantly, the knife went through it nicely; you can tell good meat

-directly you touch it with the knife. It was cooked to a turn, and had

-been done at a wood fire on a hearth; no oven taste, no taint of coal

-gas or carbon; the pure flame of wood had browned it. Such emanations as

-there may be from burning logs are odorous of the woodland, of the

-sunshine, of the fields and fresh air; the wood simply gives out as it

-burns the sweetness it has imbibed through its leaves from the

-atmosphere which floats above grass and flowers. Essences of this order,

-if they do penetrate the fibres of the meat, add to its flavour a

-delicate aroma. Grass-fed meat, cooked at a wood fire, for me.

-

-Wonderful it is that wealthy people can endure to have their meat

-cooked over coal or in a shut-up iron box, where it kills itself with

-its own steam, which ought to escape. But then wealthy villa people do

-do odd things. _Les Miserables_ who have to write like myself must put

-up with anything and be thankful for permission to exist; but people

-with mighty incomes from tea, or crockery-ware, or mud, or bricks and

-mortar--why on earth these happy and favoured mortals do not live like

-the gods passes understanding.

-

-Parisian people use charcoal: perhaps Paris will convert some of you who

-will not listen to a farmer.

-

-Mr. Iden had himself grown the potatoes that were placed before him.

-They were white, floury, without a drop of water in the whole dish of

-them. They were equal to the finest bread--far, far superior to the

-bread with which the immense city of London permits itself to be

-poisoned. (It is not much better, for it destroys the digestion.) This,

-too, with wheat at thirty shillings the quarter, a price which is in

-itself one of the most wonderful things of the age. The finest bread

-ought to be cheap.

-

-"They be forty-folds," said Mr. Iden, helping himself to half a dozen.

-"Look at the gravy go up into um like tea up a knob of sugar."

-

-The gravy was drawn up among the dry, floury particles of the potatoes

-as if they had formed capillary tubes.

-

-"Forty-folds," he repeated; "they comes forty to one. It be an amazing

-theng how thengs do that; forty grows for one. Thaay be an old-fashioned

-potato; you won't find many of thaay, not true forty-folds. Mine comes

-true, 'cause I saves um every year a' purpose. Better take more than

-that (to Amaryllis)--you haven't got but two" (to Mrs. Iden).

-

-What he ate other people at his table must eat, and the largest quantity

-possible. No one else must speak, hardly to say "Yes" or "No," but the

-master could talk, talk, talk without end. The only talking that might

-be done by others was in praise of the edibles on the table by Iden so

-carefully provided. You might admire the potatoes or the mutton, but you

-must not talk on any other subject. Nor was it safe even to do that,

-because if you said, "What capital potatoes!" you were immediately

-helped to another plateful, and had to finish them, want them or not. If

-you praised the mutton several thick slices were placed on your plate,

-and woe to you if you left a particle. It was no use to try and cover

-over what you could not manage with knife and fork; it was sure to be

-seen. "What bean't you going to yet (eat) up that there juicy bit, you?"

-

-Amaryllis and Mrs. Iden, warned by previous experience, discreetly

-refrained from admiring either mutton or potatoes.

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER III.

-

-

-"FORTY-FOLDS," went on the master, "be the best keeping potatoes. Thur

-be so many new sorts now, but they bean't no good; they be very good for

-gentlefolk as doan't know no better, and poor folk as can't help

-theirselves. They won't grow everywhere neither; there bean't but one

-patch in our garden as ull grow 'um well. It's that's big middle patch.

-Summat different in the soil thur. There's a lot, bless you! to be

-learned before you can grow a potato, for all it looks such a simple

-thing. Farty-folds----"

-

-"Farty-folds!" said Mrs. Iden, imitating his provincial pronunciation

-with extreme disgust in her tone.

-

-"Aw, yes, too," said Iden. "Varty-volds be ould potatoes, and thur

-bean't none as can beat um."

-

-The more she showed her irritation at his speech or ways, the more he

-accentuated both language and manner.

-

-"Talking with your mouth full," said Mrs. Iden. It was true, Iden did

-talk with his mouth full, very full indeed, for he fed heartily. The

-remark annoyed him; he grunted and spluttered and choked a

-little--floury things are choky. He got it down by taking a long draught

-at his quart of strong ale. Splendid ale it was, too, the stuff to

-induce you to make faces at Goliath. He soon began to talk again.

-

-"Th' ould shepherd fetched me these swede greens; I axed un three days

-ago; I know'd we was going to have this yer mutton. You got to settle

-these yer things aforehand."

-

-"Axed," muttered Mrs. Iden.

-

-"Th' pigeons have been at um, they be 'mazing fond of um, so be the

-larks. These be the best as thur was. They be the best things in the

-world for the blood. Swede greens be the top of all physic. If you can

-get fresh swede tops you don't want a doctor within twenty miles.

-Their's nothing in all the chemists' shops in England equal to swede

-greens"--helping himself to a large quantity of salt.

-

-"What a lot of salt you _do_ eat!" muttered Mrs. Iden.

-

-"Onely you must have the real swedes--not thuck stuff they sells in

-towns; greens they was once p'rhaps, but they be tough as leather, and

-haven't got a drop of sap in um. Swedes is onely to be got about March."

-

-"Pooh! you can get them at Christmas in London," said Mrs. Iden.

-

-"Aw, can 'ee? Call they swede tops? They bean't no good; you might as

-well eat dried leaves. I tell you these are the young fresh green shoots

-of spring"--suddenly changing his pronunciation as he became interested

-in his subject and forgot the shafts of irritation shot at him by his

-wife. "They are full of sap--fresh sap--the juice which the plant

-extracts from the earth as the active power of the sun's rays increases.

-It is this sap which is so good for the blood. Without it the vegetable

-is no more than a woody fibre. Why the sap should be so powerful I

-cannot tell you; no one knows, any more than they know _how_ the plant

-prepares it. This is one of those things which defy analysis--the

-laboratory is at fault, and can do nothing with it." ("More salt!"

-muttered Mrs. Iden. "How can you eat such a quantity of salt?") "There

-is something beyond what the laboratory can lay hands on; something that

-cannot be weighed, or seen, or estimated, neither by quantity, quality,

-or by any means. They analyse champagne, for instance; they find so many

-parts water, so much sugar, so much this, and so much that; but out of

-the hundred parts there remain ten--I think it is ten--at all events so

-many parts still to be accounted for. They escape, they are set down as

-volatile--the laboratory has not even a distinct name for this

-component; the laboratory knows nothing at all about it, cannot even

-name it. But this unknown constituent is the real champagne. So it is

-with the sap. In spring the sap possesses a certain virtue; at other

-times of the year the leaf is still green, but useless to us."

-

-"I shall have some vinegar," said Mrs. Iden, defiantly, stretching out

-her hand to the cruet.

-

-Mr. Iden made a wry face, as if the mere mention of vinegar had set his

-teeth on edge. He looked the other way and ate as fast as he could, to

-close his eyes to the spectacle of any one spoiling the sappy swede

-greens with nauseous vinegar. To his system of edible philosophy vinegar

-was utterly antagonistic--destructive of the sap-principle, altogether

-wrong, and, in fact, wicked, as destroying good and precious food.

-

-Amaryllis would not have dared to have taken the vinegar herself, but as

-her mother passed the cruet to her, she, too, fell away, and mixed

-vinegar with the green vegetables. All women like vinegar.

-

-When the bottle was restored to the cruet-stand Mr. Iden deigned to look

-round again at the table.

-

-"Ha! you'll cut your thumb!" he shouted to Amaryllis, who was cutting a

-piece of bread. She put the loaf down with a consciousness of guilt.

-"Haven't I told you how to cut bread twenty times? Cutting towards your

-thumb like that! Hold your left hand lower down, so that if the knife

-slips it will go over. Here, like this. Give it to me."

-

-He cut a slice to show her, and then tossed the slice across the table

-so accurately that it fell exactly into its proper place by her plate.

-He had a habit of tossing things in that way.

-

-"Why ever couldn't you pass it on the tray?" said Mrs. Iden. "Flinging

-in that manner! I hate to see it."

-

-Amaryllis, as in duty bound, in appearance took the lesson in

-bread-cutting to heart, as she had done twenty times before. But she

-knew she should still cut a loaf in the same dangerous style when out of

-his sight. She could not do it in the safe way--it was so much easier in

-the other; and if she did cut her hand she did not greatly care.

-

-"Now perhaps you'll remember," said the master, getting up with his

-plate in his hand.

-

-"Whatever _are_ you going to do now?" asked Mrs. Iden, who knew

-perfectly well.

-

-"Going to warm the plate." He went out into the kitchen, sat down by the

-fire, and carefully warmed his plate for a second helping.

-

-"I should think you couldn't want any more," said Mrs. Iden when he came

-back. "You had enough the first time for three."

-

-But Iden, who had the appetite of a giant, and had never ruined his

-digestion with vinegar or sauces, piled another series of thick slices

-on his plate, now hot to liquefy the gravy, and added to the meat a just

-proportion of vegetables. In proportion and a just mixture the secret of

-eating successfully consisted, according to him.

-

-First he ate a piece of the dark brown mutton, this was immediately

-followed by a portion of floury potato, next by a portion of swede

-tops, and then, lest a too savoury taste should remain in the mouth, he

-took a fragment of bread, as it were to sweeten and cleanse his teeth.

-Finally came a draught of strong ale, and after a brief moment the same

-ingredients were mixed in the same order as before. His dinner was thus

-eaten in a certain order, and with a kind of rhythm, duly exciting each

-particular flavour like a rhyme in its proper position, and duly putting

-it out with its correct successor. Always the savour of meat and gravy

-and vegetables had to be toned down by the ultimate bread, a vast piece

-of which he kept beside him. He was a great bread eater--it was always

-bread after everything, and if there were two courses then bread between

-to prepare the palate, and to prevent the sweets from quarrelling with

-the acids. Organization was the chief characteristic of his mind--his

-very dinner was organized and well planned, and any break or disturbance

-was not so much an annoyance in itself as destructive of a clever

-design, like a stick thrust through the web of a geometrical spider.

-

-This order of mouthfuls had been explained over and over again to the

-family, and if they felt that he was in a more than usually terrible

-mood, and if they felt his gaze upon them, the family to some extent

-submitted. Neither Mrs. Iden nor Amaryllis, however, could ever educate

-their palates into this fixed sequence of feeding; and, if Iden was not

-in a very awful and Jovelike mood, they wandered about irregularly in

-their eating. When the dinner was over (and, indeed, before it began)

-they had a way of visiting the larder, and "picking" little fragments of

-pies, or cold fowl, even a cold potato, the smallest mug--a quarter of a

-pint of the Goliath ale between them, or, if it was to be had, a sip of

-port wine. These women were very irrational in their feeding; they

-actually put vinegar on cold cabbage; they gloated over a fragment of

-pickled salmon about eleven o'clock in the morning. They had a herring

-sometimes for tea--the smell of it cooking sent the master into fits of

-indignation, he abominated it so, but they were so hardened and lost to

-righteousness they always repeated the offence next time the itinerant

-fish-dealer called. You could not drum them into good solid,

-straightforward eating.

-

-They generally had a smuggled bit of pastry to eat in the kitchen after

-dinner, for Mr. Iden considered that no one could need a second course

-after first-rate mutton and forty-folds. A morsel of cheese if you

-liked--nothing more. In summer the great garden abounded with fruit; he

-would have nothing but rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, day after day, or else

-black-currant pudding. He held that black currants were the most

-wholesome fruit that grew; if he fancied his hands were not quite clean

-he would rub them with black-currant leaves to give them a pleasant

-aromatic odour (as ladies use scented soap). He rubbed them with

-walnut-leaves for the same purpose.

-

-Of salad in its season he was a great eater, cucumber especially, and

-lettuce and celery; but a mixed salad (oil and a flash, as it were, of

-Worcester sauce) was a horror to him. A principle ran through all his

-eating--an idea, a plan and design.

-

-I assure you it is a very important matter this eating, a man's fortune

-depends on his dinner. I should have been as rich as Croesus if I

-could only have eaten what I liked all my time; I am sure I should, now

-I come to look back.

-

-The soundest and most wholesome food in the world was set on Mr. Iden's

-table; you may differ from his system, but you would have enjoyed the

-dark brown mutton, the floury potatoes, the fresh vegetables and fruit

-and salad, and the Goliath ale.

-

-When he had at last finished his meal he took his knife and carefully

-scraped his crumbs together, drawing the edge along the cloth, first one

-way and then the other, till he had a little heap; for, eating so much

-bread, he made many crumbs. Having got them together, he proceeded to

-shovel them into his mouth with the end of his knife, so that not one

-was wasted. Sometimes he sprinkled a little moist sugar over them with

-his finger and thumb. He then cut himself a slice of bread and cheese,

-and sat down with it in his arm-chair by the fire, spreading his large

-red-and-yellow silk handkerchief on his knee to catch the fragments in

-lieu of a plate.

-

-"Why can't you eat your cheese at the table, like other people?" said

-Mrs. Iden, shuffling her feet with contemptuous annoyance. A deep grunt

-in the throat was the answer she received; at the same time he turned

-his arm-chair more towards the fire, as much as to say, "Other people

-are nothing to me."

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IV.

-

-

-THIS arm-chair, of old-fashioned make, had lost an arm--the screw

-remained sticking up, but the woodwork on that side was gone. It had

-been accidentally broken some ten years since; yet, although he used the

-chair every day, the arm had never been mended. Awkward as it was, he

-let it alone.

-

-"Hum! where's _The Standard_, then?" he said presently, as he nibbled

-his cheese and sipped the ale which he had placed on the hob.

-

-"Here it is, Pa," said Amaryllis, hastening with the paper.

-

-"Thought you despised the papers?" said Mrs. Iden. "Thought there was

-nothing but lies and rubbish in them, according to you?"

-

-"No more thur bean't."

-

-"You always take good care to read them, though."

-

-"Hum!" Another deep grunt, and another slight turn of the chair. He

-could not answer this charge of inconsistency, for it was a fact that

-he affected to despise the newspaper and yet read it with avidity, and

-would almost as soon have missed his ale as his news.

-

-However, to settle with his conscience, he had a manner of holding the

-paper half aslant a good way from him, and every now and then as he read

-uttered a dissentient or disgusted grunt.

-

-The master's taking up his paper was a signal for all other persons to

-leave the room, and not to return till he had finished his news and his

-nap.

-

-Mrs. Iden and Amaryllis, as they went out, each took as many of the

-dishes as they could carry, for it was uncertain when they could come in

-again to clear the table. The cloth must not be moved, the door opened,

-or the slightest sound heard till the siesta was over.

-

-"Can't clear the dinner things till four o'clock," said Mrs. Iden as she

-went, "and then you want your tea--senseless!" Amaryllis shut the door,

-and the master was left to himself.

-

-By-and-by, his cheese being finished, he dropped his newspaper, and

-arranged himself for slumber. His left elbow he carefully fitted to the

-remnant of the broken woodwork of the chair. The silk handkerchief, red

-and yellow, he gathered into a loose pad in his left hand for his cheek

-and temple to rest on. His face was thus supported by his hand and arm,

-while the side of his head touched and rested against the wainscot of

-the wall.

-

-Just where his head touched it the wainscot had been worn away by the

-daily pressure, leaving a round spot. The wood was there exposed--a

-round spot, an inch or two in diameter, being completely bare of

-varnish. So many nods--the attrition of thirty years and more of

-nodding--had gradually ground away the coat with which the painter had

-originally covered the wood. It even looked a little hollow--a little

-depressed--as if his head had scooped out a shallow crater; but this was

-probably an illusion, the eye being deceived by the difference in colour

-between the wood and the varnish around it.

-

-This human mark reminded one of the grooves worn by the knees of

-generations of worshippers in the sacred steps of the temple which they

-ascended on all-fours. It was, indeed, a mark of devotion, as Mrs. Iden

-and others, not very keen observers, would have said, to the god of

-Sleep; in truth, it was a singular instance of continued devotion at the

-throne of the god of Thought.

-

-It was to think that Mr. Iden in the commencement assumed this posture

-of slumber, and commanded silence. But thought which has been cultivated

-for a third of a century is apt to tone down to something very near

-somnolence.

-

-That panel of wainscot was, in fact, as worthy of preservation as those

-on which the early artists delineated the Madonna and Infant, and for

-which high prices are now paid. It was intensely--superlatively--human.

-Worn in slow time by a human head within which a great mind was working

-under the most unhappy conditions, it had the deep value attaching to

-inanimate things which have witnessed intolerable suffering.

-

-I am not a Roman Catholic, but I must confess that if I could be assured

-any particular piece of wood had really formed a part of the Cross I

-should think it the most valuable thing in the world, to which

-Koh-i-noors would be mud.

-

-I am a pagan, and think the heart and soul above crowns.

-

-That panel was in effect a cross on which a heart had been tortured for

-the third of a century, that is, for the space of time allotted to a

-generation.

-

-That mark upon the panel had still a further meaning, it represented the

-unhappiness, the misfortunes, the Nemesis of two hundred years. This

-family of Idens had endured already two hundred years of unhappiness and

-discordance for no original fault of theirs, simply because they had

-once been fortunate of old time, and therefore they had to work out that

-hour of sunshine to the utmost depths of shadow.

-

-The panel of the wainscot upon which that mark had been worn was in

-effect a cross upon which a human heart had been tortured--and thought

-can, indeed, torture--for a third of a century. For Iden had learned to

-know himself, and despaired.

-

-Not long after he had settled himself and closed his eyes the handle of

-the door was very softly turned, and Amaryllis stole in for her book,

-which she had forgotten. She succeeded in getting it on tiptoe without a

-sound, but in shutting the door the lock clicked, and she heard him

-kick the fender angrily with his iron-shod heel.

-

-After that there was utter silence, except the ticking of the American

-clock--a loud and distinct tick in the still (and in that sense vacant)

-room.

-

-Presently a shadow somewhat darkened the window, a noiseless shadow;

-Mrs. Iden had come quietly round the house, and stood in the March wind,

-watching the sleeping man. She had a shawl about her shoulders--she put

-out her clenched hand from under its folds, and shook her fist at him,

-muttering to herself, "Never _do_ anything; nothing but sleep, sleep,

-sleep: talk, talk, talk; never _do_ anything. That's what I hate."

-

-The noiseless shadow disappeared; the common American clock continued

-its loud tick, tick.

-

-Slight sounds, faint rustlings, began to be audible among the cinders in

-the fender. The dry cinders were pushed about by something passing

-between them. After a while a brown mouse peered out at the end of the

-fender under Iden's chair, looked round a moment, and went back to the

-grate. In a minute he came again, and ventured somewhat farther across

-the width of the white hearthstone to the verge of the carpet. This

-advance was made step by step, but on reaching the carpet the mouse

-rushed home to cover in one run--like children at "touch wood," going

-out from a place of safety very cautiously, returning swiftly. The next

-time another mouse followed, and a third appeared at the other end of

-the fender. By degrees they got under the table, and helped themselves

-to the crumbs; one mounted a chair and reached the cloth, but soon

-descended, afraid to stay there. Five or six mice were now busy at their

-dinner.

-

-The sleeping man was as still and quiet as if carved.

-

-A mouse came to the foot, clad in a great rusty-hued iron-shod boot--the

-foot that rested on the fender, for he had crossed his knees. His ragged

-and dingy trouser, full of March dust, and earth-stained by labour, was

-drawn up somewhat higher than the boot. It took the mouse several trials

-to reach the trouser, but he succeeded, and audaciously mounted to

-Iden's knee. Another quickly followed, and there the pair of them

-feasted on the crumbs of bread and cheese caught in the folds of his

-trousers.

-

-One great brown hand was in his pocket, close to them--a mighty hand,

-beside which they were pigmies indeed in the land of the giants. What

-would have been the value of their lives between a finger and thumb that

-could crack a ripe and strong-shelled walnut?

-

-The size--the mass--the weight of his hand alone was as a hill

-overshadowing them; his broad frame like the Alps; his head high above

-as a vast rock that overhung the valley.

-

-His thumb-nail--widened by labour with spade and axe--his thumb-nail

-would have covered either of the tiny creatures as his shield covered

-Ajax.

-

-Yet the little things fed in perfect confidence. He was so still, so

-_very_ still--quiescent--they feared him no more than they did the wall;

-they could not hear his breathing.

-

-Had they been gifted with human intelligence that very fact would have

-excited their suspicions. Why so very, _very_ still? Strong men, wearied

-by work, do not sleep quietly; they breathe heavily. Even in firm sleep

-we move a little now and then, a limb trembles, a muscle quivers, or

-stretches itself.

-

-But Iden was so still it was evident he was really wide awake and

-restraining his breath, and exercising conscious command over his

-muscles, that this scene might proceed undisturbed.

-

-Now the strangeness of the thing was in this way: Iden set traps for

-mice in the cellar and the larder, and slew them there without mercy. He

-picked up the trap, swung it round, opening the door at the same

-instant, and the wretched captive was dashed to death upon the stone

-flags of the floor. So he hated them and persecuted them in one place,

-and fed them in another.

-

-A long psychological discussion might be held on this apparent

-inconsistency, but I shall leave analysis to those who like it, and go

-on recording facts. I will only make one remark. That nothing is

-consistent that is human. If it was not inconsistent it would have no

-association with a living person.

-

-From the merest thin slit, as it were, between his eyelids, Iden watched

-the mice feed and run about his knees till, having eaten every crumb,

-they descended his leg to the floor.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER V.

-

-

-HE was not asleep--he was thinking. Sometimes, of course, it happened

-that slumber was induced by the position in which he placed himself;

-slumber, however, was not his intent. He liked to rest after his midday

-meal and think. There was no real loss of time in it--he had been at

-work since half-past five.

-

-His especial and striking characteristic was a very large, high, and

-noble forehead--the forehead attributed to Shakespeare and seen in his

-busts. Shakespeare's intellect is beyond inquiry, yet he was not

-altogether a man of action. He was, indeed, an actor upon the stage;

-once he stole the red deer (delightful to think of that!), but he did

-not sail to the then new discovered lands of America, nor did he fight

-the Spaniards. So much intellect is, perhaps, antagonistic to action, or

-rather it is averse to those arts by which a soldier climbs to the

-position of commander. If Shakespeare by the chance of birth, or other

-accident, had had the order of England's forces, we should have seen

-generalship such as the world had not known since Caesar.

-

-His intellect was too big to climb backstairs till opportunity came. We

-have great thoughts instead of battles.

-

-Iden's forehead might have been sculptured for Shakespeare's. There was

-too much thought in it for the circumstances of his life. It is possible

-to think till you cannot act.

-

-After the mice descended Iden did sleep for a few minutes. When he awoke

-he looked at the clock in a guilty way, and then opening the oven of the

-grate, took out a baked apple. He had one there ready for him almost

-always--always, that is, when they were not ripe on the trees.

-

-A baked apple, he said, was the most wholesome thing in the world; it

-corrected the stomach, prevented acidity, improved digestion, and gave

-tone to all the food that had been eaten previously. If people would

-only eat baked apples they would not need to be for ever going to the

-chemists' shops for drugs and salines to put them right. The women were

-always at the chemists' shops--you could never pass the chemists' shops

-in the town without seeing two or three women buying something.

-

-The apple was the apple of fruit, the natural medicine of man--and the

-best flavoured. It was compounded of the sweetest extracts and essences

-of air and light, put together of sunshine and wind and shower in such a

-way that no laboratory could imitate: and so on in a strain and with a

-simplicity of language that reminded you of Bacon and his philosophy of

-the Elizabethan age.

-

-Iden in a way certainly had a tinge of the Baconian culture, naturally,

-and not from any study of that author, whose books he had never seen.

-The great Bacon was, in fact, a man of orchard and garden, and gathered

-his ideas from the fields.

-

-Just look at an apple on the tree, said Iden. Look at a Blenheim orange,

-the inimitable mixture of colour, the gold and bronze, and ruddy tints,

-not bright colours--undertones of bright colours--smoothed together and

-polished, and made the more delightful by occasional roughness in the

-rind. Or look at the brilliant King Pippin. Now he was getting older he

-found, however, that the finest of them all was the russet. For eating,

-at its proper season, it was good, but for cooking it was simply the

-Imperial Caesar and Sultan of apples; whether for baking, or pies, or

-sauce, there was none to equal it. Apple-sauce made of the real true

-russet was a sauce for Jove's own table. It was necessary that it should

-be the real russet. Indeed in apple trees you had to be as careful of

-breeding and pedigree as the owners of racing stables were about their

-horses.

-

-Ripe apples could not be got all the year round in any variety; besides

-which, in winter and cold weather the crudity of the stomach needed to

-be assisted with a little warmth; therefore bake them.

-

-People did not eat nearly enough fruit now-a-days; they had too much

-butcher's meat, and not enough fruit--that is, home-grown fruit,

-straight from orchard or garden, not the half-sour stuff sold in the

-shops, picked before it was ready.

-

-The Americans were much wiser (he knew a good deal about America--he had

-been there in his early days, before thought superseded action)--the

-Americans had kept up many of the fine old English customs of two or

-three hundred years since, and among these was the eating of fruit. They

-were accused of being so modern, so very, very modern, but, in fact, the

-country Americans, with whom he had lived (and who had taught him how to

-chop) maintained much of the genuine antique life of old England.

-

-They had first-rate apples, yet it was curious that the same trees

-produced an apple having a slightly different flavour to what it had in

-this country. You could always distinguish an American apple by its

-peculiar piquancy--a sub-acid piquancy, a wild strawberry piquancy, a

-sort of woodland, forest, backwoods delicacy of its own. And so on, and

-so on--"talk, talk, talk," as Mrs. Iden said.

-

-After his baked apple he took another guilty look at the clock, it was

-close on four, and went into the passage to get his hat. In farmhouses

-these places are called passages; in the smallest of villas, wretched

-little villas not fit to be called houses, they are always "halls."

-

-In the passage Mrs. Iden was waiting for him, and began to thump his

-broad though bowed back with all her might.

-

-"Sleep, sleep, sleep!" she cried, giving him a thump at each word.

-"You've slept two hours. (Thump.) You sleep till you stupefy yourself

-(thump), and then you go and dig. What's the use of digging? (Thump.)

-Why don't you make some money? (Thump.) Talk and sleep! (Thump.) I hate

-it. (Thump.) You've rubbed the paint off the wainscot with your sleep,

-sleep, sleep (thump)--there's one of your hairs sticking to the paint

-where your head goes. (Thump.) Anything more hateful--sleep (thump),

-talk (thump), sleep (thump). Go on!"

-

-She had thumped him down the passage, and across the covered-in court to

-the door opening on the garden. There he paused to put on his hat--an

-aged, battered hat--some sort of nondescript bowler, broken, grey,

-weather-stained, very battered and very aged--a pitiful hat to put above

-that broad, Shakespearian forehead. While he fitted it on he was thumped

-severely: when he opened the door he paused, and involuntarily looked up

-at the sky to see about the weather--a habit all country people

-have--and so got more thumping, ending as he started out with a

-tremendous push. He did not seem to resent the knocks, nor did the push

-accelerate his pace; he took it very much as he took the March wind.

-

-Mrs. Iden slammed the door, and went in to clear the dinner things, and

-make ready for tea. Amaryllis helped her.

-

-"He'll want his tea in half an hour," said Mrs. Iden. "What's the use of

-his going out to work for half an hour?"

-

-Amaryllis was silent. She was very fond of her father; he never did

-anything wrong in her eyes, and she could have pointed out that when he

-sat down to dinner at one he had already worked as many hours as Mrs.

-Iden's model City gentleman in a whole day. His dinner at one was, in

-effect, equivalent to their dinner at seven or eight, over which they

-frequently lingered an hour or two. He would still go on labouring,

-almost another half day. But she held her peace, for, on the other hand,

-she could not contradict and argue with her mother, whom she knew had

-had a wearisome life and perpetual disappointments.

-

-Mrs. Iden grumbled on to herself, working herself into a more fiery

-passion, till at last she put down the tea-pot, and rushed into the

-garden. There as she came round the first thing she saw was the

-daffodil, the beautiful daffodil Amaryllis had discovered. Beside

-herself with indignation--what was the use of flowers or potatoes?--Mrs.

-Iden stepped on the border and trampled the flower under foot till it

-was shapeless. After this she rushed indoors again and upstairs to her

-bedroom, where she locked herself in, and fumbled about in the old black

-oak chest of drawers till she found a faded lavender glove.

-

-That glove had been worn at the old "Ship" at Brighton years and years

-ago in the honeymoon trip: in those days bridal parties went down by

-coach. Faded with years, it had also faded from the tears that had

-fallen upon it. She turned it over in her hands, and her tears spotted

-it once more.

-

-Amaryllis went on with the tea-making; for her mother to rush away in

-that manner was nothing new. She toasted her father a piece of toast--he

-affected to despise toast, but he always ate it if it was there, and

-looked about for it if it was not, though he never said anything. The

-clock struck five, and out she went to tell him tea was ready. Coming

-round the house she found her daffodil crushed to pieces.

-

-"Oh!" The blood rushed to her forehead; then her beautiful lips pouted

-and quivered; tears filled her eyes, and her breast panted. She knew

-immediately who had done it; she ran to her bedroom to cry and to hide

-her grief and indignation.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VI.

-

-

-LADY-DAY Fair came round by and by, and Amaryllis, about eleven o'clock

-in the morning, went down the garden to the end of the orchard, where

-she could overlook the highway without being seen, and watch the folk go

-past. Just there the road began to descend into a hollow, while the

-garden continued level, so that Amaryllis, leaning her arm on the top of

-the wall, was much higher up than those who went along. The wall dropped

-quite fourteen feet down to the road, a rare red brick wall--thick and

-closely-built, the bricks close together with thin seams of mortar, so

-that the fibres of the whole mass were worked and compressed and bound

-firm, like the fibres of a piece of iron. The deep red bricks had a

-colour--a certain richness of stability--and at the top this good piece

-of workmanship was protected from the weather by a kind of cap, and

-ornamented with a projecting ridge. Within the wall Amaryllis could

-stand on a slight bank, and easily look over it. Without there was a

-sheer red precipice of fourteen feet down to the dusty sward and

-nettles beside the road.

-

-Some bare branches of a plum tree trained against the wall rose thin and

-tapering above it in a bunch, a sign of bad gardening, for they ought to

-have been pruned, and the tree, indeed, had an appearance of neglect.

-One heavy bough had broken away from the nails and list, and drooped to

-the ground, and the shoots of last year, not having been trimmed, thrust

-themselves forward presumptuously.

-

-Behind the bunch of thin and tapering branches rising above the wall

-Amaryllis was partly hidden, but she relied a great deal more for

-concealment upon a fact Iden had taught her, that people very seldom

-look up; and consequently if you are only a little higher they will not

-see you. This she proved that morning, for not one of all who passed

-glanced up from the road. The shepherd kept his eye fixed on his sheep,

-and the drover on his bullocks; the boys were in a hurry to get to the

-fair and spend their pennies; the wenches had on a bit of blue ribbon or

-a new bonnet, and were perpetually looking at the traps that overtook

-them to see if the men admired their finery. No one looked up from the

-road they were pursuing.

-

-The photographer fixes the head of the sitter by a sort of stand at the

-back, which holds it steady in one position while the camera takes the

-picture. In life most people have their heads fixed in the claws of

-some miserable pettiness, which interests them so greatly that they

-tramp on steadily forward, staring ahead, and there's not the slightest

-fear of their seeing anything outside the rut they are travelling.

-

-Amaryllis did not care anything about the fair or the people either,

-knowing very well what sort they would be; but I suspect, if it had been

-possible to have got at the cause which brought her there, it would have

-been traced to the unconscious influence of sex, a perfectly innocent

-prompting, quite unrecognised by the person who feels it, and who would

-indignantly deny it if rallied on the subject, but which leads girls of

-her age to seize opportunities of observing the men, even if of an

-uninteresting order. Still they are men, those curious beings, that

-unknown race, and little bits of knowledge about them may, perhaps, be

-picked up by a diligent observer.

-

-The men who drifted along the road towards the Fair were no "mashers, by

-Jove!" Some of them, though young, were clad antiquely enough in

-breeches and gaiters--not sportsmen's breeches and gaiters, but

-old-fashioned "granfer" things; the most of them were stout and sturdy,

-in drab and brown suits of good cloth, cut awry. Hundreds of them on

-foot, in traps, gigs, fourwheels, and on horseback, went under

-Amaryllis: but, though they were all Christians, there was not one

-"worth a Jewess' eye."

-

-She scorned them all.

-

-This member of the unknown race was too thickly made, short set, and

-squat; this one too fair--quite white and moist-sugar looking; this one

-had a straight leg.

-

-Another went by with a great thick and long black beard--what a horrid

-thing, now, when kissing!--and as he walked he wiped it with his sleeve,

-for he had just washed down the dust with a glass of ale. His neck, too,

-was red and thick; hideous, yet he was a "stout knave," and a man all

-over, as far as body makes a man.

-

-But women are, like Shakespeare, better judges. "Care I for the thews

-and sinews of a man?" They look for something more than bulk.

-

-A good many of these fellows were more or less lame, for it is

-astonishing if you watch people go by and keep account of them what a

-number have game legs, both young and old.

-

-A young buck on a capital horse was at the first glance more

-interesting--paler, rakish, a cigar in his mouth, an air of viciousness

-and dash combined, fairly well dressed, pale whiskers and beard; in

-short, he knew as much of the billiard-table as he did of sheep and

-corn. When nearer Amaryllis disliked him more than all the rest put

-together; she shrank back a little from the wall lest he should chance

-to look up; she would have feared to have been alone with such a

-character, and yet she could not have said why. She would not have

-feared to walk side by side with the great black beard--hideous as he

-was--nor with any of the rest, not even with the roughest of the

-labourers who tramped along. This gentleman alone alarmed her.

-

-There were two wenches, out for their Fair Day holiday, coming by at the

-same time; they had on their best dresses and hats, and looked fresh and

-nice. They turned round to watch him coming, and half waited for him;

-when he came up he checked his horse, and began to "cheek" them. Nothing

-loth, the village girls "cheeked" him, and so they passed on.

-

-One or two very long men appeared, unusually clumsy, even in walking

-they did not know exactly what to do with their legs. Amaryllis had no

-objection to their being tall--indeed, to be tall is often a passport to

-a "Jewess' eye"--but they were so clumsy.

-

-Of the scores who went by in traps and vehicles she could not see much

-but their clothes and their faces, and both the clothes and the faces

-were very much alike. Rough, good cloth, ill-fitting (the shoulders were

-too broad for the tailor, who wanted to force Bond Street measurements

-on the British farmer's back); reddish, speckled faces, and yellowish

-hair and whiskers; big speckled hands, and that was all. Scores of men,

-precisely similar, were driven down the road. If those broad speckled

-hands had been shown to Jacob's ewes he need not have peeled rods to

-make them bring forth speckled lambs.

-

-Against the stile a long way up the road there was a group of five or

-six men, who were there when she first peered over the wall, and made

-no further progress to the Fair. They were waiting till some

-acquaintance came by and offered a lift; lazy dogs, they could not walk.

-They had already been there long enough to have walked to the Fair and

-back, still they preferred to fold their hands and cross their legs, and

-stay on. So many people being anxious to get to the town, most of those

-who drove had picked up friends long before they got here.

-

-The worst walker of all was a constable, whose huge boots seemed to take

-possession of the width of the road, for he turned them out at right

-angles, working his legs sideways to do it, an extraordinary exhibition

-of stupidity and ugliness, for which the authorities who drilled him in

-that way were responsible, and not the poor fellow.

-

-Among the lowing cattle and the baaing sheep there drifted by a variety

-of human animals, tramps and vagrants, not nearly of so much value as

-the wool and beef.

-

-It is curious that these "characters"--as they are so kindly

-called--have a way of associating themselves with things that promise

-vast enjoyment to others. The number of unhappy, shirtless wretches who

-thread their path in and out the coaches at the Derby is wonderful.

-While the champagne fizzes above on the roof, and the footman between

-the shafts sits on an upturned hamper and helps himself out of another

-to pie with truffles, the hungry, lean kine of human life wander round

-about sniffing and smelling, like Adam and Eve after the fall at the

-edge of Paradise.

-

-There are such incredible swarms of vagrants at the Derby that you might

-think the race was got up entirely for their sakes. There would be

-thousands at Sandown, but the gate is locked with a half-crown bolt, and

-they cannot get a stare at the fashionables on the lawn. For all that,

-the true tramp, male or female, is so inveterate an attendant at races

-and all kinds of accessible entertainments and public events that the

-features of the fashionable are better known to him than to hundreds of

-well-to-do people unable to enter society.

-

-So they paddled along to the fair, slip-slop, in the dust, among the

-cattle and sheep, hands in pockets, head hanging down, most of them

-followed at a short distance by a Thing.

-

-This Thing is upright, and therefore, according to the old definition,

-ought to come within the genus Homo. It wears garments rudely resembling

-those of a woman, and there it ends. Perhaps it was a woman once;

-perhaps it never was, for many of them have never had a chance to enter

-the ranks of their own sex.

-

-Amaryllis was too young, and, as a consequence, too full of her own

-strength and youth and joy in life to think for long or seriously about

-these curious Things drifting by like cattle and sheep. Yet her brow

-contracted, and she drew herself together as they passed--a sort of

-shiver, to think that there should be such degradation in the world.

-Twice when they came along her side of the road she dropped pennies in

-front of them, which they picked up in a listless way, just glancing

-over the ear in the direction the money fell, and went on without so

-much as recognizing where it came from.

-

-If sheep were treated as unfortunate human beings are, they would take a

-bitter revenge; though they are the mildest of creatures, they would

-soon turn round in a venomous manner. If they did not receive sufficient

-to eat and drink, and were not well sheltered, they would take a bitter

-revenge: _they would die_. Loss of L s. d.!

-

-But human beings have not even got the courage or energy to do that;

-they put up with anything, and drag on--miserables that they are.

-

-I said they were not equal in value to the sheep--why, they're not worth

-anything when they're dead. You cannot even sell the skins of the

-Things!

-

-Slip-slop in the dust they drive along to the fair, where there will be

-an immense amount of eating and a far larger amount of drinking all

-round them, in every house they pass, and up to midnight. They will see

-valuable animals, and men with well-lined pockets. What on earth can a

-tramp find to please him among all this? It is not for him; yet he goes

-to see it.

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VII.

-

-

-THE crowd began to pass more thickly, when Amaryllis saw a man coming up

-the road in the opposite direction to that in which the multitude was

-moving. They were going to the fair; he had his back to it, and a party

-in a trap rallied him smartly for his folly.

-

-"What! bean't you a-going to fair? Why, Measter Duck, what's up? Looking

-for a thunderstorm?"--which young ducks are supposed to enjoy. "Ha! ha!

-ha!"

-

-Measter Duck, with a broad grin on his face, nevertheless plodded up the

-hill, and passed beneath Amaryllis.

-

-She knew him very well, for he lived in the hamlet, but she would not

-have taken any notice of him had he not been so elaborately dressed. His

-high silk hat shone glossy; his black broadcloth coat was new and

-carefully brushed; he was in black all over, in contrast with the mass

-of people who had gone by that morning. A blue necktie, bright and

-clean, spotless linen, gloves rolled up in a ball in one hand, whiskers

-brushed, boots shining, teeth clean, Johnny was off to the fair!

-

-The coat fitted him to a nicety; it had, in fact, no chance to do

-otherwise, for his great back and shoulders stretched it tight, and

-would have done so had it been made like a sack. Of all the big men who

-had gone by that day Jack Duck was the biggest; his back was immense,

-and straight, too, for he walked upright for a farmer, nor was his bulk

-altogether without effect, for he was not over-burdened with abdomen, so

-that it showed to the best advantage. He was a little over the average

-height, but not tall; he had grown laterally.

-

-He could lift two sacks of wheat from the ground. You just try to lift

-_one_.

-

-His sleeves were too long, so that only the great knuckles of his

-speckled hands were visible. Red whiskers, red hair, blue eyes, speckled

-face, straight lips, thick, like the edge of an earthenware pitcher, and

-of much the same coarse red hue, always a ready grin, a round, hard

-head, which you might have hit safely with a mallet; and there is the

-picture.

-

-For some reason, very big men do not look well in glossy black coats and

-silk hats; they seem to want wideawakes, bowlers, caps, anything rather

-than a Paris hat, and some loose-cut jacket of a free-and-easy colour,

-suitable for the field, or cricket, or boating. They do not belong to

-the town and narrow doorways; Nature grew them for hills and fields.

-

-Compared with the Continental folk, most Englishmen are big, and

-therefore, as their "best" suits do not fit in with their character as

-written in limbs and shoulders, the Continent thinks us clumsy. The

-truth is, it is the Continent that is little.

-

-"Isn't he ugly?" thought Amaryllis, looking down on poor John Duck.

-"Isn't he ugly?" Now the top of the wall was crusted with moss, which

-has a way of growing into bricks and mortar, and attaching particles of

-brick to its roots. As she watched the people she unconsciously trifled

-with a little piece of moss--her hand happened at the moment to project

-over the wall, and as John Duck went under she dropped the bit of moss

-straight on his glossy hat. Tap! the fragment of brick adhering to the

-moss struck the hollow hat smartly like a drum.

-

-She drew back quickly, laughing and blushing, and angry with herself all

-at the same time, for she had done it without a thought.

-

-Jack pulled off his hat, saw nothing, and put it on again, suspecting

-that some one in a passing gig had "chucked" something at him.

-

-In a minute Amaryllis peeped over the wall, and, seeing his broad back a

-long way up the road, resumed her stand.

-

-"How ever could I do such a stupid thing?" she thought. "But isn't he

-ugly? Aren't they _all_ ugly? All of them--horridly ugly."

-

-The entire unknown race of Man was hideous. So coarse in feature--their

-noses were thick, half an inch thick, or enormously long and knobbed at

-the end like a walking-stick, or curved like a reaping-hook, or slewed

-to one side, or flat as if they had been smashed, or short and stumpy

-and incomplete, or spotted with red blotches, or turned up in the

-vulgarest manner--nobody had a good nose.

-

-Their eyes were goggles, round and staring--like liquid marbles--they

-had no eyelashes, and their eyebrows were either white and invisible, or

-shaggy, as if thistles grew along their foreheads.

-

-Their cheeks were speckled and freckled and red and brick-dust and

-leather-coloured, and enclosed with scrubby whiskers, like a garden

-hedge.

-

-Upon the whole, those who shaved and were smooth looked worse than those

-who did not, for they thus exposed the angularities of their chins and

-jaws.

-

-They wore such horrid hats on the top of these roughly-sketched

-faces--sketched, as it were, with a bit of burnt stick. Some of them had

-their hats on the backs of their heads, and some wore them aslant, and

-some jammed over their brows.

-

-They went along smoking and puffing, and talking and guffawing in the

-vulgarest way, _en route_ to swill and smoke and puff and guffaw

-somewhere else.

-

-Whoever could tell what they were talking about? these creatures.

-

-They had no form or grace like a woman--no lovely sloped shoulders, no

-beautiful bosom, no sweeping curve of robe down to the feet. No softness

-of cheek, or silky hair, or complexion, or taper fingers, or arched

-eyebrows; no sort of style whatever. They were mere wooden figures; and,

-in short, sublimely ugly.

-

-There was a good deal of truth in Amaryllis' reflections; it was a pity

-a woman was not taken into confidence when the men were made.

-

-Suppose the women were like the men, and we had to make love to such a

-set of bristly, grisly wretches!--pah! shouldn't we think them ugly! The

-patience of the women, putting up with us so long!

-

-As for the muscles on which we pride ourselves so much, in a woman's

-eyes (though she prefers a strong man) they simply increase our

-extraordinary ugliness.

-

-But if we look pale, and slim, and so forth, then they despise us, and

-there is no doubt that altogether the men were made wrong.

-

-"And Jack's the very ugliest of the lot," thought Amaryllis. "He just

-_is_ ugly."

-

-Pounding up the slope, big John Duck came by-and-by to the gateway, and

-entering without ceremony, as is the custom in the country, found Mr.

-Iden near the back door talking to a farmer who had seated himself on a

-stool.

-

-He was a middle-aged man, stout and florid, rough as a chunk of wood,

-but dressed in his best brown for the fair. Tears were rolling down his

-vast round cheeks as he expatiated on his grievances to Mr. Iden:--

-

-"Now, just you see how I be helped up with this here 'ooman," he

-concluded as Duck arrived. Mr. Iden, not a little glad of an opportunity

-to escape a repetition of the narrative, to which he had patiently

-listened, took Jack by the arm, and led him indoors. As they went the

-man on the stool extended his arm towards them hopelessly:--"Just you

-see how I be helped up with this here 'ooman!"

-

-A good many have been "helped up" with a woman before now.

-

-Mrs. Iden met Jack with a gracious smile--she always did--yet there

-could not have been imagined a man less likely to have pleased her.

-

-A quick, nervous temperament, an eye sharp to detect failings or

-foolishness, an admirer of briskness and vivacity, why did she welcome

-John Duck, that incarnation of stolidity and slowness, that enormous

-mountain of a man? Because extremes meet? No, since she was always

-complaining of Iden's dull, motionless life; so it was not the contrast

-to her own disposition that charmed her.

-

-John Duck was Another Man--not Mr. Iden.

-

-The best of matrons like to see Another Man enter their houses; there's

-no viciousness in it, it is simply nature, which requires variety. The

-best of husbands likes to have another woman--or two, or three--on a

-visit; there's nothing wrong, it is innocent enough, and but gives a

-spice to the monotony of existence.

-

-Besides, John Duck, that mountain of slowness and stolidity, was not

-perhaps a fool, notwithstanding his outward clumsiness. A little

-attention is appreciated even by a matron of middle age.

-

-"Will you get us some ale?" said Iden; and Mrs. Iden brought a full jug

-with her own hands--a rare thing, for she hated the Goliath barrel as

-Iden enjoyed it.

-

-"Going to the fair, Mr. Duck?"

-

-"Yes, m'm," said John, deep in his chest and gruff, about as a horse

-might be expected to speak if he had a voice. "You going, m'm? I just

-come up to ask if you'd ride in my dog-trap?"

-

-John had a first-rate turn-out.

-

-Mrs. Iden, beaming with smiles, replied that she was not going to the

-fair.

-

-"Should be glad to take you, you know," said John, dipping into the ale.

-"Shall you be going presently?"--to Mr. Iden. "Perhaps you'd have a

-seat?"

-

-"Hum!" said Iden, fiddling with his chin, a trick he had when undecided.

-"I don't zactly know; fine day, you see; want to see that hedge grubbed;

-want to fill up the gaps; want to go over to the wood meads; thought

-about----"

-

-"There, take and go!" said Mrs. Iden. "Sit there thinking--take and go."

-

-"I can't say zactly, John; don't seem to have anything to go vor."

-

-"What do other people go for?" said Mrs. Iden, contemptuously. "Why

-can't you do like other people? Get on your clean shirt, and go. Jack

-can wait--he can talk to Amaryllis while you dress."

-

-"Perhaps Miss would like to go," suggested John, very quietly, and as if

-it was no consequence to him; the very thing he had called for, to see

-if he could get Amaryllis to drive in with him. He knew that Mrs. Iden

-never went anywhere, and that Mr. Iden could not make up his mind in a

-minute--he would require three or four days at least--so that it was

-quite safe to ask them first.

-

-"Of course she would," said Mrs. Iden. "She is going--to dine with her

-grandfather; it will save her a long walk. You had better go and ask

-her; she's down at Plum Corner, watching the people."

-

-"So I wull," said Jack, looking out of the great bow window at the

-mention of Plum Corner--he could just see the flutter of Amaryllis'

-dress in the distance between the trees. That part of the garden was

-called Plum Corner because of a famous plum tree--the one that had not

-been pruned and was sprawling about the wall.

-

-Mr. Iden had planted that plum tree specially for Mrs. Iden, because she

-was so fond of a ripe luscious plum. But of late years he had not pruned

-it.

-

-"Vine ale!" said John, finishing his mug. "Extra vine ale!"

-

-"It be, bean't it?" said Mr. Iden.

-

-It really was humming stuff, but John well knew how proud Iden was of

-it, and how much he liked to hear it praised.

-

-The inhabitants of the City of London conceitedly imagine that no one

-can be sharp-witted outside the sound of Bow Bells--country people are

-stupid. My opinion is that clumsy Jack Duck, who took about half an hour

-to write his name, was equal to most of them.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VIII.

-

-

-THE ale being ended, Iden walked with him through the orchard.

-

-"Famous wall that," said John, presently, nodding towards the great red

-brick wall which adorned that side of the place. "Knowed how to build

-walls in those days."

-

-"No such wall as that anywhere about here," said Iden, as proud of his

-wall as his ale. "No such bricks to be got. Folk don't know how to put

-up a wall now--you read in the papers how the houses valls down in

-Lunnon."

-

-"Sort of cracks and comes in like--jest squashes up," said John.

-

-"Now, that's a real bit of brickwork," said Iden. "That'll last--ah,

-last----"

-

-"No end to it," said John, who had admired the wall forty times before,

-thinking to himself as he saw Amaryllis leaning over the corner,

-"Blessed if I don't think as 'twas she as dropped summat on my hat."

-This strengthened his hopes; he had a tolerably clear idea that Mr. and

-Mrs. Iden were not averse to his suit; but he was doubtful about

-Amaryllis herself.

-

-Amaryllis had not the slightest idea Duck had so much as looked at

-her--he called often, but seemed absorbed in the ale and gossip. Fancy

-her scorn if she had guessed!

-

-John Duck was considered one of the most eligible young men thereabouts,

-for though by no means born in the purple of farming, it was believed he

-was certain to be very "warm" indeed when his father died. Old Duck, the

-son of a common labourer, occupied two or three of the finest farms in

-the neighbourhood. He made his money in a waggon--a curious place, you

-will say; why so? Have you ever seen the dingy, dark china-closets they

-call offices in the City? Have you ever ascended the dirty, unscrubbed,

-disgraceful staircase that leads to a famous barrister's "chambers"?

-These are far less desirable, surely, than a seat in a waggon in a

-beautiful meadow or cornfield. Old Duck, being too ponderous to walk,

-was driven about in a waggon, sitting at the rear with his huge, short

-legs dangling down; and, the waggon being halted in a commanding

-position, he overlooked his men at work.

-

-One day he was put in a cart instead, and the carter walking home beside

-the horse, and noting what a pull it was for him up the hills, and

-drawling along half asleep, quite forgot his master, and dreamed he had

-a load of stones. By-and-by, he pulled out the bar, and shot Old Duck

-out. "A shot me out," grumbled the old man, "as if I'd a been a load of

-flints."

-

-Riding about in this rude chariot the old fellow had amassed

-considerable wealth--his reputation for money was very great indeed--and

-his son John would, of course, come in for it.

-

-John felt sure of Mr. and Mrs. Iden, but about Amaryllis he did not

-know. The idea that she had dropped "summat" on his hat raised his

-spirits immensely.

-

-Now Amaryllis was not yet beautiful--she was too young; I do not think

-any girl is really beautiful so young--she was highly individualized,

-and had a distinct character, as it were, in her face and figure. You

-saw at a glance that there was something about her very different from

-other girls, something very marked, but it was not beauty yet.

-

-Whether John thought her handsome, or saw that she would be, or what, I

-do not know; or whether he looked "forrard," as he would have said.

-

-          "Heigh for a lass with a tocher!"

-

-John had never read Burns, and would not have known that tocher meant

-dowry; nor had he seen the advice of Tennyson--

-

-          "Doesn't thee marry for money,

-           But go where money lies."

-

-but his native intelligence needed no assistance from the poets,

-coronetted or otherwise.

-

-It was patent to everyone that her father, Iden, was as poor as the

-raggedest coat in Christendom could make him; but it was equally well

-known and a matter of public faith, that her grandfather, the great

-miller and baker, Lord Lardy-Cake, as the boys called him derisively,

-had literally bushels upon bushels of money. He was a famous stickler

-for ancient usages, and it was understood that there were twenty

-thousand spade guineas in an iron box under his bed. Any cottager in the

-whole country side could have told you so, and would have smiled at your

-ignorance; the thing was as well known as that St. Paul's is in the

-City.

-

-Besides which there was another consideration, old Granfer Iden was a

-great favourite at Court--Court meaning the mansion of the Hon. Raleigh

-Pamment, the largest landowner that side of the county. Granfer Iden

-entered the Deer Park (which was private) with a special key whenever he

-pleased, he strolled about the gardens, looked in at the conservatory,

-chatted familiarly with the royal family of Pamment when they were at

-home, and when they were away took any friend he chose through the

-galleries and saloons.

-

-"Must be summat at the bottom on't," said John Duck to himself many a

-time and oft. "They stuck-up proud folk wouldn't have he there if there

-wasn't summat at the bottom on't." A favourite at Court could dispense,

-no doubt, many valuable privileges.

-

-Amaryllis heard their talk as they came nearer, and turned round and

-faced them. She wore a black dress, but no hat; instead she had

-carelessly thrown a scarlet shawl over her head, mantilla fashion, and

-held it with one hand. Her dark ringlets fringed her forehead, blown

-free and wild; the fresh air had brought a bright colour into her

-cheeks. As is often the case with girls whose figure is just beginning

-to show itself, her dress seemed somewhat shortened in front--lifted up

-from her ankles, which gave the effect of buoyancy to her form, she

-seemed about to walk though standing still. There was a defiant light in

-her deep brown eyes, that sort of "I don't care" disposition which our

-grandmothers used to say would take us to the gallows. Defiance,

-wilfulness, rebellion, was expressed in the very way she stood on the

-bank, a little higher than they were, and able to look over their heads.

-

-"Marning," said John, rocking his head to one side as a salute.

-

-"Marning," repeated Amaryllis, mocking his broad pronunciation.

-

-As John could not get any further Iden helped him.

-

-"Jack's going to the fair," he said, "and thought you would like to ride

-with him. Run in and dress."

-

-"I shan't ride," said Amaryllis, "I shall walk."

-

-"Longish way," said John. "Mor'n two mile."

-

-"I shall walk," said Amaryllis, decidedly.

-

-"Lot of cattle about," said John.

-

-"Better ride," said Iden.

-

-"No," said Amaryllis, and turned her back on them to look over the wall

-again.

-

-She was a despot already. There was nothing left for them but to walk

-away.

-

-"However," said Iden, always trying to round things off and make square

-edges smooth, "very likely you'll overtake her and pick her up."

-

-"Her wull go across the fields," said John. "Shan't see her."

-

-As he walked down the road home for his dog-trap he looked up at the

-corner of the wall, but she was not looking over then. Mrs. Iden had

-fetched her in, as it was time to dress.

-

-"I don't want to go," said Amaryllis, "I hate fairs--they are so silly."

-

-"But you must go," said Mrs. Iden. "Your grandfather sent a message last

-night; you know it's his dinner-day."

-

-"He's such a horrid old fellow," said Amaryllis, "I can't bear him."

-

-"How dare you speak of your grandfather like that? you are getting very

-rude and disrespectful."

-

-There was no depending on Mrs. Iden. At one time she would go on and

-abuse Granfer Iden for an hour at a time, calling him every name she

-could think of, and accusing him of every folly under the sun. At

-another time she would solemnly inform Amaryllis that they had not a

-farthing of money, and how necessary it was that they should be

-attentive and civil to him.

-

-Amaryllis very slowly put her hat on and the first jacket to hand.

-

-"What! aren't you going to change your dress?"

-

-"No, that I'm not."

-

-"Change it directly."

-

-"What, to go in and see that musty old----"

-

-"Change it directly; I _will_ be obeyed."

-

-Amaryllis composedly did as she was bid.

-

-One day Mrs. Iden humoured her every whim and let her do just as she

-pleased; the next she insisted on minute obedience.

-

-"Make haste, you'll be late; now, then, put your things on--come."

-

-So Amaryllis, much against her will, was bustled out of the house and

-started off. As John had foreseen, she soon quitted the road to follow

-the path across the fields, which was shorter.

-

-An hour or so later Iden came in from work as usual, a few minutes

-before dinner, and having drawn his quart of ale, sat down to sip it in

-the bow window till the dishes were brought.

-

-"You're not gone, then?" said Mrs. Iden, irritatingly.

-

-"Gone--wur?" said Iden, rather gruffly for him.

-

-"To fair, of course--like other people."

-

-"Hum," growled Iden.

-

-"You know your father expects all the family to come in to dinner on

-fair day; I can't think how you can neglect him, when you know we

-haven't got a shilling--why don't you go in and speak to him?"

-

-"You can go if you like."

-

-"I go!" cried Mrs. Iden. "I go!" in shrill accents of contempt. "I don't

-care a button for all the lardy-cake lot! Let him keep his money. I'm as

-good as he is any day. My family go about, and do some business----"

-

-"_Your_ family," muttered Iden. "The Flammas!"

-

-"Yes, _my_ family--as good as yours, I should think! What's your family

-then, that you should be so grand? You're descended from a lardy-cake!"

-

-"You be descended from a quart pot," said Iden.

-

-This was an allusion to Mrs. Iden's grandfather, who had kept a small

-wayside public. There was no disgrace in it, for he was a very

-respectable man, and laid the foundation of his family's fortune, but it

-drove Mrs. Iden into frenzy.

-

-"You talk about a quart pot--_you_," she shrieked. "Why, your family

-have drunk up thousands of pounds--you know they have. Where's the

-Manor? they swilled it away. Where's Upper Court? they got it down their

-throats. They built a house to drink in and nothing else. You know they

-did. You told me yourself. The most disgraceful set of drunkards that

-ever lived!"

-

-"Your family don't drink, then, I suppose?" said Iden.

-

-"Your lot's been drinking two hundred years--why, you're always talking

-about it."

-

-"Your family be as nervous as cats--see their hands shake in the

-morning."

-

-"They go to business in the City and do something; they don't mess about

-planting rubbishing potatoes." Mrs. Iden was London born.

-

-"A pretty mess they've made of their business, as shaky as their hands.

-Fidgetty, miserable, nervous set they be."

-

-"They're not stocks and stones like yours, anyhow, as stolid, and slow,

-and stupid; why, you do nothing but sleep, sleep, sleep, and talk, talk,

-talk. You've been talking with the lazy lot over at the stile, and

-you've been talking with that old fool at the back door, and talking

-with Jack Duck--and that's your second mug! You're descended from a

-nasty, greasy lardy-cake! There!"

-

-Iden snatched a piece of bread from the table and thrust it in one

-pocket, flung open the oven-door, and put a baked apple in the other

-pocket, and so marched out to eat what he could in quiet under a tree in

-the fields.

-

-In the oratory of abuse there is no resource so successful as raking up

-the weaknesses of the opponent's family, especially when the parties are

-married, for having gossiped with each other for so long in the most

-confidential manner, they know every foible. How Robert drank, and Tom

-bet, and Sam swore, and Bill knocked his wife about, and Joseph did as

-Potiphar's spouse asked him, and why your uncle had to take refuge in

-Spain; and so on to an indefinite extent, like the multiplication table.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IX.

-

-

-THIS discordance between her father and mother hurt Amaryllis'

-affectionate heart exceedingly. It seemed to be always breaking out all

-the year round.

-

-Of a summer's eve, when the day's work among the hot hay was done, Iden

-would often go out and sit under the russet apple till the dew had

-filled the grass like a green sea. When the tide of the dew had risen he

-would take off his heavy boots and stockings, and so walk about in the

-cool shadows of eve, paddling in the wet grass. He liked the refreshing

-coolness and the touch of the sward. It was not for washing, because he

-was scrupulously clean under the ragged old coat; it was because he

-liked the grass. There was nothing very terrible in it; men, and women,

-too, take off their shoes and stockings, and wade about on the sands at

-the sea, and no one thinks that it is anything but natural, reasonable,

-and pleasant. But, then, you see, _everybody_ does it at the seaside,

-and Iden alone waded in the dew, and that was his crime--that he alone

-did it.

-

-The storm and rage of Mrs. Iden whenever she knew he was paddling in the

-grass was awful. She would come shuffling out--she had a way of rubbing

-her shoes along the ground when irritated with her hands under her

-apron, which she twisted about--and pelt him with scorn.

-

-"There, put your boots on--do, and hide your nasty feet!" (Iden had a

-particularly white skin, and feet as white as a lady's.) "Disgusting!

-Nobody ever does it but you, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself!

-Anything more disgusting I never heard of. Nobody else but you would

-ever think of such a thing; makes me feel queer to see you."

-

-Shuffling about, and muttering to herself, "Nobody else"--that was the

-sin and guilt of it--by-and-by Mrs. Iden would circle round to where he

-had left his boots, and, suddenly seizing them, would fling them in the

-ditch.

-

-And I verily believe, in the depth of her indignation, if she had not

-been afraid to touch firearms, she would have brought out the gun, and

-had a shot at him.

-

-After a time Iden left his old post at the russet apple, and went up the

-meadow to the horse-chestnut trees that he himself had planted, and

-there, in peace and quietness and soft cool shadow, waded about in the

-dew, without any one to grumble at him.

-

-How crookedly things are managed in this world!

-

-It is the modern fashion to laugh at the East, and despise the Turks and

-all their ways, making Grand Viziers of barbers, and setting waiters in

-high places, with the utmost contempt for anything reasonable--all so

-incongruous and chance-ruled. In truth, all things in our very midst go

-on in the Turkish manner; crooked men are set in straight places, and

-straight people in crooked places, just the same as if we had all been

-dropped promiscuously out of a bag and shook down together on the earth

-to work out our lives, quite irrespective of our abilities and natures.

-Such an utter jumble!

-

-Here was Iden, with his great brain and wonderful power of observation,

-who ought to have been a famous traveller in unexplored Africa or

-Thibet, bringing home rarities and wonders; or, with his singular

-capacity for construction, a leading engineer, boring Mont Cenis Tunnels

-and making Panama Canals; or, with his Baconian intellect, forming a new

-school of philosophy--here was Iden, tending cows, and sitting, as the

-old story goes, undecidedly on a stile--sitting astride--eternally

-sitting, and unable to make up his mind to get off on one side or the

-other.

-

-Here was Mrs. Iden, who had had a beautiful shape and expressive eyes,

-full in her youth of life and fire, who ought to have led the gayest

-life in London and Paris alternately, riding in a carriage, and flinging

-money about in the most extravagant, joyous, and good-natured

-manner--here was Mrs. Iden making butter in a dull farmhouse, and

-wearing shoes out at the toes.

-

-So our lives go on, rumble-jumble, like a carrier's cart over ruts and

-stones, thumping anyhow instead of running smoothly on new-mown sward

-like a cricket-ball.

-

-It all happens in the Turkish manner.

-

-Another time there would come a letter from one of the Flammas in

-London. Could they spare a little bag of lavender?--they grew such

-lovely sweet lavender at Coombe Oaks. Then you might see Mr. and Mrs.

-Iden cooing and billing, soft as turtle-doves, and fraternising in the

-garden over the lavender hedge. Here was another side, you see, to the

-story.

-

-Mrs. Iden was very fond of lavender, the scent, and the plant in every

-form. She kept little bags of it in all her drawers, and everything at

-Coombe Oaks upstairs in the bedrooms had a faint, delicious lavender

-perfume. There is nothing else that smells so sweet and clean and dry.

-You cannot imagine a damp sheet smelling of lavender.

-

-Iden himself liked lavender, and used to rub it between his finger and

-thumb in the garden, as he did, too, with the black-currant leaves and

-walnut-leaves, if he fancied anything he had touched might have left an

-unpleasant odour adhering to his skin. He said it cleaned his hands as

-much as washing them.

-

-Iden liked Mrs. Iden to like lavender because his mother had been so

-fond of it, and all the sixteen carved oak-presses which had been so

-familiar to him in boyhood were full of a thick atmosphere of the

-plant.

-

-Long since, while yet the honeymoon bouquet remained in the wine of

-life, Iden had set a hedge of lavender to please his wife. It was so

-carefully chosen, and set, and watched, that it grew to be the finest

-lavender in all the country. People used to come for it from round

-about, quite certain of a favourable reception, for there was nothing so

-sure to bring peace at Coombe Oaks as a mention of lavender.

-

-But the letter from the Flammas was the great event--from London, all

-that way, asking for some Coombe Oaks lavender! Then there was billing

-and cooing, and fraternising, and sunshine in the garden over the hedge

-of lavender. If only it could have lasted! Somehow, as people grow older

-there seems so much grating of the wheels.

-

-In time, long time, people's original feelings get strangely confused

-and overlaid. The churchwardens of the eighteenth century plastered the

-fresco paintings of the fourteenth in their churches--covered them over

-with yellowish mortar. The mould grows up, and hides the capital of the

-fallen column; the acanthus is hidden in earth. At the foot of the oak,

-where it is oldest, the bark becomes dense and thick, impenetrable, and

-without sensitiveness; you may cut off an inch thick without reaching

-the sap. A sort of scale or caking in long, long time grows over

-original feelings.

-

-There was no one in the world so affectionate and loving as Mrs.

-Iden--no one who loved a father so dearly; just as Amaryllis loved _her_

-father.

-

-But after they had lived at Coombe Oaks thirty years or so, and the

-thick dull bark had grown, after the scales or caking had come upon the

-heart, after the capital of the column had fallen, after the painting

-had been blurred, it came about that old Flamma, Mrs. Iden's father,

-died in London.

-

-After thirty years of absolute quiet at Coombe Oaks, husband and wife

-went up to London to the funeral, which took place at one of those

-fearful London cemeteries that strike a chill at one's very soul. Of all

-the horrible things in the world there is nothing so calmly ghastly as a

-London cemetery.

-

-In the evening, after the funeral, Mr. and Mrs. Iden went to the

-theatre.

-

-"How frivolous! How unfeeling!" No, nothing of the sort; how truly sad

-and human, for to be human is to be sad. That men and women should be so

-warped and twisted by the pressure of the years out of semblance to

-themselves; that circumstances should so wall in their lives with

-insurmountable cliffs of granite facts, compelling them to tread the

-sunless gorge; that the coldness of death alone could open the door to

-pleasure.

-

-They sat at the theatre with grey hearts. With the music and the song,

-the dancing, the colours and gay dresses, it was sadder there than in

-the silent rooms at the house where the dead had been. Old Flamma alone

-had been dead _there_; they were dead here. Dead in life--at the

-theatre.

-

-They had used to go joyously to the theatre thirty years before, when

-Iden came courting to town; from the edge of the grave they came back

-to look on their own buried lives.

-

-If you will only _think_, you will see it was a most dreadful and

-miserable incident, that visit to the theatre after the funeral.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER X.

-

-

-WHEN Mrs. Iden threw his lardy-cake descent in Iden's face she alluded

-to Grandfather Iden's being a baker and miller, and noted for the

-manufacture of these articles. A lardy, or larded, cake is a thing, I

-suppose, unknown to most of this generation; they were the principal

-confectionery familiar to country folk when Grandfather Iden was at the

-top of his business activity, seventy years since, in the Waterloo era.

-

-A lardy-cake is an oblong, flat cake, crossed with lines, and rounded at

-the corners, made of dough, lard, sugar, and spice. Our ancestors liked

-something to gnaw at, and did not go in for lightness in their pastry;

-they liked something to stick to their teeth, and after that to their

-ribs. The lardy-cake eminently fulfilled these conditions; they put a

-trifle of sugar and spice in it, to set it going as it were, and the

-rest depended on the strength of the digestion. But if a ploughboy could

-get a new, warm lardy-cake, fresh from the oven, he thought himself

-blessed.

-

-Grandfather Iden had long since ceased any serious business, but he

-still made a few of these renowned cakes for his amusement, and sold a

-good few at times to the carters' lads who came in to market.

-

-Amaryllis knew the path perfectly, but if she had not, the tom-tomming

-of drums and blowing of brass, audible two miles away, would have guided

-her safely to the fair. The noise became prodigious as she

-approached--the ceaseless tomtom, the beating of drums and gongs outside

-the show vans, the shouting of the showmen, the roar of a great crowd,

-the booing of cattle, the baaing of sheep, the neighing of

-horses--altogether the "rucket" was tremendous.

-

-She looked back from the hill close to the town and saw the people

-hurrying in from every quarter--there was a string of them following the

-path she had come, and others getting over distant stiles. A shower had

-fallen in the night, but the ceaseless wheels had ground up the dust

-again, and the lines of the various roads were distinctly marked by the

-clouds hanging above them. For one on business, fifty hastened on to

-join the uproar.

-

-Suppose the Venus de Medici had been fetched from Florence and had been

-set up in the town of Woolhorton, or the Laocoon from Rome, or the Milo

-from Paris, do you think all these people would have scurried in such

-haste to admire these beautiful works? Nothing of the sort; if you want

-a crowd you must make a row. It is really wonderful how people do

-thoroughly and unaffectedly enjoy a fearful disturbance; if the cannon

-could be shot off quietly, and guns made no noise, battles would not be

-half so popular to read about. The silent arrow is uninteresting, and if

-you describe a mediaeval scramble you must put in plenty of splintering

-lances, resounding armour, shrieks and groans, and so render it lively.

-

-"This is the patent age of new inventions," and some one might make a

-profit by starting a fete announcing that a drum or a gong would be

-provided for every individual, to be beaten in a grand universal chorus.

-

-Amaryllis had no little difficulty in getting through the crowd till she

-found her way behind the booths and slipped along the narrow passage

-between them and the houses. There was an arched entrance,

-archaeologically interesting, by which she paused a moment, half inclined

-to go up and inquire for her boots. The shoemaker who lived there had

-had them since Christmas, and all that wanted doing was a patch on one

-toe; they were always just going to be done, but never finished. She

-read the inscription over his door, "Tiras Wise, Shoemaker; Established

-1697." A different sort of shoemaker to your lively Northampton awls; a

-man who has been in business two hundred years cannot be hurried. She

-sighed, and passed on.

-

-The step to Grandfather Iden's door consisted of one wide stone of

-semi-circular shape, in which the feet of three generations of

-customers had worn a deep grove. The venerable old gentleman, for he was

-over ninety, was leaning on the hatch (or lower half of the door), in

-the act of handing some of his cakes to two village girls who had called

-for them. These innocent, hamlet girls, supposed to be so rurally

-simple, had just been telling him how they never forgot his nice cakes,

-but always came every fair day to buy some. For this they got sixpence

-each, it being well known that the old gentleman was so delighted with

-anybody who bought his cakes he generally gave them back their money,

-and a few coppers besides.

-

-He took Amaryllis by the arm as she stood on the step and pulled her

-into the shop, asked her if her father were coming, then walked her down

-by the oven-door, and made her stand up by a silver-mounted peel, to see

-how tall she was. The peel is the long wooden rod, broad at one end,

-with which loaves are placed in the baker's oven. Father Iden being

-proud of his trade, in his old age had his favourite peel ornamented

-with silver.

-

-"Too fast--too fast," he said, shaking his head, and coughing; "you grow

-too fast; there's the notch I cut last year, and now you're two inches

-taller." He lowered the peel, and showed her where his thumb was--quite

-two inches higher than the last year's mark.

-

-"I want to be tall," said Amaryllis.

-

-"I daresay--I daresay," said the old man, in the hasty manner of feeble

-age, as he cut another notch to record her height. The handle of the

-peel was notched all round, where he had measured his grandchildren;

-there were so many marks it was not easy to see how he distinguished

-them.

-

-"Is your father coming?" he asked, when he had finished with the knife.

-

-"I don't know." This was Jesuitically true--she did not _know_--she

-could not be certain; but in her heart she was sure he would not come.

-But she did not want to hear any hard words said about him.

-

-"Has he sent anything? Have you brought anything for me? No. No.

-Hum!--ha!"--fit of coughing--"Well, well--come in; dinner's late,

-there's time to hear you read--you're fond of books, you read a great

-deal at home,"--and so talking, half to himself and half to her, he led

-the way into the parlour by the shop.

-

-Bowed by more than ninety years, his back curved over forwards, and his

-limbs curved in the opposite direction, so that the outline of his form

-resembled a flattened capital S. For his chin hung over his chest, and

-his knees never straightened themselves, but were always more or less

-bent as he stood or walked. It was much the attitude of a strong man

-heavily laden and unable to stand upright--such an attitude as big Jack

-Duck in his great strength might take when carrying two sacks of wheat

-at once. There was as heavy a load on Grandfather Iden's back, but Time

-is invisible.

-

-He wore a grey suit, as a true miller and baker should, and had worn the

-same cut and colour for years and years. In the shop, too, he always

-had a grey hat on, perhaps its original hue was white, but it got to

-appear grey upon him; a large grey chimney-pot, many sizes too big for

-his head apparently, for it looked as if for ever about to descend and

-put out his face like an extinguisher. Though his boots were so

-carefully polished, they quickly took a grey tint from the flour dust as

-he pottered about the bins in the morning. The ends of his trousers, too

-long for his antique shanks, folded and creased over his boots, and

-almost hid his grey cloth under-gaiters.

-

-A great knobbed old nose--but stay, I will not go further, it is not

-right to paint too faithfully the features of the very aged, which are

-repellent in spite of themselves; I mean, they cannot help their faces,

-their sentiments and actions are another matter; therefore I will leave

-Father Iden's face as a dim blot on the mirror; you look in it and it

-reflects everywhere, except one spot.

-

-Amaryllis followed him jauntily,--little did she care, reckless girl,

-for the twenty thousand guineas in the iron box under his bed.

-

-The cottage folk, who always know so much, had endless tales of Iden's

-wealth; how years ago bushels upon bushels of pennies, done up in

-five-shilling packets, had been literally carted like potatoes away from

-the bakehouse to go to London; how ponies were laden with sacks of

-silver groats, all paid over that furrowed counter for the golden flour,

-dust more golden than the sands of ancient Pactolus.

-

-Reckless Amaryllis cared not a pin for all the spade guineas in the iron

-box.

-

-The old man sat down by the fire without removing his hat, motioning to

-her to shut the door, which she was loth to do, for the little room was

-smothered with smoke. Troubled with asthma, he coughed incessantly, and

-mopped his mouth with a vast silk handkerchief, but his dull blood

-craved for warmth, and he got his knees close to the grate, and piled up

-the coal till it smoked and smoked, and filled the close apartment with

-a suffocating haze of carbon. To be asked into Father Iden's sanctuary

-was an honour, but, like other honours, it had to be paid for.

-

-Amaryllis gasped as she sat down, and tried to breathe as short as

-possible, to avoid inhaling more than she could bear.

-

-"Books," said her grandfather, pointing to the bookcases, which occupied

-three sides of the room. "Books--you like books; look at them--go and

-see."

-

-To humour him, Amaryllis rose, and appeared to look carefully along the

-shelves which she had scanned so many times before. They contained very

-good books indeed, such books as were not to be found elsewhere

-throughout the whole town of Woolhorton, and perhaps hardly in the

-county, old and rare volumes of price, such as Sotheby, Wilkinson, and

-Co. delight to offer to collectors, such as Bernard Quaritch, that giant

-of the modern auction room, would have written magnificent cheques for.

-

-Did you ever see the Giant Quaritch in the auction-room bidding for

-books? It is one of the sights of London, let me tell you, to any one

-who thinks or is alive to the present day. Most sights are reputations

-merely--the pale reflection of things that were real once. This sight is

-something of the living time, the day in which we live. Get an

-_Athenaeum_ in the season, examine the advertisements of book auctions,

-and attend the next great sale of some famous library.

-

-You have a recollection of the giant who sat by the highway and devoured

-the pilgrims who passed? This giant sits in the middle of the ring and

-devours the books set loose upon their travels after the repose of

-centuries.

-

-What prices to give! No one can withstand him. From Paris they send

-agents with a million francs at their back; from Berlin and Vienna come

-the eager snappers-up of much considered trifles, but in vain. They only

-get what the Giant chooses to leave them.

-

-Books that nobody ever heard of fetch L50, L60, L100, L200; wretched

-little books never opened since they were printed; dull duodecimos on

-the course of the river Wein; nondescript indescribable twaddling local

-books in Italian, Spanish, queer French, written and printed in some

-unknown foreign village; read them--you might as well try to amuse

-yourself with a Chinese pamphlet! What earthly value they are of cannot

-be discovered. They were composed by authors whose names are gone like

-the sand washed by the Nile into the sea before Herodotus. They contain

-no beautiful poetry, no elevated thought, no scientific discovery; they

-are simply so much paper, printing, and binding, so many years old, and

-it is for that age, printing, and binding that the money is paid.

-

-I have read a good many books in my time--I would not give sixpence for

-the whole lot.

-

-They are not like a block-book--first efforts at printing; nor like the

-first editions of great authors; there is not the slightest intrinsic

-value in them whatever.

-

-Yet some of them fetch prices which not long ago were thought tremendous

-even for the Shakespeare folio.

-

-Hundreds and hundreds of pounds are paid for them. Living and writing

-authors of the present day are paid in old songs by comparison.

-

-Still, this enormous value set on old books is one of the remarkable

-signs of the day. If any one wishes to know what To-Day is, these

-book-auctions are of the things he should go to see.

-

-Such books as these lined Grandfather Iden's shelves; among them there

-were a few that I call _real_ old books, an early translation or two, an

-early Shakespeare, and once there had been a very valuable Boccaccio,

-but this had gone into Lord Pamment's library, "Presented by James

-Bartholomew Iden, Esq."

-

-The old man often went to look at and admire his Boccaccio in my Lord's

-library.

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XI.

-

-

-THERE was one peculiarity in all the books on Grandfather Iden's

-shelves, they were all very finely bound in the best style of hand-art,

-and they all bore somewhere or other a little design of an ancient Roman

-lamp.

-

-Hand-art is a term I have invented for the workmanship of good taste--it

-is not the sculptor's art, nor the painter's--not the art of the mind,

-but the art of the hand. Some furniture and cabinet work, for instance,

-some pottery, book-binding like this, are the products of hand-art.

-

-"Do you see the Lamp?" asked the old man, when Amaryllis had stared

-sufficiently at the backs of the books.

-

-"Yes, I can see the Lamp."

-

-"House of Flamma," said old Iden.

-

-"House of Flamma," repeated Amaryllis, hastily, eager to show that she

-understood all about it. She feared lest he should enter into the

-history of the House of Flamma and of his connection with it; she had

-heard it all over and over again; her mother was a Flamma; she had

-herself some of the restless Flamma blood in her. When anything annoyed

-her or made her indignant her foot used to tap the floor, and her neck

-flush rosy, and her face grow dusky like the night. Then, striving to

-control herself, she would say to herself, "I _will_ not be a Flamma."

-

-Except her dear mother and one other, Amaryllis detested and despised

-the whole tribe of the Flammas, the nervous, excitable, passionate,

-fidgetty, tipsy, idle, good-for-nothing lot; she hated them all, the

-very name and mention of them; she sided with her father as an Iden

-against her mother's family, the Flammas. True they were almost all

-flecked with talent like white foam on a black horse, a spot or two of

-genius, and the rest black guilt or folly. She hated them; she would not

-be a Flamma.

-

-How should she at sixteen understand the wear and tear of life, the

-pressure of circumstances, the heavy weight of difficulties--there was

-something to be said even for the miserable fidgetty Flammas, but

-naturally sixteen judged by appearances. Shut up in narrow grooves and

-working day after day, year after year, in a contracted way, by degrees

-their constitutional nervousness became the chief characteristic of

-their existence. It was Intellect overcome--over-burdened--with two

-generations of petty cares; Genius dulled and damped till it went to the

-quart pot.

-

-Sixteen could scarcely understand this. Amaryllis detested the very

-name; she would not be a Flamma.

-

-But she was a Flamma for all that; a Flamma in fire of spirit, in

-strength of indignation, in natural capacity; she drew, for instance,

-with the greatest ease in pencil or pen-and-ink, drew to the life; she

-could write a letter in sketches.

-

-Her indignation sometimes at the wrongfulness of certain things seemed

-to fill her with a consuming fire. Her partizanship for her father made

-her sometimes inwardly rage for the lightning, that she might utterly

-erase the opposer. Her contempt of sycophancy, and bold independence led

-her constantly into trouble.

-

-Flamma means a flame.

-

-Yet she was gentleness itself too; see her at the bookshelves patiently

-endeavouring to please the tiresome old man.

-

-"Open that drawer," said he, as she came to it.

-

-Amaryllis did so, and said that the coins and medals in it were very

-interesting, as they really were. The smoke caught her in the throat,

-and seemed to stop the air as she breathed from reaching her chest. So

-much accustomed to the open air, she felt stifled.

-

-Then he asked her to read to him aloud, that he might hear how she

-enunciated her words. The book he gave her was an early copy of Addison,

-the page a pale yellow, the type old-fount, the edges rough, but where

-in a trim modern volume will you find language like his and ideas set

-forth with such transparent lucidity? How easy to write like that!--so

-simple, merely a letter to an intimate friend; but try!

-

-Trim modern volumes are so very hard to read, especially those that come

-to us from New York, thick volumes of several hundred pages, printed on

-the thinnest paper in hard, unpleasant type. You cannot read them; you

-_work_ through them.

-

-The French have retained a little of the old style of book in their

-paper bound franc novels, the rough paper, thick black type, rough edges

-are pleasant to touch and look at--they feel as if they were done by

-hand, not turned out hurriedly smooth and trim by machinery.

-

-Docile to the last degree with him, Amaryllis tried her utmost to read

-well, and she succeeded, so far as the choking smoke would let her. By

-grunting between his continuous fits of coughing the old man signified

-his approval.

-

-Amaryllis would have been respectful to any of the aged, but she had a

-motive here; she wanted to please him for her father's sake. For many

-years there had been an increasing estrangement between the younger and

-the elder Iden; an estrangement which no one could have explained, for

-it could hardly be due to money matters if Grandfather Iden was really

-so rich. The son was his father's tenant--the farm belonged to

-Grandfather Iden--and perhaps the rent was not paid regularly. Still

-that could not have much mattered--a mere trifle to a man of old Iden's

-wealth. There was something behind, no one knew what; possibly they

-scarcely knew themselves, for it is a fact that people frequently fall

-into a quarrel without remembering the beginning.

-

-Amaryllis was very anxious to please the old man for her father's sake;

-her dear father, whom she loved so much. Tradesmen were for ever

-worrying him for petty sums of money; it made her furious with

-indignation to see and hear it.

-

-So she read her very best, and swallowed the choking smoke patiently.

-

-Among the yellow pages, pressed flat, and still as fresh as if gathered

-yesterday, Amaryllis found bright petals and coloured autumn leaves. For

-it was one of the old man's ways to carry home such of these that

-pleased him and to place them in his books. This he had done for half a

-century, and many of the flower petals and leaves in the grey old works

-of bygone authors had been there a generation. It is wonderful how long

-they will endure left undisturbed and pressed in this way; the paper

-they used in old books seems to have been softer, without the hard

-surface of our present paper, more like blotting paper, and so keeps

-them better. Before the repulsion between father and son became so

-marked, Amaryllis had often been with her grandfather in the garden and

-round the meadows at Coombe Oaks, and seen him gather the yellow tulips,

-the broad-petalled roses, and in autumn the bright scarlet bramble

-leaves. The brown leaves of the Spanish chestnut, too, pleased him;

-anything with richness of colour. The old and grey, and withered man

-gathered the brightest of petals for his old and grey, and forgotten

-books.

-

-Now the sight of these leaves and petals between the yellow pages

-softened her heart towards him; he was a tyrant, but he was very, very

-old, they were like flowers on a living tomb.

-

-In a little while Grandfather Iden got up, and going to a drawer in one

-of the bookcases, took from it some scraps of memoranda; he thrust these

-between her face and the book, and told her to read them instead.

-

-"These are your writing."

-

-"Go on," said the old man, smiling, grunting, and coughing, all at once.

-

-"In 1840," read Amaryllis, "there were only two houses in Black Jack

-Street." "Only _two_ houses!" she interposed, artfully.

-

-"Two," said the grandfather.

-

-"One in 1802," went on Amaryllis, "while in 1775 the site was covered

-with furze." "How it has changed!" she said. He nodded, and coughed, and

-smiled; his great grey hat rocked on his head and seemed about to

-extinguish him.

-

-"There's a note at the bottom in pencil, grandpa. It says, 'A hundred

-voters in this street, 1884.'"

-

-"Ah!" said the old man, an ah! so deep it fetched his very heart up in

-coughing. When he finished, Amaryllis read on--

-

-"In 1802 there were only ten voters in the town."

-

-"Ah!" His excitement caused such violent coughing Amaryllis became

-alarmed, but it did him no harm. The more he coughed and choked the

-livelier he seemed. The thought of politics roused him like a

-trumpet--it went straight to his ancient heart.

-

-"Read that again," he said. "How many voters now?"

-

-"A hundred voters in this street, 1884."

-

-"We've got them all"--coughing--"all in my lord's houses, everyone; vote

-Conservative, one and all. What is it?" as some one knocked. Dinner was

-ready, to Amaryllis's relief.

-

-"Perhaps you would like to dine with me?" asked the grandfather,

-shuffling up his papers. "There--there," as she hesitated, "you would

-like to dine with young people, of course--of course."

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XII.

-

-

-OLD Grandfather Iden always dined alone in the parlour, with his

-housekeeper to wait on him; they were just bringing in his food. The

-family and visitors had their meals in a separate and much more

-comfortable apartment in another part of the house, which was large.

-Sometimes, as a great favour and special mark of approval, the old Pacha

-would invite you to eat with him.

-

-Amaryllis, though anxious to please him, hesitated, not only because of

-the smoke, but because she knew he always had pork for dinner.

-

-The rich juices of roast pork sustained his dry and withered frame--it

-was a sort of Burgundy of flesh to him. As the good wine of Burgundy

-fills the blood with iron and strengthens the body, so the rich juice of

-the pork seemed to supply the oil necessary to keep the sinews supple

-and to prevent the cartilages from stiffening.

-

-The scientific people say that it is the ossification of the

-cartilages--the stiffening of the firmer tissues--that in time

-interferes with the processes of life. The hinges rust, as if your

-tricycle had been left out in the rain for a week--and the delicate

-watchwork of the human frame will not run.

-

-If suppleness could only be maintained there is no reason why it should

-not continue to work for a much longer period, for a hundred and fifty,

-two hundred years--as long as you fancy. But nothing has yet been

-devised to keep up the suppleness.

-

-Grandfather Iden found the elixir of life in roast pork. The jokers of

-Woolhorton--there are always jokers, very clever they think

-themselves--considered the reason it suited him so well was because of

-the pig-like obstinacy of his disposition.

-

-Anything more contrary to common sense than for an old man of ninety to

-feed on pork it would be hard to discover--so his friends said.

-

-"Pork," said the physician, had down from London to see him on one

-occasion, "pork is the first on the list of indigestible articles of

-food. It takes from six to eight hours for the gastric apparatus to

-reduce its fibres. The stomach becomes overloaded--acidity is the

-result; nightmares, pains, and innumerable ills are the consequence. The

-very worst thing Mr. Iden could eat."

-

-"Hum," growled the family doctor, a native of Woolhorton, when he heard

-of this. "Hum!" low in his throat, like an irate bulldog. If in the

-least excited, like most other country folk, he used the provincial

-pronunciation. "Hum! A' have lived twenty years on pork. Let'n yet it!"

-

-Grandfather Iden intended to eat it, and did eat it six days out of

-seven, not, of course, roast pork every dinner; sometimes boiled pork;

-sometimes he baked it himself in the great oven. Now and then he varied

-it with pig-meat--good old country meat, let me tell you, pig-meat--such

-as spare-rib, griskin, blade-bone, and that mysterious morsel, the

-"mouse." The chine he always sent over for Iden junior, who was a chine

-eater--a true Homeric diner--and to make it even, Iden junior sent in

-the best apples for sauce from his favourite russet trees. It was about

-the only amenity that survived between father and son.

-

-The pig-meat used to be delicious in the old house at home, before we

-all went astray along the different paths of life; fresh from the pigs

-fed and killed on the premises, nutty, and juicy to the palate. Much of

-it is best done on a gridiron--here's heresy! A gridiron is flat

-blasphemy to the modern school of scientific cookery. Scientific

-fiddlestick! Nothing like a gridiron to set your lips watering.

-

-But the "mouse,"--what was the "mouse?" The London butchers can't tell

-me. It was a titbit. I suppose it still exists in pigs; but London folk

-are so ignorant.

-

-Grandfather Iden ate pig in every shape and form, that is, he mumbled

-the juice out of it, and never complained of indigestion.

-

-He was up at five o'clock every morning of his life, pottering about the

-great oven with his baker's man. In summer if it was fine he went out at

-six for a walk in the Pines--the promenade of Woolhorton.

-

-"If you wants to get well," old Dr. Butler used to say, "you go for a

-walk in the marning afore the aair have been braathed auver."

-

-Before the air has been breathed over--inspired and re-inspired by human

-crowds, while it retains the sweetness of the morning, like water fresh

-from the spring; that was when it possessed its value, according to

-bluff, gruff, rule-of-thumb old Butler. Depend upon it, there is

-something in his dictum, too.

-

-Amaryllis hesitated at the thought of the pork, for he often had it

-underdone, so the old gentleman dismissed her in his most gracious

-manner to dine with the rest.

-

-She went down the corridor and took the seat placed for her. There was a

-posy of primroses beside her napkin--posies of primroses all round the

-table.

-

-This raging old Tory of ninety years would give a shilling for the

-earliest primrose the boys could find for him in the woods. Some one got

-him a peacock's feather which had fallen from Beaconsfield's

-favourites--a real Beaconsfield peacock-feather--which he had set in the

-centre of a splendid screen of feathers that cost him twenty guineas.

-The screen was upstairs in the great drawing-room near a bow window

-which overlooked the fair.

-

-People, you see, took pains to get him feathers and anything he fancied,

-on account of the twenty thousand spade guineas in the iron box under

-the bed.

-

-His daughters, elderly, uninteresting married folk, begged him not to

-keep a peacock's feather in the house--it would certainly bring

-misfortune. The superstition was so firmly rooted in their minds that

-they actually argued with him--_argued_ with Grandfather Iden!--pointing

-out to him the fearful risk he was running. He puffed and coughed, and

-grew red in the face--the great grey hat shook and tottered with anger;

-not for all the Powers of Darkness would he have given up that feather.

-

-The chairs round the large table were arranged in accordance with the

-age of the occupants. There were twenty-one grandchildren, and a number

-of aunts, uncles, and so on; a vague crowd that does not concern us. The

-eldest sat at the head of the table, the next in age followed, and so

-all round the dishes. This arrangement placed Amaryllis rather low

-down--a long way from the top and fountain of honour--and highly

-displeased her. She despised and disliked the whole vague crowd of her

-relations, yet being there, she felt that she ought to have had a

-position above them all. Her father--Iden, junior--was old Iden's only

-son and natural heir; therefore her father's chair ought to have been at

-the top of the table, and hers ought to have been next to his.

-

-Instead of which, as her father was not the eldest, his seat was some

-distance from the top, and hers again, was a long way from his.

-

-All the other chairs were full, but her father's chair was empty.

-

-The vague crowd were so immensely eager to pay their despicable court to

-the Spade-Guinea Man, not one of them stopped away; the old, the young,

-the lame, the paralytic, all found means to creep in to Grandfather

-Iden's annual dinner. His only son and natural heir was alone absent.

-How eagerly poor Amaryllis glanced from time to time at that empty

-chair, hoping against hope that her dear father would come in at the

-Psalms, or even at the sermon, and disappoint the venomous, avaricious

-hearts of the enemies around her.

-

-For well she knew how delighted they were to see his chair empty, as a

-visible sign and token of the gulf between father and son, and well she

-knew how diligently each laboured to deepen the misunderstanding and set

-fuel to the flame of the quarrel. If the son were disinherited, consider

-the enormous profit to the rest of them!

-

-Grandfather Iden made no secret of the fact that he had not signed a

-will. It was believed that several rough drafts had been sketched out

-for him, but, in his own words--and he was no teller of falsehoods--he

-had not decided on his will. If only they could persuade him to make his

-will they might feel safe of something; but suppose he went off pop, all

-in a moment, as these extraordinarily healthy old people are said to do,

-and the most of his estate in land! Consider what a contingency--almost

-all of it would go to his own son. Awful thing!

-

-Amaryllis was aware how they all stared at her and quizzed her over and

-over; her hair, her face, her form, but most of all her dress. They were

-so poor at home she had not had a new dress this twelvemonth past; it

-was true her dress was decent and comfortable, and she really looked

-very nice in it to any man's eye; but a girl does not want a comfortable

-dress, she wants something in the style of the day, and just

-sufficiently advanced to make the women's eyes turn green with envy. It

-is not the men's eyes; it is the women's eyes.

-

-Amaryllis sat up very quiet and unconcerned, trying with all her might

-to make them feel she was the Heiress, not only an only son's only

-daughter, but the only son's only offspring--doubly the Heiress of

-Grandfather Iden.

-

-The old folk, curious in such matters, had prophesied so soon as she was

-born that there would be no more children at Coombe Oaks, and so it fell

-out. For it had been noticed in the course of generations, that in the

-direct line of Iden when the first child was a daughter there were none

-to follow. And further, that there never was but one Miss Iden at a

-time.

-

-If the Direct Line had a daughter first, they never had any more

-children; consequently that daughter was the only Miss Iden.

-

-If the Direct Line had a son, they never had a second son, though they

-might have daughters; but then, in order that there should still be

-only one Miss Iden, it always happened that the first died, or was

-married early, before the second came into existence.

-

-Such was the tradition of the Iden family; they had a long pedigree, the

-Idens, reaching farther back than the genealogies of many a peer, and it

-had been observed that this was the rule of their descent.

-

-Amaryllis was the only Miss Iden, and the heiress, through her father,

-of the Spade-Guinea Man. She tried to make them feel that she knew it

-and felt it; that she was the Iden of the Idens. Her proud face--it was

-a very proud face naturally--darkened a little, and grew still more

-disdainful in its utter scorn and loathing of the vague crowd of

-enemies.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIII.

-

-

-TO one, as it were, in the gallery, it was a delight to see her; her

-sweet cheeks, fresh as the dawn, reddening with suppressed indignation;

-her young brow bent; her eyes cast down--don't you think for a moment

-she would deign to look at them--pride in her heart, and resolute

-determination to fight for her dear father and mother.

-

-But she felt as she sat so unconcerned that there was a crack in her

-boot unmended, and it seemed as if everyone could see it though under

-the solid table. She had not had a really sound pair of boots for many,

-many months; they could not afford her a new pair at home, and the

-stupid shoemaker, "Established 1697," was such a time repairing her

-others.

-

-She would not look at them, but she knew that they were all dressed

-better than she was; there were some of them very poor, and very vulgar,

-too, but they were all dressed better than her, and without a doubt had

-sound boots on their feet.

-

-The cottagers in Coombe hamlet always had sound boots; she never had;

-nor, indeed, her mother. Her father had a pair, being compelled by the

-character of his work in the fields to take care of himself so far,

-though he wore a ragged coat. But neither mother nor daughter ever had a

-whole pair of boots--whole and sound as the very cottagers had.

-

-If Amaryllis had sat there with naked feet she would have been prouder

-than ever, and that is why I always loved her so; she was not to be put

-down by circumstances, she was above external things.

-

-But as time went on, and the dinner was nearly over--she had scarcely

-eaten anything--and as she glanced from time to time at her father's

-empty chair, and knew that he would not come, and that his defection

-would revive the old quarrel which might so easily have been mended, the

-Flamma blood began to rise and grow hotter and hotter, and the foot with

-the worn boot on it began to tap the floor.

-

-The Flamma blood would have liked to have swept the whole company over a

-precipice into the Red Sea as the herd of swine in old time. It was

-either the Red Sea or somewhere; geography is of no consequence.

-

-          Spain's an island near

-          Morocco, betwixt Egypt and Tangier.

-

-The Flamma blood would have liked to have seen them all poisoned and

-dying on their seats.

-

-The Flamma blood would have been glad to stick a knife into each of

-them--only it would not have touched them with the longest hop-pole in

-Kent, so utter was its loathing of the crew gloating over that empty

-chair.

-

-And for once Amaryllis did not check it, and did not say to herself, "I

-_will_ not be a Flamma."

-

-Towards the end of the tedious banquet the word was passed round that

-everyone was to sit still, as Grandfather Iden was coming to look at his

-descendants.

-

-There was not the least fear of any of them stirring, for they well knew

-his custom--to walk round, and speak a few words to everyone in turn,

-and to put a new golden sovereign into their hands. Thirty-two

-sovereigns it was in all--one for each--but the thirty-third was always

-a spade-guinea, which was presented to the individual who had best

-pleased him during the year.

-

-A genial sort of custom, no doubt, but fancy the emulation and the

-heart-burning over the spade-guinea! For the fortunate winner usually

-considered himself the nearest to the Will.

-

-Amaryllis' cheeks began to burn at the thought that she should have to

-take his horrible money. A hideous old monster he was to her at that

-moment--not that he had done anything to her personally--but he left her

-dear father to be worried out of his life by petty tradesmen, and her

-dear mother to go without a pair of decent boots, while he made this

-pompous distribution among these wretches. The hideous old monster!

-

-Out in the town the boys behind his back gave him endless nicknames:

-Granfer Iden, Floury Iden, My Lord Lardy-Cake, Marquis Iden, His Greasy

-Grace; and, indeed, with his whims and humours, and patronage, his

-caprices and ways of going on, if he had but had a patent of nobility,

-Grandfather Iden would have made a wonderfully good duke.

-

-By-and-by in comes the old Pacha, still wearing his great grey tottery

-hat, and proceeds from chair to chair, tapping folk on the shoulder,

-saying a gracious word or two, and dropping his new golden sovereigns in

-their eager palms. There was a loud hum of conversation as he went

-round; they all tried to appear so immensely happy to see him.

-

-Amaryllis did not exactly watch him, but of course knew what he was

-about, when suddenly there was a dead silence. Thirty-two people

-suddenly stopped talking as if the pneumatic brake had been applied to

-their lips by a sixty-ton locomotive.

-

-Dead, ominous silence. You could almost hear the cat licking his paw

-under the table.

-

-Amaryllis looked, and saw the old man leaning with both hands on the

-back of his son's empty chair.

-

-He seemed to cling to it as if it was a spar floating on the barren

-ocean of life and death into which his withered old body was sinking.

-

-Perhaps he really would have clung like that to his son had but his son

-come to him, and borne a little, and for a little while, with his ways.

-

-A sorrowful thing to see--the old man of ninety clinging to the back of

-his son's empty chair. His great grey tottery hat seemed about to tumble

-on the floor--his back bowed a little more--and he groaned deeply, three

-times.

-

-We can see, being out of the play and spectators merely, that there was

-a human cry for help in the old man's groan--his heart yearned for his

-son's strong arm to lean on.

-

-The crowd of relations were in doubt as to whether they should rejoice,

-whether the groan was a sign of indignation, of anger too deep ever to

-be forgotten, or whether they should be alarmed at the possibility of

-reconciliation.

-

-The Flamma blood was up too much in Amaryllis for her to feel pity for

-him as she would have done in any other mood; she hated him all the

-more; he was rich, the five-shilling fare was nothing to him, he could

-hire a fly from the "Lamb Inn," and drive over and make friends with her

-father in half an hour. Groaning there--the hideous old monster! and her

-mother without a decent pair of boots.

-

-In a moment or two Grandfather Iden recovered himself, and continued the

-distribution, and by-and-by Amaryllis felt him approach her chair. She

-did not even turn to look at him, so he took her hand, and placed two

-coins in it, saying in his most gracious way that the sovereign was for

-her father, and the guinea--the spade-guinea--for herself. She muttered

-something--she knew not what--she could but just restrain herself from

-throwing the money on the floor.

-

-It was known in a moment that Amaryllis had the guinea. Conceive the

-horror, the hatred, the dread of the crowd of sycophants! That the

-Heiress Apparent should be the favourite!

-

-Yet more. Half-an-hour later, just after they had all got upstairs into

-the great drawing-room, and some were officiously and reverently

-admiring the peacock-feather in the screen, and some looking out of the

-bow window at the fair, there came a message for Amaryllis to put on her

-hat and go for a walk with her grandfather.

-

-There was not one among all the crowd in the drawing-room who had ever

-been invited to accompany Iden Pacha.

-

-Three days ago at home, if anyone had told Amaryllis that she would be

-singled out in this way, first to receive the Iden medal--the

-spade-guinea stamp of approval--and then, above all things, to be

-honoured by walking out with this "almighty" grandfather, how delighted

-she would have been at the thought of the triumph!

-

-But now it was just the reverse. Triumph over these people--pah! a

-triumph over rats and flies or some such creatures. She actually felt

-lowered in her own esteem by being noticed at all among them. Honoured

-by this old horror--she revolted at it. _He_ honour her with his

-approval--she hated him.

-

-The other day a travelling piano was wheeled through Coombe and set up

-a tune in that lonesome spot. Though it was but a mechanical piece of

-music, with the cogs as it were of the mechanism well marked by the

-thump, thump, it seemed to cheer the place--till she went out to the

-gate to look at the Italian woman who danced about while the grinding

-was done, and saw that she had a sound pair of boots on. That very

-morning her mother in crossing the road had set the Flamma rheumatism

-shooting in her bones, for the dampness of the mud came through the

-crack in her boot.

-

-This miserable old Iden Pacha thought to honour her while he let her

-mother walk about with her stocking on the wet ground!

-

-The Flamma blood was up in her veins--what did she care for guineas!

-

-As she was putting her hat on in the bedroom before the glass she looked

-round to see that no one was watching, and then stooped down and put the

-spade-guinea in the dust of the floor under the dressing-table. She

-would have none of his hateful money. The sovereign she took care of

-because it was for her father, and he might buy something useful with

-it; he wanted a few shillings badly enough.

-

-So the spade-guinea remained in the dust of the floor for a week or two,

-till it pleased the housemaid to move the dressing-table to brush away

-the accumulation, when she found the shining one in the fluff.

-

-Being over thirty, she held her tongue, the guinea henceforward

-travelled down the stream of Time fast enough though silently, but she

-took the first opportunity of examining the iron box under the Pacha's

-bed, thinking perhaps there might be a chink in it. And it was curious

-how for some time afterwards a fit of extraordinary industry prevailed

-in the house; there was not a table, a chair, or any piece of furniture

-that was not chivvied about under pretence of polishing. She actually

-had a day's holiday and a cast-off gown given to her as a reward for her

-labours.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIV.

-

-

-AMARYLLIS did not look back as she walked beside her grandfather slowly

-up the street, or she would have seen the company of relations watching

-them from the bow-window.

-

-Iden went straight through the crowd without any hesitation on account

-of his age--angry as she was, Amaryllis feared several times lest the

-clumsy people should over-turn him, and tried her best to shield him.

-But he had a knack of keeping on his feet--the sort of knack you learn

-by skating--and did not totter much more than usual, despite the press.

-

-The world gets on with very little amusement somehow. Here were two or

-three thousand people packed in the street, and all they had to enliven

-their festive gathering was the same old toys their fathers' fathers'

-fathers had set before them.

-

-Rows of booths for the display of "fairings," gingerbread, nuts, cakes,

-brandy-balls, and sugar-plums stood in the gutter each side.

-

-The "fairings" were sweet biscuits--they have been made every fair this

-hundred years.

-

-The nuts were dry and hard, just as Spanish nuts always are. The

-gingerbread was moulded in the same old shapes of clumsy horses outlined

-with gilt.

-

-There was the same old trumpeting and tootling, tom-tomming, and roaring

-of showmen's voices. The same old roundabouts, only now they were driven

-by steam, and short, quick whistles announced that the whirligig caravan

-was travelling round the world. The fat woman, the strong man, the

-smashers tapping the "claret," the "Pelican of the Wilderness," that

-mystic and melancholy bird, the rifle galleries, the popping for

-nuts--behold these are they our fathers have seen.

-

-There is nothing new under the sun--not even at Epsom. The first time I

-saw the wonderful crowd of the Derby Day--perhaps the largest crowd in

-the world--I could scarcely believe my eyes, for I found on passing

-through it that the hundreds of thousands of people there had nothing

-more to amuse them than they would have found at an ordinary country

-fair. Swings, roundabouts, cockshies at cocoa-nuts, rootletum,

-tootletum, and beer. That was all. No new amusement whatsoever: a very

-humdrum sort of world, my masters!

-

-The next finest crowd is the crowd on August bank-holiday all along the

-Brighton beach, and there it is just the same. Nothing for the folk but

-Punch, brass bands, and somersaulters--dull old stories in my

-grandmother's time.

-

-Xerxes offered a reward to anyone who could invent him a fresh

-pleasure--the multitude of the Derby Day and Brighton beach should do

-the same. But indeed they do, for an immense fortune would certainly be

-the reward of such a discoverer. One gets tired of pitching sticks at

-cocoa-nuts all one's time.

-

-However, at Woolhorton nobody but the very rawest and crudest folk cared

-for the shows, all they did care was to alternately stand stock still

-and then shove. First they shoved as far as the "Lion" and had some

-beer, then they shoved back to the "Lamb" and had some beer, then they

-stood stock still in the street and blocked those who were shoving.

-Several thousand people were thus happily occupied, and the Lion and the

-Lamb laid down together peacefully that day.

-

-Amaryllis and old Iden had in like manner to shove, for there was no

-other way to get through, no one thought of moving, or giving any

-passage, if you wanted to progress you must shoulder them aside. As

-Grandfather Iden could not shove very hard they were frequently

-compelled to wait till the groups opened, and thus it happened that

-Amaryllis found herself once face to face with Jack Duck.

-

-He kind of sniggered in a foolish way at Amaryllis, and touched his hat

-to Iden. "You ain't a been over to Coombe lately, Mr. Iden," he said.

-

-"No," replied the old man sharply, and went on.

-

-Jack could hardly have struck a note more discordant to Amaryllis. The

-father had not been to visit his son for more than a year--she did not

-want unpleasant memories stirred up.

-

-Again in another group a sturdy labourer touched his hat and asked her

-if her father was at fair, as he was looking out for a job. Old Iden

-started and grunted like a snorting horse.

-

-Amaryllis, though put out, stayed to speak kindly to him, for she knew

-he was always in difficulties. Bill Nye was that contradiction a strong

-man without work. He wanted to engage for mowing. Bill Nye was a mower

-at Coombe, and his father, Bill Nye, before him, many a long year before

-he was discovered in California.

-

-When she overtook Iden he was struggling to pass the stream of the

-Orinoco, which set strongly at that moment out of the "Lamb" towards the

-"Lion." Strong men pushed out from the "Lamb" archway like a river into

-the sea, thrusting their way into the general crowd, and this mighty

-current cast back the tottering figure of old Iden as the swollen

-Orinoco swung the crank old Spanish caravels that tried to breast it.

-

-It was as much as Amaryllis and he together could do to hold their

-ground at the edge of the current. While they were thus battling she

-chanced to look up.

-

-A large window was open over the archway, and at this window a fellow

-was staring down at her. He stood in his shirt-sleeves with a

-billiard-cue in his hand waiting his turn to play. It was the same young

-fellow, gentleman if you like, whose pale face had so displeased her

-that morning as he rode under when she watched the folk go by to fair.

-He was certainly the most advanced in civilization of all who had passed

-Plum Corner, and yet there was something in that pale and rather

-delicate face which was not in the coarse lineaments of the "varmers"

-and "drauvers" and "pig-dealers" who had gone by under the wall.

-Something that insulted her.

-

-The face at the window was appraising her.

-

-It was reckoning her up--so much for eyes, so much for hair, so much for

-figure, and as this went on the fingers were filling a pipe from an

-elastic tobacco-pouch. There was no romance, no poetry in that

-calculation--no rapture or pure admiration of beauty; there was a

-billiard-cue and a tobacco-pouch, and a glass of spirits and water, and

-an atmosphere of smoke, and a sound of clicking ivory balls at the back

-of the thought. His thumb was white where he had chalked it to make a

-better bridge for the cue. His face was white; for he had chalked it

-with dissipation. His physical body was whitened--chalked--a whited

-sepulchre; his moral nature likewise chalked.

-

-At the back of his thought lay not the high esteem of the poet-thinker

-for beauty, but the cynical blackguardism of the XIXth century.

-

-The cynicism that deliberately reckons up things a Shakespeare would

-admire at their lowest possible sale value. A slow whiff of smoke from a

-corner of the sneering mouth, an air of intense knowingness, as much as

-to say, "You may depend upon me--I've been behind the scenes. All this

-is got up, you know; stage effect in front, pasteboard at the rear;

-nothing in it."

-

-In the sensuality of Nero there may still be found some trace of a

-higher nature; "What an artist the world has lost!" he exclaimed, dying.

-

-The empress Theodora craved for the applause of the theatre to which she

-exposed her beauty.

-

-This low, cynical nineteenth century blackguardism thinks of nothing but

-lowness, and has no ideal. The milliner even has an ideal, she looks to

-colour, shape, effect; though but in dress, yet it is an ideal. There

-was no ideal in Ned Marks.

-

-They called him from within to take his turn with the cue; he did not

-answer, he was so absorbed in his calculations. He was clever--in a way;

-he had quite sufficient penetration to see that this was no common girl.

-She was not beautiful--yet, she was not even pretty, and so plainly

-dressed; still there was something marked in her features. And she was

-with old Iden.

-

-Amaryllis did not understand the meaning of his glance, but she felt

-that it was an insult. She looked down quickly, seized her grandfather's

-arm, and drew him out from the pavement into the street, yielding a

-little to the current and so hoping to presently pass it.

-

-By this time, as Ned Marks did not answer, his companions had come to

-the window to discover what he was staring at. "Oho!" they laughed.

-"It's Miss Iden. Twenty thousand guineas in the iron box!"

-

-Iden's great white hat, which always seemed to sit loosely on his head,

-was knocked aside by the elbow of a burly butcher struggling in the

-throng; Amaryllis replaced it upright, and leading him this way, and

-pushing him that, got at last to the opposite pavement, and so behind

-the row of booths, between them and the houses where there was less

-crush. Taking care of him, she forgot to look to her feet and stepped in

-the gutter where there was a puddle. The cold water came through the

-crack in her boot.

-

-While these incidents were still further irritating her, the old Pacha

-kept mumbling and muttering to himself, nodding his head and smiling at

-each fresh mark of attention, for though he was so independent and

-fearless still he appreciated the trouble she took. The mumbling in his

-mouth was a sort of purring. Her dutiful spirit had stroked him up to a

-pleasant state of electric glow; she felt like a hound in a leash, ready

-to burst the bond that held her to his hand. Side by side, and arm in

-arm, neither of them understood the other; ninety and sixteen, a strange

-couple in the jostling fair.

-

-Iden turned down a passage near the end of the street, and in an instant

-the roar of the crowd which had boomed all round them was shut off by

-high walls up which it rose and hummed over their heads in the air. They

-walked on broad stone flags notched here and there at the edges, for the

-rest worn smooth by footsteps (the grave drives such a trade) like

-Iden's doorstep, they were in fact tombstones, and the walled passage

-brought them to the porch of the Abbey church.

-

-There he stopped, muttering and mumbling, and wiped his forehead with

-his vast silk handkerchief. They were no longer incommoded by a crowd,

-but now and then folk came by hastening to the fair; lads with favours

-in their coats, and blue ribbons in their hats, girls in bright dresses,

-chiefly crude colours, who seemed out of accord with the heavy weight as

-it were of the great Abbey, the ponderous walls, the quiet gloom of the

-narrow space, and the shadows that lurked behind the buttresses.

-

-The aged man muttered and mumbled about the porch and took Amaryllis

-under it, making her look up at the groining, and note the spring of the

-arch, which formed a sort of carved crown over them. It was a fine old

-porch, deep and high, in some things reminding you of the porches that

-are to be seen in Spain; stone made to give a pleasant shade like trees,

-so cut and worked as to be soft to the eye.

-

-He pointed out to her the touches that rendered it so dear to those who

-value art in stone. He knew them, every one, the history and the dates,

-and the three stags' heads on a shield; there were broad folios in the

-smoky room at home, filled with every detail, Iden himself had

-subscribed forty pounds to the cost of illustrating one of them. Every

-scholar who visited the Abbey church, called and begged to see the

-baker's old books.

-

-Iden rubbed his old thumb in the grooves and went outside and hoisted

-himself, as it were, up from his crooked S position to look at the three

-stags' heads on the shield on the wall; dim stags' heads that to you, or

-at least to me, might have been fishes, or Jove's thunderbolts, or

-anything.

-

-Amaryllis was left standing alone a moment in the porch, the deep shadow

-within behind her, the curve of the arch over, a fine setting for a

-portrait. She stood the more upright because of the fire and temper

-suppressed in her.

-

-Just outside the human letter S--crooked S--clad in sad white-grey

-miller's garments, its old hat almost falling backwards off its old grey

-head, gazed up and pointed with its oaken cudgel at the coat of arms.

-Seven hundred years--the weight of seven hundred years--hung over them

-both in that old Abbey.

-

-Into that Past he was soon to disappear: she came out to the Future.

-

-Thence he took her to an arched door, nail-studded, in the passage wall,

-and giving her the key, told her to open it, and stood watching her in

-triumph, as if it had been the door to some immense treasury. She turned

-the lock, and he pushed her before him hastily, as if they must snatch

-so grand an opportunity.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XV.

-

-

-WITHIN there was a gravel path, and glimpses between trees of wide

-pleasure-grounds. Amaryllis hesitated, and looked back; Iden drew her

-forward, not noticing her evident disinclination to proceed. If he had,

-he would have put it down to awe, instead of which it was dislike.

-

-For she guessed they were entering the lawns in front of the Hon.

-Raleigh Pamment's mansion. He was the largest owner of town and country;

-the streets, the market-place, the open spaces, in which the fair was

-being held, belonged to him; so did most of the farms and hamlets out of

-which the people had come. The Pamments were Tories; very important

-Tories indeed.

-

-The Idens, in their little way, were Tories, too, right to the centre of

-the cerebellum; the Flammas were hot Republicans. Now Amaryllis, being a

-girl, naturally loved her father most, yet she was a wilful and

-rebellious revolutionist. Amaryllis, who would not be a Flamma, had

-imbibed all the Flamma hatred of authority from her mother.

-

-To her the Pamments were the incarnation of everything detestable, of

-oppression, obstruction, and mediaeval darkness. She knew nothing of

-politics; at sixteen you do not need to know to feel vehemently, you

-feel vehemently without knowing. Still, she had heard a good deal about

-the Pamments.

-

-She resented being brought there to admire the pleasure grounds and

-mansion, and to kow-tow to the grandeur of these mediaeval tyrants.

-

-Old Iden led her on till they came to the smooth lawn before the front

-windows; three centuries of mowing had made it as smooth as the top of

-his own head, where the years had mown away merrily.

-

-There was not so much as a shrub--not a daisy--between them and the

-great windows of the house. They stood in full view.

-

-Amaryllis could scarcely endure herself, so keen was her vexation; her

-cheeks reddened. She was obliged to face the house, but her glance was

-downwards; she would not look at it.

-

-Grandfather Iden was in the height of his glory. In all Woolhorton town

-there was not another man who could do as he was doing at that moment.

-

-The Pamments were very exclusive people, exceptionally exclusive even

-for high class Tories. Their gardens, and lawns, and grounds were

-jealously surrounded with walls higher than the old-fashioned houses of

-the street beneath them. No one dared to so much as peer through a

-crevice of the mighty gates. Their persons were encircled with the

-"divinity" that hedges the omnipotent landed proprietor. No one dared

-speak to a Pamment. They acknowledged no one in the town, not even the

-solicitors, not even the clergyman of the Abbey church; that was on

-account of ritual differences.

-

-It was, indeed, whispered--high treason must always be whispered--that

-young Pamment, the son and heir, was by no means so exclusive, and had

-been known to be effusive towards ladies of low birth--and manners.

-

-The great leaders of Greece--Alcibiades, Aristides, and so on--threw

-open their orchards to the people. Everyone walked in and did as he

-chose. These great leaders of England--the Pamments--shut up their lawns

-and pleasure-grounds, sealed them hermetically, you could hardly throw a

-stone over the walls if you tried.

-

-But Grandfather Iden walked through those walls as if there were none;

-he alone of all Woolhorton town and country.

-

-In that gossipy little town, of course, there were endless surmises as

-to the why and wherefore of that private key. Shrewd people said--"Ah!

-you may depend they be getting summat out of him. Lent 'em some of his

-guineas, a' reckon. They be getting summat out of him. Hoss-leeches,

-they gentlefolks."

-

-Grandfather Iden alone entered when he listed: he wandered about the

-lawns, he looked in at the conservatories, he took a bunch of grapes if

-it pleased him, or a bouquet of flowers; he actually stepped indoors

-occasionally and sat down on the carved old chairs, or pottered about

-the picture gallery. He had a private key to the nail-studded door in

-the wall by the Abbey church, and he looked upon that key very much as

-if it had been the key of Paradise.

-

-When Grandfather Iden stood on the lawn at Pamment House he was the

-proudest and happiest man in what they sarcastically call "God's

-creation."

-

-He was a peer at such moments; a grandee--the grandee who can wear his

-hat or sit down (which is it? it is most important to be accurate) in

-the presence of his deity, I mean his sovereign; he could actually step

-on the same sward pressed by the holy toes of the Pamments.

-

-In justice to him it must be said that he was most careful not to

-obtrude himself into the sight of their sacred majesties. If they were

-at home he rarely went in, if he did he crept round unfrequented paths,

-the byeways of the gardens, and hid himself under the fig trees, as it

-were. But if by chance a Pamment did light upon him, it was noteworthy

-that he was literally dandled and fondled like an infant, begged to come

-in, and take wine, and so so, and so so.

-

-In justice to old Iden let it be known that he was most careful not to

-obtrude himself; he hid himself under the fig trees.

-

-Hardly credible is it? that a man of ninety years--a man of no common

-intelligence--a man of books, and coins, and antiquities, should, in

-this nineteenth century, bend his aged knees in such a worship.

-Incredible as it may seem it is certainly true.

-

-Such loyalty in others of old time, remember, seems very beautiful when

-we read of the devotion that was shown towards Charles Stuart.

-

-With all his heart and soul he worshipped the very ground the Pamments

-trod on. He loved to see them in the Abbey church; when they were at

-home he never failed to attend service, rain, snow, thunder, ninety

-years notwithstanding, he always attended that he might bow his

-venerable head to them as they swept up the aisle, receiving the

-faintest, yet most gracious, smile of recognition in return.

-

-He was quite happy in his pew if he could see them at their carved desks

-in the chancel; the organ sounded very beautiful then; the light came

-sweetly through the painted windows; a sanctity and heavenly presence

-was diffused around.

-

-Rebellious Amaryllis knew all this, and hated it. Her Flamma foot tapped

-the sacred sward.

-

-Grandfather Iden, after mopping his mouth with his silk handkerchief,

-began to point with his cudgel--a big hockey stick--at the various parts

-of the building. This was Elizabethan, that dated from James II., that

-went back to Henry VII., there were walls and foundations far more

-ancient still, out of sight.

-

-Really, it was a very interesting place archaeologically, if only you

-could have got rid of the Pamments.

-

-Amaryllis made no remark during this mumbling history. Iden thought she

-was listening intently. At the conclusion he was just moving her--for

-she was passive now, like a piece of furniture--when he spied some one

-at a window.

-

-Off came the great white hat, and down it swept till the top brushed the

-grass in the depth of his homage. It was a bow that would have delighted

-a lady, so evidently real in its intent, so full of the gentleman, so

-thoroughly courtier-like, and yet honest. There was nothing to smile at

-in that bow; there was not a young gentleman in Belgravia who could bow

-in that way, for, in truth, we have forgotten how to bow in this

-generation.

-

-A writing and talking is always going on about the high place woman

-occupies in modern society, but the fact is, we have lost our reverence

-for woman as woman; it is after-dinner speech, nothing more, mere sham.

-We don't venerate woman, and therefore we don't bow.

-

-Grandfather Iden's bow would have won any woman's heart had it been

-addressed to her, for there was veneration and courtesy, breeding, and

-desire to please in it.

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVI.

-

-

-THE man he had seen at the window was young Raleigh Pamment, the son and

-heir.

-

-He had been sitting in an easy chair, one leg over the arm, busy with a

-memorandum book, a stump of pencil, and a disordered heap of telegrams,

-letters, and newspapers.

-

-Everybody writes to Mr. Gladstone, a sort of human lion's mouth for

-post-cards, but Raleigh junior had not got to manage the House of

-Commons, the revenue, the nation, the Turks, South Africa, the Nile,

-Ganges, Indus, Afghanistan, sugar, shipping, and Homer.

-

-Yet Raleigh junior had an occasional table beside him, from which the

-letters, telegrams, newspapers, and scraps of paper had overflowed on to

-the floor. In a company's offices it would have taken sixteen clerks to

-answer that correspondence; this idle young aristocrat answered it

-himself, entered it in his day book, "totted" it up, and balanced

-the--the residue.

-

-Nothing at all businesslike, either, about him--nothing in the least

-like those gentlemen who consider that to go in to the "office" every

-morning is the sum total of life. A most unbusinesslike young fellow.

-

-A clay pipe in his mouth, a jar of tobacco on another chair beside him,

-a glass of whiskey for a paper-weight on his telegrams. An idle,

-lounging, "bad lot;" late hours, tobacco, whiskey, and ballet-dancers

-writ very large indeed on his broad face. In short, a young "gent" of

-the latter half of the nineteenth century.

-

-Not the slightest sign of "blue blood" anywhere; not even in the cut of

-his coat, no Brummel-like elegance; hardly a Bond Street coat at

-all--rough, large, coarse cloth. If he had stood at the door of a shop

-he would have done very well indeed for a shopkeeper, the sort that

-drives about in a cart for orders.

-

-Of his character nothing could be learned from his features. His face

-was broad, rather flat, with a short but prominent nose; in spite of

-indulgence, he kept a good, healthy, country colour. His neck was thick,

-his figure stout, his hands big--a jovial, good-tempered looking man.

-

-His neck was _very_ thick, tree-like; a drover's neck, no refinement or

-special intelligence indicated there; great power to eat, drink, and

-sleep--belly energy.

-

-But let no one, therefore, suppose that the members of the upper ten

-thousand are any thicker in the neck, or more abdominal in their

-proclivities, or beneath the culture of the day. Take five hundred

-"blue bloods," and you will find among them a certain proportion of

-thick-necked people; take five hundred very common commoners, and you

-may count exactly the same number interspersed.

-

-The Pamments were simply Englishmen, and liable to be born big, with

-broad faces, thick necks, and ultimate livers. It was no disgrace to

-Raleigh, that jolly neck of his.

-

-Unless you are given to aesthetic crockery, or Francesco de Rimini, I

-think you would rather have liked him; a sort of fellow who would lend

-you his dogs, or his gun, or his horse, or his ballet-dancer, or his

-credit--humph!--at a moment's notice. But he was a very "bad lot;" they

-whispered it even in dutiful Woolhorton.

-

-He got rid of money in a most surprising way, and naturally had nothing

-to show for it. The wonderful manner in which coin will disappear in

-London, like water into deep sand, surpasses the mysteries of the skies.

-It slips, it slides, it glides, it sinks, it flies, it runs out of the

-pocket. The nimble squirrel is nothing to the way in which a sovereign

-will leap forth in town.

-

-Raleigh had a good allowance, often supplemented by soft aunts, yet he

-frequently walked for lack of a cab fare. _I_ can't blame him; I should

-be just as bad, if fortune favoured me. How delicious now to walk down

-Regent Street, along Piccadilly, up Bond Street, and so on, in a

-widening circle, with a thousand pounds in one's pocket, just to spend,

-all your own, and no need to worry when it was gone. To look in at all

-the shops and pick up something here and something yonder, to say, "I'll

-have that picture I admired ten years ago; I'll have a bit of real old

-oak furniture; I'll go to Paris--" but Paris is not a patch on London.

-To take a lady--_the_ lady--to St. Peter Robinson's, and spread the

-silks of the earth before her feet, and see the awakening delight in her

-eyes and the glow on her cheek; to buy a pony for the "kids" and a

-diamond brooch for the kind, middle-aged matron who befriended you years

-since in time of financial need; to get a new gun, and inquire about the

-price of a deer-stalk in Scotland; whetting the road now and then with a

-sip of Moet--but only one sip, for your liver's sake--just to brighten

-up the imagination. And so onwards in a widening circle, as sun-lit

-fancy led: could Xerxes, could great Pompey, could Caesar with all his

-legions, could Lucullus with all his oysters, ever have enjoyed such

-pleasure as this--just to spend money freely, with a jolly chuckle, in

-the streets of London? What is Mahomet's Paradise to _that_?

-

-The exquisite delight of utterly abandoned extravagance, no

-counting--anathemas on counting and calculation! If life be not a dream,

-what is the use of living?

-

-Say what you will, the truth is, we all struggle on in hope of living in

-a dream some day. This is my dream. Dreadfully, horribly wicked, is it

-not, in an age that preaches thrift and--twaddle? No joy like waste in

-London streets; happy waste, imaginative extravagance; to and fro like a

-butterfly!

-

-Besides, there's no entertainment in the world like the streets of

-London on a sunny day or a gas-lit night. The shops, the carriages, the

-people, the odds and ends of life one sees, the drifting to and fro of

-folk, the "bits" of existence, glimpses into shadowy corners, the

-dresses, the women; dear me, where shall we get to? At all events, the

-fact remains that to anyone with an eye the best entertainment in the

-world is a lounge in London streets. Theatres, concerts, seances, Albert

-Halls, museums, galleries, are but set and formal shows; a great

-weariness, for the most part, and who the deuce would care to go and

-gaze at them again who could lounge in Piccadilly?

-

-It is well worth a ten-pound note any day in May; fifty pounds sometimes

-at 1 p.m., merely to look on, I mean, it is worth it; but you can see

-this living show for nothing. Let the grandees go to the opera; for me,

-the streets.

-

-So I can't throw dirt at Raleigh, who often had a hatful of money, and

-could and did just what seemed pleasant in his sight. But the money went

-like water, and in order to get further supplies, the idle,

-good-for-nothing, lazy dog worked like a prime minister with telegrams,

-letters, newspapers, and so on, worked like a prime minister--at

-betting. Horse-racing, in short, was the explanation of the

-memorandum-book, the load of correspondence, and the telegrams, kept

-flat with a glass of whiskey as a paper-weight.

-

-While he wrote, and thought, and reckoned up his chances, a loud refrain

-of snoring arose from the sofa. It was almost as loud as the boom of the

-fair, but Raleigh had no nerves. His friend Freddie, becoming oppressed

-with so much labour, had dropped asleep, leaving his whiskey beside him

-on the sofa, so that the first time he moved over it went on the carpet.

-With one long leg stretched out, the other knee up, lying on his back,

-and his mouth wide open to the ceiling, Freddie was very happy.

-

-Raleigh puffed his clay pipe, sipped, and puffed again. Freddie boomed

-away on the sofa. The family was in London; Raleigh and Freddie got down

-here in this way: it happened one night there was a row at a superb bar,

-Haymarket trail. The "chuckers-out" began their coarse horse-play, and

-in the general melee Raleigh distinguished himself. Rolled about by the

-crowd, he chanced to find himself for a moment in a favourable position,

-and punished one of these gigantic brutes pretty severely.

-

-Though stout and short of breath, Raleigh was strong in the arm, he was

-"up," and he hit hard. The fellow's face was a "picture," coloured in

-cardinal. Such an opportunity does not occur twice in a lifetime;

-Raleigh's genius seized the opportunity, and he became great. Actium was

-a trifle to it.

-

-There were mighty men before Agamemnon, and there are mighty men who do

-not figure in the papers.

-

-Raleigh became at once an anaxandron--a King of Men. The history of his

-feat spread in ten minutes from one end of midnight London to the other:

-from the policeman in Waterloo Place to--everywhere. Never was such a

-stir; the fall of Sebastopol--dear me! I can remember it, look at the

-flight of time--was nothing to it. They would have chaired him, _feted_

-him, got a band to play him about the place, literally crowned him with

-laurel. Ave, Caesar! Evoe! Bacchus! But they could not find him.

-

-Raleigh was off with Freddie, who had been in at the death, and was well

-"blooded." Hansom to Paddington in the small hours; creep, creep, creep,

-through the raw morning mist, puff, whistle, broad gauge, and they had

-vanished.

-

-Raleigh was a man of his age; he lost not a moment; having got the

-glory, the next thing was to elude the responsibility; and, in short, he

-slipped out of sight till the hue-and-cry was over, and the excitement

-of the campaign had subsided.

-

-In case anyone should suppose I approve of midnight battle, I may as

-well label the account at once: "This is a goak."

-

-I do _not_ approve of brawls at the bar, but I have set myself the task

-to describe a bit of human life exactly as it really is, and I can

-assure you as a honest fact that Raleigh by that lucky knock became a

-very great man indeed among people as they really are. People as they

-really are, are not all Greek scholars.

-

-As I don't wish you to look down upon poor Raleigh too much because he

-smoked a cutty, and hit a fellow twice as big as himself, and lent his

-money, and made bets, and drank whiskey, and was altogether wicked, I

-may as well tell you something in his favour: He was a hero to his

-valet.

-

-"No man is a hero to his valet," says the proverb, not even Napoleon,

-Disraeli, or Solomon.

-

-But Raleigh _was_ a hero to his valet.

-

-He was not only a hero to Nobbs the valet; he had perfectly fascinated

-him. The instant he was off duty Nobbs began to be a Raleigh to himself.

-He put on a coat cut in the Raleigh careless style; in fact, he dressed

-himself Raleigh all over. His private hat was exactly like Raleigh's; so

-was his necktie, the same colour, shape, and bought at the same shop; so

-were his boots. He kept a sovereign loose in his waistcoat pocket,

-because that was where Raleigh carried his handy gold. He smoked a

-cutty-pipe, and drank endless whiskies--just like Raleigh, "the very

-ticket"--he had his betting-book, and his telegrams, and his money on

-"hosses," and his sporting paper, and his fine photographs of fine

-women. He swore in Raleigh's very words, and used to spit like him;

-Raleigh, if ever he chanced to expectorate, had an odd way of twisting

-up the corner of his mouth, so did Nobbs. In town Nobbs went to the very

-same bars (always, of course, discreetly and out of sight), the very

-same theatres; a most perfect Raleigh to the tiniest detail. Why,

-Raleigh very rarely wound up his watch--careless Raleigh; accordingly,

-Nobbs' watch was seldom going. "And you just look here," said Nobbs to a

-great and confidential friend, after they had done endless whiskies, and

-smoked handfuls of Raleigh's tobacco, "you look here, if I was _he_, and

-had lots of chink, and soft old parties to get money out of as easy as

-filling yer pipe, by Jove! wouldn't _I_ cut a swell! I'd do it, _I_

-would. I'd make that Whitechapel of his spin along, I rather guess I

-would. I'd liquor up. Wouldn't I put a thou on the Middle Park Plate?

-Ah! wouldn't I, Tommy, my boy! Just wouldn't I have heaps of wimmen;

-some in the trap, and some indoors, and some to go to the theatre

-with--respectable gals, I mean--crowds of 'em would come if Raleigh was

-to hold up his finger. Guess I'd fill this old shop (the Pamment

-mansion) choke full of wimmen! If I was only he! Shouldn't I like to

-fetch one of them waiter chaps a swop on the nose, like _he_ did! Oh,

-my! Oh, Tommy!" And Nobbs very nearly wept at the happy vision of being

-"he."

-

-Why, Raleigh was not only a Hero, he was a Demi-god to his valet! Not

-only Nobbs, but the footmen, and the grooms, and the whole race of

-servants everywhere who had caught a glimpse of Raleigh looked upon him

-as the Ideal Man. So did the whole race of "cads" in the bars and at

-the races, and all over town and country, all of that sort who knew

-anything of Raleigh sighed to be like "he."

-

-The fellow who said that "No man is a hero to his valet" seemed to

-suppose that the world worships good and divine qualities only. Nothing

-of the sort; it is not the heroic, it is the low and coarse and

-blackguard part the mass of people regard with such deep admiration.

-

-If only Nobbs could have been "he," no doubt whatever he would have

-"done it" very big indeed. But he would have left out of his copy that

-part of Raleigh's nature which, in spite of the whiskey and the cutty,

-and the rest of it, made him still a perfect gentleman at heart. Nobbs

-didn't want to be a perfect gentleman.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVII.

-

-

-GLANCING up from his betting-book, Raleigh caught sight of someone on

-the lawn, and went to the window to see who it was.

-

-It was then that Grandfather Iden raised his great grey hat, and brought

-it with so lowly a sweep down to the very ground before this demi-god of

-his.

-

-"Hullo! Fred, I say! Come, quick!" dragging him off the sofa. "Here's

-the Behemoth."

-

-"The Behemoth--the Deluge!" said Fred, incoherently, still half asleep.

-

-"Before that," said Raleigh. "I told you I'd show him to you some day.

-That's the Behemoth."

-

-Some grand folk keep a hump-backed cow, or white wild cattle, or strange

-creatures of that sort, in their parks as curiosities. The particular

-preserve of the Pamments was Grandfather Iden--antediluvian Iden--in

-short, the Behemoth.

-

-It is not everybody who has got a Behemoth on show.

-

-"There's a girl with him," said Fred.

-

-"Have her in," said Raleigh. "Wake us up," ringing the bell. And he

-ordered the butler to fetch old Iden in.

-

-How thoroughly in character with Human Life it was that a man like

-Grandfather Iden--aged, experienced, clever, learned, a man of wise old

-books, should lower his ancient head, and do homage to Raleigh Pamment!

-

-          "Wherefore come ye not to court?

-          Skelton swears 'tis glorious sport.

-          Chattering fools and wise men listening."

-

-Accordingly the butler went out bare-headed--his head was as bare as

-Mont Blanc--and, with many a gracious smile, conveyed his master's

-wishes. The Behemoth, mopping and mowing, wiping his slobbery old mouth

-in the excess of his glorification, takes Amaryllis by the arm, and

-proceeds to draw her towards the mansion.

-

-"But, grandpa--grandpa--really I'd rather not go. Please, don't make me

-go. No--no--I can't," she cried, in a terror of disgust. She would not

-willingly have set foot on the Pamment threshold, no, not for a crown of

-gold, as the old song says unctuously.

-

-"Don't be afraid," said Iden. "Nothing to be afraid of"--mistaking her

-hesitation for awe.

-

-"Afraid!" repeated Amaryllis, in utter bewilderment. "Afraid! I don't

-want to go."

-

-"There's nothing to be afraid of, I'm sure," said the butler in his

-most insidious tones. "Mr. Pamment so very particularly wished to see

-you."

-

-"Come--come," said old Iden, "don't be silly," as she still hung back.

-"It's a splendid place inside--there, lean on me, don't be afraid," and

-so the grandfather pulling her one side, and the butler very, very

-gently pressing her forward the other, they persuaded, or rather they

-moved Amaryllis onward.

-

-She glanced back, her heart beat quick, she had half a mind to break

-loose--easy enough to over-turn the two old fogies--but--how soon "but"

-comes, "but" came to Amaryllis at sixteen. She remembered her father.

-She remembered her mother's worn-out boots. By yielding yet a little

-further she could perhaps contrive to keep her grandfather in good

-humour and open the way to a reconciliation.

-

-So the revolutionary Amaryllis, the red-hot republican blood seething

-like molten metal in her veins, stepped across the hated threshold of

-the ancient and mediaeval Pamments.

-

-But we have all heard about taking the horse to water and finding that

-he would not drink. If you cannot even make a horse, do you think you

-are likely to _make_ a woman do anything?

-

-Amaryllis walked beside her grandfather quietly enough now, but she

-would not see or hear; he pointed out to her the old armour, the marble,

-the old oak; he mumbled on of the staircase where John Pamment, temp.

-Hen. VII., was seized for high treason; she kept her glance steadfastly

-on the ground.

-

-Iden construed it to be veneration, and was yet more highly pleased.

-

-Raleigh had taste enough to receive them in another room, not the

-whiskey-room; he met old Iden literally with open arms, taking both the

-old gentleman's hands in his he shook them till Iden tottered, and tears

-came into his eyes.

-

-Amaryllis scarcely touched his fingers, and would not raise her glance.

-

-"Raw," thought Freddie, who being tall looked over Raleigh's shoulder.

-"Very raw piece."

-

-To some young gentlemen a girl is a "piece."

-

-"My granddaughter," said Iden, getting his voice.

-

-"Ah, yes; like to see the galleries--fond of pictures----"

-

-Amaryllis was silent.

-

-"Answer," said Grandfather Iden graciously, as much as to say, "you

-may."

-

-"No," said Amaryllis.

-

-"Hum--let's see--books--library--carvings. Come, Mr. Iden, you know the

-place better than I do, you're an antiquarian and a scholar--I've

-forgotten my Greek. What would you like to show her?"

-

-"She _is_ fond of pictures," said Iden, greatly flattered that he should

-be thought to know the house better than the heir. "She is fond of

-pictures; she's shy."

-

-Amaryllis' face became a dark red. The rushing blood seemed to stifle

-her. She could have cried out aloud; her pride only checked her

-utterance.

-

-Raleigh, not noticing the deep colour in her face, led on upstairs, down

-the corridors, and into the first saloon. There he paused and old Iden

-took the lead, going straight to a fine specimen of an old Master.

-

-Holding his great grey hat (which he would not give up to the butler) at

-arm's-length and pointing, the old man began to show Amaryllis the

-beauties of the picture.

-

-"A grand thing--look," said he.

-

-"I can't see," said Amaryllis, forced to reply.

-

-"Not see!" said Iden, in a doubtful tone.

-

-"Not a good light, perhaps," said Raleigh. "Come this side."

-

-She did not move.

-

-"Go that side," said Iden.

-

-No movement.

-

-"Go that side," he repeated, sharply.

-

-At last she moved over by Raleigh and stood there, gazing down still.

-

-"Look up," said Iden. She looked up hastily--above the canvas, and then

-again at the floor.

-

-Iden's dim old eyes rested a moment on the pair as they stood together;

-Amaryllis gazing downwards, Raleigh gazing at her. Thoughts of a

-possible alliance, perhaps, passed through Iden's mind; only consider,

-intermarriage between the Pamments and the Idens! Much more improbable

-things have happened; even without the marriage license the connection

-would be an immense honour.

-

-Grandfather Iden, aged ninety years, would most certainly have

-sacrificed the girl of sixteen, his own flesh and blood, joyously and

-intentionally to his worship of the aristocrat.

-

-If she could not have been the wife he would have forced her to be the

-mistress.

-

-There is no one so cruel--so utterly inhuman--as an old man, to whom

-feeling, heart, hope have long been dead words.

-

-"Now you can see," he said, softly and kindly. "Is it not noble?"

-

-"It looks smoky," said Amaryllis, lifting her large, dark eyes at last

-and looking her grandfather in the face.

-

-"Smoky!" he ejaculated, dropping his great white hat, his sunken cheeks

-flushing. It was not so much the remark as the tone of contemptuous

-rebellion.

-

-"Smoky," he repeated.

-

-"Smoky and--dingy," said Amaryllis. She had felt without actually seeing

-that Raleigh's gaze had been fixed upon her the whole time since they

-had entered, that emphatic look which so pleases or so offends a woman.

-

-Now there was nothing in Raleigh's manner to give offence--on the

-contrary he had been singularly pleasant, respectfully pleasant--but she

-remembered the fellow staring at her from the window at the "Lamb" and

-it biased her against him. She wished to treat him, and his pictures,

-and his place altogether with marked contempt.

-

-"I do not care for these pictures," she said. "I will leave now, if you

-please," and she moved towards the door.

-

-"Stop!" cried Iden, stretching out his hands and tottering after her.

-"Stop! I order you to stop! you rude girl!"

-

-He could not catch her, she had left the gallery--he slipped in his

-haste on the polished floor. Fred caught him by the arm or he would have

-fallen, and at the same time presented him with his great white hat.

-

-"Ungrateful!" he shrieked, and then choked and slobbered and mumbled,

-and I verily believe had it not been for his veneration of the place he

-would have spat upon the floor.

-

-Raleigh had rushed after Amaryllis, and overtook her at the staircase.

-

-"Pardon me, Miss Iden," he said, as she hastily descended. "Really I

-should have liked you to have seen the house--will you sit down a

-moment? Forgive me if I said or did----. No, do stay--please--"

-as she made straight for the hall. "I am so sorry--really

-sorry--unintentional"--in fact he had done nothing, and yet he was

-penitent. But she would not listen, she hurried on along the path, she

-began to run, or nearly, as he kept up with her, still begging her to

-pause; Amaryllis ran at last outright. "At least let me see you through

-the fair--rough people. Let me open the door----"

-

-The iron-studded door in the wall shut with a spring lock, and for a

-moment she could not unfasten it; she tore at it and grazed her hand,

-the blood started.

-

-"Good Heavens!" cried Raleigh, now thoroughly upset. "Let me bind it

-up," taking out his handkerchief. "I would not have had this happen for

-money"--short for any amount of money. "Let me----"

-

-"Do please leave me," cried Amaryllis, panting, not with the run, which

-was nothing to her, but pent-up indignation, and still trying to open

-the lock.

-

-Raleigh pressed the lock and the door swung open--he could easily have

-detained her there, but he did not. "One moment, pray--Miss Iden." She

-was gone down the passage between the Abbey church and the wall; he

-followed, she darted out into the crowd of the fair.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVIII.

-

-

-WHEN he stopped and turned, angry beyond measure, vexation biting deep

-lines like aquafortis on his broad, good-natured face.

-

-"That I should have been such a fool--an infernal blockheaded

-fool--" shutting the iron-studded door with a kick and a

-clang--"muddle-headed fool--I'll never touch a drop of whiskey

-again--and that jackass, Fred--why, she's--" a lady, he would have said,

-but did not dare admit to himself now that he had thought to ask her in

-to "wake us up." "But what did I do? Can't think what annoyed her. Must

-have been something between her and that tedious old Iden. Quite sure I

-didn't do or say----" but still he could not quiet his conscience, for

-if he had not by deed or word, he knew he had in thought.

-

-He had sent for her as he might have done for any of the vulgar wenches

-in the fair to amuse an idle hour, and he was ashamed of himself.

-

-In truth, Raleigh had never seen a woman like Amaryllis Iden. Her

-features were not beautiful, as general ideas go, nor had her form the

-grace of full increase; indeed words, and even a portrait by a

-master-hand, would have failed to carry the impression her nature had

-made upon him.

-

-It is not the particular cast of features that makes a man great, and

-gives him a pre-eminence among his fellows. It is the character--the

-mind.

-

-A great genius commands attention at once by his presence, and so a

-woman may equally impress by the power of her nature. Her moral strength

-asserts itself in subtle ways.

-

-I don't say for certain that it was her character that impressed

-Raleigh--it might have been nothing of the sort, it might have been

-_because it was so_, a woman's reason, and therefore appropriate. These

-things do not happen by "why and because."

-

-Some may say it is quite out of place to suppose a whiskey-sipping,

-cutty-pipe smoking, horse-racing, bar-frequenting fellow like Raleigh

-could by any possible means fall in love at first sight. But whiskey,

-cutty, horse, and bar were not the real man, any more than your hat is

-your head, they were mere outside chaff, he had a sound heart all the

-same, a great deal sounder and better, and infinitely more generous than

-some very respectable folk who are regularly seen in their pews, and

-grind down their clerks and dependents to the edge of starvation.

-

-Raleigh was capable of a good deal of heart, such as the pew-haunting

-Pharisee knows not of. Perhaps he was not in love: at all events he was

-highly excited.

-

-Fred had contrived to keep old Iden from following Amaryllis by

-representing that Raleigh would be sure to bring her back. The butler,

-who was very well acquainted with old Iden, hastily whipped out a bottle

-of champagne and handed him a brimming glass. The old gentleman, still

-mouthing and bubbling over with rage, spluttered and drank, and

-spluttered again, and refusing a second, would go, and so met Raleigh in

-the hall.

-

-Raleigh tried on his part to soothe the old man, and on his part the old

-man tried at one and the same moment to apologize for his granddaughter

-and to abuse her for her misconduct. Consequently neither of them heard

-or understood the other.

-

-But no sooner was Iden gone than Raleigh, remembering the rough crowd in

-the fair, despatched the butler after him to see him safe home. It was

-now growing dusky as the evening came on.

-

-Without more ado, this young gentleman then set to and swore at Fred for

-half an hour straight ahead. Fred at first simply stared and wondered

-what on earth had turned his brain; next, being equally hot-tempered, he

-swore in reply; then there followed some sharp recriminations (for each

-knew too much of the other's goings on not to have plenty of material),

-and finally they sparred. Two or three cuffs cooled their ardour, having

-nothing to quarrel about; sulks ensued; Raleigh buried himself in the

-papers; Fred lit a cigar and walked out into the fair. Thus there was

-tribulation in the great house of the Pamments.

-

-Grandfather Iden permitted the butler to steer him through the crowd

-quietly enough, because it flattered him to be thus taken care of before

-the world by a Pamment servitor. When they parted at the doorstep he

-slipped half-a-sovereign in the butler's hand--he could not offer less

-than gold to a Pamments' man--but once inside, his demeanour changed. He

-pushed away his housekeeper, went into his especial sitting-room, bolted

-the door, spread his hands and knees over the fire, and poked the coals,

-grunted, poked, and stirred till smoke and smuts filled the stuffy

-little place.

-

-By-and-by there was a banging of drawers--the drawers in the bureau and

-the bookcases were opened and shut sharply--writing-paper was flung on

-the table, and he sat down to write a letter with a scratchy quill pen.

-The letter written was ordered to post immediately, and the poking, and

-stirring, and grunting recommenced. Thus there was tribulation in the

-house of the head of the Idens.

-

-Amaryllis meantime had got through the town by keeping between the

-booths and the houses. Just as she left the last street Ned Marks rode

-up--he had been on the watch, thinking to talk with her as she walked

-home, but just as he drew rein to go slow and so speak, a heathen pig

-from the market rushed between his horse's legs and spoiled the game by

-throwing him headlong.

-

-She did not see, or at least did not notice, but hastening on, entered

-the fields. In coming to town that morning she had seen everything; now,

-returning in her anger and annoyance, she took no heed of anything; she

-was so absorbed that when a man--one of those she met going to the fair

-for the evening--turned back and followed her some way, she did not

-observe him. Finding that she walked steadily on, the fellow soon ceased

-to pursue.

-

-The gloom had settled when she reached home, and the candles were lit.

-She gave her father the sovereign, and was leaving the room, hoping to

-escape questioning, when Mrs. Iden asked who had the prize-guinea.

-

-"I did," said Amaryllis, very quietly and reluctantly.

-

-"Where is it? Why didn't you say so? Let me see," said Mrs. Iden.

-

-"I--I--I lost it," said Amaryllis.

-

-"You lost it! Lost a guinea! A spade-guinea!"

-

-"What!" said Iden in his sternest tones. "Show it immediately."

-

-"I can't; I lost it."

-

-"Lost it!"

-

-And they poured upon her a cross-fire of anger: a careless, wasteful

-hussy, an idle wretch; what did she do for her living that she could

-throw away spade-guineas? what would her grandfather say? how did she

-suppose they were to keep her, and she not earn the value of a

-bonnet-string? time she was apprenticed to a dressmaker; the quantity

-she ate, and never could touch any fat--dear me, so fine--bacon was not

-good enough for her--she could throw away spade-guineas.

-

-Poor Amaryllis stood by the half-open door, her hat in her hand, her

-bosom heaving, her lips apart and pouting, not with indignation but

-sheer misery; her head drooped, her form seemed to lose its firmness and

-sink till she stooped; she could not face them as she would have done

-others, because you see she loved them, and she had done her best that

-day till too sorely tried.

-

-The storm raged on; finally Iden growled "Better get out of sight." Then

-she went to her bedroom, and sat on the bed; presently she lay down, and

-sobbed silently on the pillow, after which she fell asleep, quite worn

-out, dark circles under her eyes. In the silence of the house, the

-tom-tom and blare of brazen instruments blown at the fair two miles away

-was audible.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIX.

-

-

-So there was tribulation in three houses. Next morning she scarcely

-dared come in to breakfast, and opened the door timidly, expecting heavy

-looks, and to be snapped up if she spoke. Instead of which, on taking

-her place, Iden carefully cut for her the most delicate slice of ham he

-could find, and removed the superfluous fat before putting it on her

-plate. Mrs. Iden had a special jug of cream ready for her--Amaryllis was

-fond of cream--and enriched the tea with it generously.

-

-"And what did you see at the fair?" asked Iden in his kindest voice,

-lifting up his saucer--from which he always drank--by putting his thumb

-under it instead of over, so that his thick little finger projected. He

-always sipped his tea in this way.

-

-"You had plenty of fun, didn't you?" said Mrs. Iden, still more kindly.

-

-"I--I don't know; I did not see much of the fair," said Amaryllis, at a

-loss to understand the change of manner.

-

-Iden smiled at his wife and nodded; Mrs. Iden picked up a letter from

-the tea-tray and gave it to her daughter:

-

-"Read."

-

-Amaryllis read--it was from Grandfather Iden, furiously upbraiding Iden

-for neglecting his daughter's education; she had no reverence, no

-manners--an undutiful, vulgar girl; she had better not show her face in

-his house again till she had been taught to know her position; her

-conduct was not fit for the kitchen; she had not the slightest idea how

-to behave herself in the presence of persons of quality.

-

-She put it down before she had finished the tirade of abuse; she did not

-look up, her face was scarlet.

-

-Iden laughed.

-

-"Horrid old wretch! Served him right!" said Mrs. Iden. "So glad you

-vexed him, dear!"

-

-Amaryllis last night a wretch was this morning a heroine. The

-grandfather's letter had done this.

-

-Iden never complained--never mentioned his father--but of course in his

-heart he bitterly felt the harsh neglect shown towards him and his wife

-and their child. He was a man who said the less the more he was moved;

-he gossiped freely with the men at the stile, or even with a hamlet old

-woman. Not a word ever dropped from him of his own difficulties--he kept

-his mind to himself. His wife knew nothing of his intentions--he was

-over-secretive, especially about money matters, in which he affected

-the most profound mystery, as if everyone in Coombe was not perfectly

-aware they could hardly get a pound of sugar on credit.

-

-All the more bitterly he resented the manner in which Grandfather Iden

-treated him, giving away half-crowns, crown-pieces, shillings, and

-fourpenny bits to anyone who would flatter his peculiarities, leaving

-his own descendants to struggle daily with debt and insult.

-

-Iden was in reality a very proud man, and the insults of his petty

-creditors fretted him.

-

-He would have been glad if Amaryllis had become her grandfather's

-favourite; as the grandfather had thrown savage words at the girl, so

-much the more was added to the score against the grandfather.

-

-Mrs. Iden hated the grandfather with every drop of Flamma blood in her

-veins--hated him above all for his pseudo-Flamma relationship, for old

-Iden had in his youth been connected with the Flammas in business--hated

-him for his veneration of the aristocratic and mediaeval Pamments.

-

-She was always impressing upon Amaryllis the necessity of cultivating

-her grandfather's goodwill, and always abusing him--contradicting

-herself in the most natural manner.

-

-This letter had given them such delight, because it showed how deeply

-Amaryllis had annoyed the old gentleman. Had he been whipped he could

-hardly have yelled more; he screamed through his scratchy quill. Suppose

-they did lose his money, he had had _one_ good upset, that was

-something.

-

-They were eager to hear all about it. Amaryllis was at first very shy to

-tell, knowing that her father was a thick Tory and an upholder of the

-Pamments, and fearing his displeasure. But for various reasons both

-father and mother grew warmer in delight at every fresh incident of her

-story.

-

-Mrs. Flamma Iden--revolutionary Flamma--detested the Pamments

-enthusiastically, on principle first, and next, because the grandfather

-paid them such court.

-

-Iden was indeed an extra thick Tory, quite opaque, and had voted in the

-Pamment interest these thirty years, yet he had his secret reasons for

-disliking them personally.

-

-Both Mr. and Mrs. Iden agreed in their scorn of the grandfather's

-pottering about the grounds and in and out the conservatories, as if

-that was the highest honour on earth. Yet Mrs. Iden used often to accuse

-her husband of a desire to do the very same thing: "You're just as

-stupid," she would say; "you'd think it wonderful to have a private

-key--you're every bit as silly really, only you haven't got the chance."

-

-However, from a variety of causes they agreed in looking on Amaryllis'

-disgrace as a high triumph and glory.

-

-So she was petted all the morning by both parties--a rare thing--and in

-the afternoon Iden gave her the sovereign she had brought home, to buy

-her some new boots, and to spend the rest as she chose on herself.

-

-Away went Amaryllis to the town, happy and yet not without regret that

-she had increased the disagreement between her father and grandfather.

-She met the vans and gipsies slowly leaving the site of the fair, the

-children running along with bare brown feet. She went under the

-archaeologically interesting gateway, and knocked at the door of Tiras

-Wise, shoemaker, "established 200 years."

-

-Tiras Wise of the present generation was thin and nervous, weary of the

-centuries, worn out, and miserable-looking. Amaryllis, strong in the

-possession of a golden sovereign, attacked him sharply for his

-perfidious promises; her boots promised at Christmas were not mended

-yet.

-

-Tiras, twiddling a lady's boot in one hand, and his foot measure in the

-other, very humbly and deprecatingly excused himself; there had been so

-much trouble with the workmen, some were so tipsy, and some would not

-work; they were always demanding higher wages, and just as he had a job

-in hand going off and leaving it half finished--shoemaker's tricks

-these. Sometimes, indeed, he could not get a workman, and then there was

-the competition of the ready-made boot from Northampton; really, it was

-most trying--it really was.

-

-"Well, and when am I going to have the boots?" said Amaryllis, amused at

-the poor fellow's distress. "When _are_ they going to be finished?"

-

-"You see, Miss Iden," said the shoemaker's mother, coming to help her

-son, "the fact is, he's just worried out of his life with his men--and

-really--"

-

-"You don't seem to get on very well with your shoemaking, Mr. Wise,"

-said the customer, smiling.

-

-"The fact is," said poor Wise, in his most melancholy manner, with a

-deep sigh, "the fact is, the men don't know their work as they used to,

-they spoil the leather and cut it wrong, and leave jobs half done, and

-they're always drinking; the leather isn't so good as it used to be; the

-fact is," with a still deeper sigh, "_we can't make a boot_."

-

-At which Amaryllis laughed outright, to think that people should have

-been in business two hundred years as shoemakers, and yet could not make

-a boot!

-

-Her experience of life as yet was short, and she saw things in their

-first aspect; it is not till much later we observe that the longer

-people do one thing, the worse they do it, till in the end they cannot

-do it at all.

-

-She presently selected a pair for herself, 9_s._, and another pair for

-her mother, 10_s._ 6_d._, leaving sixpence over; add sixpence discount

-for ready-money, and she was still rich with a shilling. Carrying the

-parcel, she went up the street and passed old Iden's door on elate

-instep, happy that she had not got to cross his threshold that day,

-happy to think she had the boots for her mother. Looking in at two or

-three dingy little shops, she fixed at last on one, and bought

-half-a-dozen of the very finest mild bloaters, of which Mrs. Iden was so

-fond. This finished the savings, and she turned quickly for home. The

-bloaters being merely bound round with one thin sheet of newspaper,

-soon imparted their odour to her hand.

-

-A lady whose hand smells of bloaters is not, I hope, too ideal; I hope

-you will see now that I am not imaginative, or given to the heroinesque.

-Amaryllis, I can tell you, was quite absorbed in the bloaters and the

-boots; a very sweet, true, and loving hand it was, in spite of the

-bloaters--one to kiss fervently.

-

-They soon had the bloaters on over a clear fire of wood-coals, and while

-they cooked the mother tried her new boots, naturally not a little

-pleased with the thoughtful present. The Flamma blood surged with

-gratitude; she would have given her girl the world at that moment. That

-she should have remembered her mother showed such a good disposition;

-there was no one like Amaryllis.

-

-"Pah!" said Iden, just then entering, "pah!" with a gasp; and holding

-his handkerchief to his nose, he rushed out faster than he came in, for

-the smell of bloaters was the pestilence to him.

-

-They only laughed all the merrier over their supper.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XX.

-

-

-RIGHT at the top of the house there was a large, unfurnished room, which

-Amaryllis had taken as her own long since. It was her study, her

-thinking-room, her private chapel and praying-room, her one place of

-solitude, silence, and retirement.

-

-The days had gone on, and it was near the end of April. Coming up the

-dark stairs one morning, she found them still darker, because she had

-just left the sunshine. They were built very narrow, as usual in old

-country-houses, and the landing shut off with a door, so that when you

-were in them you seemed to be in a box. There was no carpet--bare

-boards; old-fashioned folk did not carpet their stairs; no handrail; the

-edges of the steps worm-eaten and ragged, little bits apt to break off

-under sudden pressure, so that the board looked as if it had been

-nibbled by mice.

-

-Shutting the landing door behind her, Amaryllis was in perfect darkness,

-but her feet knew the well-remembered way, and she came quickly to the

-top.

-

-There were two great rooms running the whole length of the house: the

-first was a lumber-room, the second her own especial cell. Cell-like it

-was, in its monastic or conventual bareness. It was vague with bareness:

-a huge, square room, gaunt as a barn, the walls and ceiling whitewashed,

-the floor plain boards. Yonder, near the one small window, stood a table

-and tall-backed oaken chair, afar off, as it were, from the doorway--a

-journey to them across the creaking floor. On one side an old four-post

-bedstead of dark oak, much damaged, was placed by the wall; the sacking

-hung down in a loop, torn and decayed--a bedstead on which no one had

-slept these hundred years past. By the table there was, too, an ancient

-carved linen-press of black oak, Amaryllis' bookcase.

-

-These bits of rude furniture were lost in the vastness of space, as much

-as if you had thrown your hat into the sky.

-

-Amaryllis went straight to the window and knelt down. She brought a

-handful of violets, fresh-gathered, to place in the glass which she kept

-there for her flowers. The window was cut in the thick wall, and formed

-a niche, where she always had a tumbler ready--a common glass tumbler,

-she could not afford a vase.

-

-They were the white wild violets, the sweetest of all, gathered while

-the nightingale was singing his morning song in the April sunshine--a

-song the world never listens to, more delicious than his evening notes,

-for the sunlight helps him, and the blue of the heavens, the green

-leaf, and the soft wind--all the soul of spring.

-

-White wild violets, a dewdrop as it were of flower, tender and delicate,

-growing under the great hawthorn hedge, by the mosses and among the dry,

-brown leaves of last year, easily overlooked unless you know exactly

-where to go for them. She had a bunch for her neck, and a large bunch

-for her niche. They would have sunk and fallen into the glass, but she

-hung them by their chins over the edge of the tumbler, with their stalks

-in the water. Then she sat down in the old chair at the table, and

-rested her head on her hand.

-

-Except where she did this every day, and so brushed it, a thin layer of

-dust had covered the surface (there was no cloth) and had collected on

-her portfolio, thrust aside and neglected. Dust on the indiarubber, dust

-on the cake of Indian ink, dust invisible on the smooth surface of the

-pencils, dust in the little box of vine charcoal.

-

-The hoarse baying of the hungry wolves around the house had shaken the

-pencil from her fingers--Siberian wolves they were, racing over the arid

-deserts of debt, large and sharp-toothed, ever increasing in number and

-ferocity, ready to tear the very door down. There are no wolves like

-those debt sends against a house.

-

-Every knock at the door, every strange footstep up the approach, every

-letter that came, was like the gnawing and gnashing of savage teeth.

-

-Iden could plant the potatoes and gossip at the stile, and put the

-letters unopened on the mantelshelf--a pile of bills over his head where

-he slept calmly after dinner. Iden could plant potatoes, and cut trusses

-of hay, and go through _his_ work to appearance unmoved.

-

-Amaryllis could not draw--she could not do it; her imagination refused

-to see the idea; the more she concentrated her mind, the louder she

-heard the ceaseless grinding and gnashing of teeth.

-

-Potatoes can be planted and nails can be hammered, bill-hooks can be

-wielded and faggots chopped, no matter what the inward care. The

-ploughman is deeply in debt, poor fellow, but he can, and does, follow

-the plough, and finds, perhaps, some solace in the dull monotony of his

-labour. Clods cannot feel. A sensitive mind and vivid imagination--a

-delicately-balanced organization, that almost lives on its ideas as

-veritable food--cannot do like this. The poet, the artist, the author,

-the thinker, cannot follow their plough; their work depends on a serene

-mind.

-

-But experience proves that they _do_ do their work under such

-circumstances. They do; how greatly then they must be tortured, or for

-what a length of time they must have suffered to become benumbed.

-

-Amaryllis was young, and all her feelings unchecked of Time. She could

-not sketch--that was a thing of useless paper and pencil; what was

-wanted was money. She could not read, that was not real; what was wanted

-was solid coin.

-

-So the portfolio was thrust aside, neglected and covered with dust, but

-she came every day to her flowers in the window-niche.

-

-She had drawn up there in the bitter cold of February and March, without

-a fire, disdainful of ease in the fulness of her generous hope. Her warm

-young blood cared nothing for the cold, if only by enduring it she could

-assist those whom she loved.

-

-There were artists in the Flamma family in London who made what seemed

-to her large incomes, yet whose names had never been seen in a newspaper

-criticism, and who had never even sent a work to the Academy--never even

-tried to enter. Their work was not of an ambitious order, but it was

-well paid.

-

-Amaryllis did not for a moment anticipate success as an artist, nor

-think to take the world by storm with her talent. Her one only hope was

-to get a few pounds now and then--she would have sold twenty sketches

-for ten shillings--to save her father from insult, and to give her

-mother the mere necessities of dress she needed.

-

-No thought of possible triumph, nor was she sustained by an

-overmastering love of art; she was inspired by her heart, not her

-genius.

-

-Had circumstances been different she would not have earnestly practised

-drawing; naturally she was a passive rather than an active artist.

-

-She loved beauty for its own sake--she loved the sunlight, the grass and

-trees, the gleaming water, the colours of the fields and of the sky. To

-listen to the running water was to her a dear delight, to the wind in

-the high firs, or caught in the wide-stretching arms of the oak; she

-rested among these things, they were to her mind as sleep to the body.

-The few good pictures she had seen pleased her, but did not rouse the

-emotion the sunlight caused; artificial music was enjoyable, but not

-like the running stream. It said nothing--the stream was full of

-thought.

-

-No eager desire to paint like that or play like that was awakened by

-pictures or music; Amaryllis was a passive and not an active artist by

-nature. And I think that is the better part; at least, I know it is a

-thousand times more pleasure to me to see a beautiful thing than to

-write about it. Could I choose I would go on seeing beautiful things,

-and not writing.

-

-Amaryllis had no ambition whatever for name or fame; to be silent in the

-sunshine was enough for her. By chance she had inherited the Flamma

-talent--she drew at once without effort or consideration; it was not so

-much to her as it is to me to write a letter.

-

-The thought to make use of her power did not occur to her until the

-preceding Christmas. Roast beef and plum pudding were a bitter mockery

-at Coombe Oaks--a sham and cold delusion, cold as snow. A "merry

-Christmas"--holly berries, mistletoe--and behind these--debt. Behind the

-glowing fire, written in the flames--debt; in the sound of the distant

-chimes--debt. Now be merry over the plum-pudding while the wolves gnash

-their teeth, wolves that the strongest bars cannot keep out.

-

-Immediately the sacred day was past they fell in all their fury upon

-Iden. Pay me that thou owest! The one only saying in the Gospel

-thoroughly engrained in the hearts of men. Pay me that thou owest! This

-is the message from the manger at Bethlehem of our modern Christmas.

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXI.

-

-

-SO Amaryllis went up into the gaunt, cold room at the top of the house,

-and bent herself seriously to drawing. There was no fireplace, and if

-there had been they could not have allowed her coals; coals were dear.

-It was quite an event when the horse and cart went to the wharf for

-coal. There was plenty of wood for the hearth--wood grew on the

-farm--but coal was money.

-

-The March winds howled round the corner of the old thatched house, and

-now and again tremendous rains blew up against the little western window

-near which she had placed her table. Through the silent cold of January,

-the moist cold of February, the east winds and hurricane rains of March,

-Amaryllis worked on in her garret, heedless of nipped fingers and

-chilled feet.

-

-Sometimes she looked out of the window and watched Iden digging in the

-garden underneath, planting his potatoes, pruning his trees and shrubs,

-or farther away, yonder in the meadow, clearing out the furrows that

-the water might flow better--"trenching," as he called it.

-

-The harder it rained the harder he worked at this in the open, with a

-sack about his shoulders like a cloak; the labourers were under shelter,

-the master was out in the wet, hoping by guiding the water to the grass

-to get a larger crop of hay in June.

-

-Bowed under his sack, with his rotten old hat, he looked a woful figure

-as the heavy shower beat on his back. But to Amaryllis he was always her

-father.

-

-Sometimes she went into the next room--the lumber-room--only lighted by

-a window on a level with the floor, a window which had no glass, but

-only a wire network. Sitting on the floor there, she could see him at

-the stile across the road, his hands behind his back, gossiping now with

-another farmer or two, now with a labourer, now with an old woman

-carrying home a yoke of water from the brook.

-

-The gossiping hurt Amaryllis even more than the work in the cold rain;

-it seemed so incongruous, so out of character, so unlike the real Iden

-as she knew him.

-

-That he, with his great, broad and noble forehead, and his profile like

-Shakespeare, should stand there talk, talk, talking on the smallest

-hamlet topics with old women, and labourers, and thickheaded farmers,

-was to her a bewilderment and annoyance.

-

-She could not understand it, and she resented it. The real Iden she knew

-was the man of thought and old English taste, who had told her so much

-by the fireside of that very Shakespeare whom in features he resembled,

-and of the poets from Elizabethan days downwards. His knowledge seemed

-to be endless; there was no great author he had not read, no subject

-upon which he could not at least tell her where to obtain information.

-Yet she knew he had never had what is now called an education. How

-clever he must be to know all these things! You see she did not know how

-wonderful is the gift of observation, which Iden possessed to a degree

-that was itself genius. Nothing escaped him; therefore his store was

-great.

-

-No other garden was planted as Iden's garden was, in the best of old

-English taste, with old English flowers and plants, herbs and trees. In

-summer time it was a glory to see: a place for a poet, a spot for a

-painter, loved and resorted to by every bird of the air. Of a bare old

-farmhouse he had made a beautiful home.

-

-Questions upon questions her opening mind had poured upon him, and to

-all he had given her an answer that was an explanation. About the earth

-and about the sea, the rivers, and living things; about the stars and

-sun, the comet, the wonders of the firmament, of geology and astronomy,

-of science; there was nothing he did not seem to know.

-

-A man who had crossed the wide ocean as that Ulysses of whom he read to

-her, and who, like that Ulysses, enjoyed immense physical strength, why

-was he like this? Why was he so poor? Why did he work in the rain under

-a sack? Why did he gossip at the stile with the small-brained hamlet

-idlers?

-

-It puzzled her and hurt her at the same time.

-

-I cannot explain why it was so, any better than Amaryllis; I could give

-a hundred reasons, and then there would be no explanation--say partly

-circumstances, partly lack of a profession in which talent would tell,

-partly an indecision of character--too much thought--and, after all said

-and done, Fate.

-

-Watching him from the network window, Amaryllis felt her heart drooping,

-she knew not why, and went back to her drawing unstrung.

-

-She worked very hard, and worked in vain. The sketches all came back to

-her. Some of them had a torn hole at the corner where they had been

-carelessly filed, others a thumb-mark, others had been folded wrongly,

-almost all smelt of tobacco. Neither illustrated papers, periodicals:

-neither editors nor publishers would have anything to do with them. One

-or two took more care, and returned the drawings quite clean; one sent a

-note saying that they promised well.

-

-Poor Amaryllis! They promised well, and she wanted half a sovereign

-_now_. If a prophet assured a man that the picture he could not now

-dispose of would be worth a thousand pounds in fifty years, what

-consolation would that be to him?

-

-They were all a total failure. So many letters could not be received in

-that dull place without others in the house seeing what was going on.

-Once now and then Amaryllis heard a step on the stairs--a shuffling,

-uncertain step--and her heart began to beat quicker, for she knew it was

-her mother. Somehow, although she loved her so dearly, she felt that

-there was not much sympathy between them. She did not understand her

-mother; the mother did not understand the daughter. Though she was

-working for her mother's sake, when she heard her mother's step she was

-ashamed of her work.

-

-Mrs. Iden would come in and shuffle round the room, drawing one foot

-along the floor in an aggravating way she had, she was not lame, and

-look out of window, and presently stand behind Amaryllis, and say--

-

-"Ah! you'll never do anything at that. Never do anything. I've seen too

-much of it. Better come down and warm yourself."

-

-Now this annoyed Amaryllis so much because it seemed so inconsistent.

-Mrs. Iden blew up her husband for having no enterprise, and then turned

-round and discouraged her daughter for being enterprising, and this,

-too, although she was constantly talking about the superiority of the

-art employments of the Flammas in London to the clodhopper work around

-her.

-

-Amaryllis could never draw a line till her mother had gone downstairs

-again, and then the words kept repeating themselves in her ear--"Never

-do no good at that, never do no good at that."

-

-If we were to stay to analyse deeply, perhaps we should find that

-Amaryllis was working for a mother of her own imagination, and not for

-the mother of fact.

-

-Anyone who sits still, writing, drawing, or sewing, feels the cold very

-much more than those who are moving indoors or out. It was bitterly cold

-in the gaunt garret, the more so because the wind came unchecked through

-the wire network of the window in the next room. But for that her

-generous young heart cared nothing, nor for the still colder wind of

-failure.

-

-She had no name--no repute, therefore had her drawings been equal to the

-finest ever produced they would not have been accepted. Until the

-accident of reputation arises genius is of no avail.

-

-Except an author, or an artist, or a musician, who on earth would

-attempt to win success by merit? That alone proves how correct the world

-is in its estimation of them; they must indeed be poor confiding fools.

-Succeed by merit!

-

-Does the butcher, or the baker, or the ironmonger, or the

-tallow-chandler rely on personal merit, or purely personal ability for

-making a business? They rely on a little capital, credit, and much push.

-The solicitor is first an articled clerk, and works next as a

-subordinate, his "footing" costs hundreds of pounds, and years of hard

-labour. The doctor has to "walk the hospitals," and, if he can, he buys

-a practice. They do not rely on merit.

-

-The three fools--the author, the artist, and the musician--put certain

-lines on a sheet of paper and expect the world to at once admire their

-clever ideas.

-

-In the end--but how far is it to the end!--it is true that genius is

-certain of recognition; the steed by then has grown used to starvation,

-waiting for the grass to grow. Look about you: Are the prosperous men of

-business men of merit? are they all clever? are they geniuses? They do

-not exactly seem to be so.

-

-Nothing so hard as to succeed by merit; no path so full of

-disappointments; nothing so incredibly impossible.

-

-I would infinitely rather be a tallow-chandler, with a good steady

-income and no thought, than an author; at the first opportunity I mean

-to go into the tallow business.

-

-Until the accident of reputation chanced to come to her, Amaryllis might

-work and work, and hope and sigh, and sit benumbed in her garret, and

-watch her father, Shakespeare Iden, clearing the furrows in the rain,

-under his sack.

-

-She had not even a diploma--a diploma, or a certificate, a South

-Kensington certificate! Fancy, without even a certificate! Misguided

-child!

-

-What a hideous collection of frumpery they have got there at the Museum,

-as many acres as Iden's farm, shot over with all the rubbish of the

-"periods." What a mockery of true art feeling it is! They have not even

-a single statue in the place. They would shrivel up in horror at a nude

-model. _They_ teach art--miserable sham, their wretched art culminates

-in a Christmas card.

-

-Amaryllis had not even been through the South Kensington "grind," and

-dared to send in original drawings without a certificate. Ignorance, you

-see, pure clodhopper ignorance.

-

-Failure waited on her labours; the postman brought them all back again.

-

-Yet in her untaught simplicity she had chosen the line which the very

-highest in the profession would probably have advised her to take. She

-drew what she knew. The great cart-horse, the old barn up the road, the

-hollow tree, the dry reeds, the birds, and chanticleer himself--

-

-          High was his comb, and coral red withal,

-          In dents embattled like a castle wall.

-

-Hardly a circumstance of farm life she did not sketch; the fogger with

-his broad knife cutting hay; the ancient labourer sitting in the

-wheelbarrow munching his bread-and-cheese, his face a study for Teniers;

-the team coming home from plough--winter scenes, most of them, because

-it was winter time. There are those who would give fifty pounds for one

-of those studies now, crumpled, stained, and torn as they are.

-

-It was a complete failure. Once only she had a gleam of success. Iden

-picked up the sketch of the dry reeds in the brook, and after looking

-at it, put it in his "Farmer's Calendar," on the mantelshelf. Amaryllis

-felt like the young painter whose work is at last hung at the Academy.

-His opinion was everything to her. He valued her sketch.

-

-Still, that was not money. The cold wind and the chill of failure still

-entered her garret study. But it was neither of these that at length

-caused the portfolio to be neglected, she would have worked on and on,

-hoping against hope, undaunted, despite physical cold and moral check.

-It was the procession of creditors.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXII.

-

-

-STEADILY they came over from the town, dunning Iden and distracting

-Amaryllis in her garret. She heard the heavy footsteps on the path to

-the door, the thump, thump with the fist (there was neither knocker nor

-bell, country fashion); more thumping, and then her mother's excuses, so

-oft repeated, so wearisome, so profitless. "But where is he?" the

-creditor would persist. "He's up at the Hayes," or "He's gone to Green

-Hills." "Well, when will he be in?" "Don't know." "But I wants to know

-when this yer little account is going to be settled." Then a long

-narration of his wrongs, threats of "doing summat," i.e., summoning,

-grumble, grumble, and so slow, unwilling steps departing.

-

-Very rude men came down from the villages demanding payment in their

-rough way--a raw, crude way, brutally insulting to a lady. Iden had long

-since exhausted his credit in the town; neither butcher, baker, draper,

-nor anyone else would let them have a shilling's-worth until the

-shilling had been placed on the counter. He had been forced lately to

-deal with the little men of the villages--the little butcher who killed

-once a fortnight; the petty cottagers' baker, and people of that kind.

-Inferior meat and inferior bread on credit first; coarse language and

-rudeness afterwards.

-

-One day, the village baker, having got inside the door as Mrs. Iden

-incautiously opened it, stood there and argued with her, while Amaryllis

-in the garret put down her trembling pencil to listen.

-

-"Mr. Iden will send it up," said her mother.

-

-"Oh, he'll send it up. When will he send it up?"

-

-"He'll send it up."

-

-"He've a' said that every time, but it beant come yet. You tell un I be

-come to vetch it."

-

-"Mr. Iden's not in."

-

-"I'll bide till he be in."

-

-"He'll only tell you he'll send it up."

-

-"I'll bide and see un. You've served I shameful. It's nothing but

-cheating--that's what I calls it--to have things and never pay for um.

-It's cheating."

-

-Amaryllis tore downstairs, flushed with passion.

-

-"How dare you say such a thing? How dare you insult my mother? Leave the

-house this moment!"

-

-And with both hands she literally pushed the man, unwilling, but not

-absolutely resisting, outside, grumbling as he moved that he never

-insulted nobody, only asked for his money.

-

-A pleasing preparation this for steadiness of hand, calculated to

-encourage the play of imagination! She could do nothing for hours

-afterwards.

-

-Just as often Iden was at home, and then it was worse, because it lasted

-longer. First they talked by the potato-patch almost under the window;

-then they talked on the path; then they came indoors, and then there

-were words and grumbling sounds that rose up the staircase. By-and-by

-they went out again and talked by the gate. At last the creditor

-departed, and Iden returned indoors to take a glass of ale and sit a

-moment till the freshness of the annoyance had left his mind. Mrs. Iden

-then had her turn at him: the old story--why didn't he do something?

-Amaryllis knew every word as well as if she had been sitting in the

-room.

-

-How Iden had patience with them Amaryllis could not think; how he could

-stand, and be argued with, and abused, and threatened, and yet not take

-the persecutor by the collar and quietly put him in the road, she could

-not understand.

-

-The truth was he could not help himself; violence would have availed

-nothing. But to youth it seems as if a few blows are all that is needed

-to overcome difficulties.

-

-Waller and Co., the tailor--he was his own Co.--walked over regularly

-once a week; very civil and very persistent, and persistent in vain. How

-he came to be a creditor was not easy to see, for Iden's coat was a

-pattern of raggedness, his trousers bare at the knee, and his shabby

-old hat rotten. But somehow or other there was a five-pound account two

-years overdue.

-

-Cobb, the butcher at Woolhorton, got off his trap as he went by, at

-least twice a week, to chivey Iden about his money. Though he would not

-let them have a mutton chop without payment, whenever there was five

-shillings to spare for meat it was always taken into his shop, as it was

-better to have good meat there, if you had to pay cash for meat, than

-inferior in the village. One day, Amaryllis was waiting for some steak,

-side by side with a poor woman, waiting for scraps, while Cobb served a

-grand lady of the town. "Yes, m'm--oh, yes, m'm, certainly, m'm," bows,

-and scrapes, and washing of hands, all the obsequiousness possible. When

-the fine lady had gone, "Lar, Mr. Cobb," says the poor woman, "how

-different you do speak to _they_ to what you do speak to _me_."

-

-"Oh, yes," replied Cobb, not in the least abashed at having one manner

-for the poor and another for the rich. "Yes, you see, these ladies they

-require such a deal of _homage_."

-

-There was a long bill at Beavan's the grocer's, but that was not much

-pressed, only a large blue letter about once a month, as Beavan had a

-very good profit out of them through the butter. Mrs. Iden made

-excellent butter, which had a reputation, and Beavan took it all at

-about half-price. If it had been sold to anyone else he would have

-insisted on payment. So, by parting with the best butter in the county

-at half-price, they got their tea and sugar without much dunning.

-

-At one time Mrs. Iden became excited and strange in her manner, as if on

-the point of hysterics, from which Amaryllis divined something serious

-was approaching, though her mother would say nothing. So it turned

-out--a bailiff appeared, and took up his quarters in the kitchen. He was

-very civil and quiet; he sat by the great fire of logs, and offered to

-help in any way he could. Iden gave him plenty of beer, for one thing.

-Amaryllis could not go into the kitchen--the dear old place seemed

-deserted while he was there.

-

-This woke up Iden for the moment. First there was a rummaging about in

-his old bureau, and a laborious writing of letters, or adding up of

-figures. Next there was a great personal getting up, a bath, clean

-linen, shaving, and donning of clothes packed away these years past. In

-two hours or so Iden came down another man, astonishingly changed, quite

-a gentleman in every respect, and so handsome in Amaryllis's eyes.

-Indeed, he was really handsome still, and to her, of course, wonderfully

-so. If only he would always dress like that!

-

-Iden walked into Woolhorton, but all these preparations had so consumed

-the time that the bank was shut, the solicitor's offices closed, and

-there was no means of raising any money that evening. The son passed the

-father's doorstep--the worn stone step, ground by the generations of

-customers--he saw the light behind the blind in the little room where

-Grandfather Iden sat--he might, had he paused and listened, have heard

-the old man poke the fire, the twenty-thousand-guinea-man--the son

-passed on, and continued his lonely walk home, the home that held a

-bailiff.

-

-A makeshift bed had to be made up for the bailiff in the kitchen, and

-there he remained the night, and was up and had lit the fire for Luce

-the servant before she was down. The man was certainly very civil, but

-still there was the shock of it.

-

-Early in the morning Iden went into town again, saw his solicitor, and

-got a cheque--it was only five-and-twenty or thirty pounds, and the

-bailiff left.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXIII.

-

-

-BUT his presence did not die out of the kitchen; they always seemed to

-feel as if he had been there. The hearth had been stained by a foreign

-foot, the very poker had been touched by a foreign hand, the rude form

-at the side by the wall had been occupied by an intruder. Amaryllis had

-always been so fond of the kitchen--the oldest part of the house, two

-centuries at least. The wide hearth and immense chimney, up which, when

-the fire was out, of a winter's night you could see the stars; over

-which of a windy night you could imagine the witches riding by, borne on

-the deep howling of the blast; the great beam and the gun slung to it;

-the heavy oaken table, unpolished, greyish oak; the window in the thick

-wall, set with yellowish glass; the stone floor, and the walls from

-which the whitewash peeled in flakes; the rude old place was very dear

-to her.

-

-Ofttimes they sat there in winter instead of the sitting-room, drawn by

-its antique homeliness. Mrs. Iden warmed elder wine, and Iden his great

-cup of Goliath ale, and they roasted chestnuts and apples, while the

-potatoes--large potatoes--Iden's selected specialities--were baking

-buried in the ashes. Looking over her shoulder Amaryllis could see the

-white drift of snow against the window, which was on a level with the

-ground outside, and so got Iden to tell her stories of the deep snow in

-the United States, and the thick ice, sawn with saws, or, his fancy

-roaming on, of the broad and beautiful Hudson River, the river he had so

-admired in his youth, the river the poets will sing some day; or of his

-clinging aloft at night in the gale on the banks of Newfoundland, for he

-had done duty as a sailor. A bold and adventurous man in his youth, why

-did he gossip at the stile now in his full and prime of manhood?

-

-It would be a long, long tale to tell, and even then only those who have

-lived in the country and had practical experience could fully comprehend

-the hopelessness of working a small farm, unless you are of a wholly

-sordid nature. Iden's nature was not sordid; the very reverse. The

-beginning, or one of the beginnings, of the quarrel between father and

-son arose because of this; Grandfather Iden could not forgive his son

-for making the place beautiful with trees and flowers.

-

-By-and-by the baked potatoes were done, and they had supper on the old

-and clumsy table, village made and unpolished, except in so far as the

-stains of cooking operations had varnished it, the same table at which

-"Jearje," the fogger, sat every morning to eat his breakfast, and every

-evening to take his supper. What matter? George worked hard and honestly

-all day, his great arms on the table, spread abroad as he ate, did not

-injure it.

-

-Great mealy potatoes, cracked open, white as the snow without, floury

-and smoking; dabs of Mrs. Iden's delicious butter, a little salt and

-pepper, and there was a dish for a king. The very skins were

-pleasant--just a taste.

-

-They were not always alone at these kitchen-feasts, sometimes a Flamma

-from London, sometimes an Iden from over the hill, or others were there.

-Iden was very hospitable--though most of his guests (family connections)

-were idle folk, no good to themselves or anybody, still they were made

-cordially welcome. But others, very high folk, socially speaking (for

-they had good connections, too, these poor Idens), who had dined at

-grand London tables, seemed to enjoy themselves most thoroughly on the

-rude Homeric fare.

-

-For it was genuine, and there was a breadth, an open-handed generosity,

-a sense of reality about it; something really to eat, though no

-finger-glasses; Homeric straightforwardness of purpose.

-

-Amaryllis was very fond of the old kitchen; it was the very centre of

-home. This strange man, this intruding bailiff, trod heavily on her

-dearest emotions. His shadow remained on the wall though he had gone.

-

-They all felt it, but Amaryllis most of all, and it was weeks before the

-kitchen seemed to resume its former appearance. Jearje was the one who

-restored it. He ate so heartily, and spoke so cheerily at breakfast and

-at supper, it almost made them forget their troubles to see anyone so

-grateful and pleased with all they did for him. "Thank you, ma'am; dest

-about a good bit a' bacon, this yer"--locally the "d" and "j" were often

-interchangable, dest for jest, or just--"That'll be a' plenty for I,

-ma'am, doan't want more'n I can yet"--don't want more than I can eat,

-don't want to be greedy--"Thank you, miss; dest about some ripping good

-ale, this yer; that it be."

-

-He so thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the bacon, and the cheese, and

-the ale; he was like a great, big human dog; you know how we like to see

-a big dog wag his tail at his food, or put his paws on our knees and

-laugh, as it were, with his eyes in our face. They petted him, these two

-women, exactly as if he had been a dog, giving him all the bones,

-literally and metaphorically, the actual bones of the meat, and any

-scraps there were, to take home with him (besides his regular meals),

-and now and then some trifles of clothing for his aged mother. The dog

-most thoroughly appreciated this treatment; he rolled in it, revelled in

-it, grew shiny and fat, and glistened with happiness.

-

-Iden petted him, too, to some degree, out of doors, and for much the

-same reason; his cheery content and willingness, and the absence of the

-usual selfish niggardliness of effort. George worked willingly and

-fairly, and, if occasion needed, stayed another hour, or put his

-shoulder to the wheel of his own accord, and so, having a good employer,

-and not one minded to take advantage of him, was rewarded in many ways.

-Iden did not reduce his wages by a shilling or eighteenpence in winter,

-and gave him wood for firing, half a sack of potatoes, garden produce,

-or apples, and various other things from time to time.

-

-Living partly indoors, and being of this disposition, Jearje was more

-like a retainer than a servant, or labourer; a humble member of the

-family.

-

-It was a sight to see him eat. Amaryllis and Mrs. Iden used often to

-watch him covertly, just for the amusement it gave them. He went about

-it as steadily and deliberately as the horses go to plough; no attempt

-to caracole in the furrow, ready to stand still as long as you like.

-

-Bacon three inches thick with fat: the fat of beef; fat of

-mutton--anything they could not finish in the sitting-room; the overplus

-of cabbage or potatoes, savoury or unsavoury; vast slices of bread and

-cheese; ale, and any number of slop-basins full of tea--the cups were

-not large enough--and pudding, cold dumpling, hard as wood, no matter

-what, Jearje ate steadily through it.

-

-A more willing fellow never lived; if Mrs. Iden happened to want

-anything from the town ever so late, though George had worked hard the

-long day through from half-past five in the morning, off he would start,

-without sign of demur, five miles there and back, and come in singing

-with his burden.

-

-There are such, as George still among the labourer class, in despite of

-the change of circumstance and sentiment, men who would be as faithful

-as the faithfullest retainer who ever accompanied a knight of old time

-to the Crusade. But, observe, for a good man there must be a good

-master. Proud Iden was a good master, who never forgot that his man was

-not a piece of mechanism, but flesh and blood and feelings.

-

-Now this great human dog, sprawling his strong arms abroad on the oaken

-table, warming his heavily-booted feet at the hearth, always with a

-cheery word and smile, by his constant presence there slowly wore away

-the impression of the bailiff, and the dear old kitchen came to be

-itself again.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXIV.

-

-

-BUT all these shocks and worries and trampling upon her emotions made

-the pencil tremble in the artist's hand as she worked in the gaunt

-garret.

-

-One day, as she was returning from Woolhorton, Iden's solicitor, from

-whom he had borrowed money, overtook her, walked his horse, and began to

-talk to her in his perky, affected, silly way. Of all the fools in

-Woolhorton town there was none equal in pure idiotcy to this namby-pamby

-fellow--it was wonderful how a man of Iden's intelligence could trust

-his affairs to such a man, the more so as there was at least one good

-lawyer in the place. This is very characteristic of the farming race;

-they will work like negroes in the field, and practise the utmost penury

-to save a little, and be as cautious over a groat as the keenest miser,

-and then go and trust their most important affairs to some perfect fool

-of a solicitor. His father, perhaps, or his uncle, or somebody connected

-with the firm, had a reputation about the era of Waterloo, and upon this

-tradition they carry their business to a man whom they admit themselves

-"doan't seem up to much, yon." In the same way, or worse, for there is

-no tradition even in this case, they will consign a hundred pounds'

-worth of milk to London on the mere word of a milkman's agent, a man of

-straw for aught they know, and never so much as go up to town to see if

-there is such a milk business in existence.

-

-This jackanapes began to talk to Amaryllis about her father. "Now, don't

-you think, Miss Iden, you could speak to your father about these money

-matters; you know he's getting into a pound, he really is (the

-jackanapes pretended to hunt); he'll be pounded. Now, don't you think

-you could talk to him, and persuade him to be more practical?"

-

-The chattering of this tom-tit upset Amaryllis more than the rudeness of

-the gruff baker who forced his way in, and would not go. That such a

-contemptible nincompoop should dare to advise her father to be

-practical! The cleverest man in the world--advise him to be practical;

-as if, indeed, he was not practical and hard-working to the very utmost.

-

-To her it was a bitter insult. The pencil trembled in her hand.

-

-But what shook it most of all was anxiety about her mother. Ever since

-the bailiff's intrusion Mrs. Iden had seemed so unsettled. Sometimes she

-would come downstairs after the rest had retired, and sit by the dying

-fire for hours alone, till Iden chanced to wake, and go down for her.

-

-Once she went out of doors very late, leaving the front door wide open,

-and Amaryllis found her at midnight wandering in an aimless way among

-the ricks.

-

-At such times she had a glazed look in her eyes, and did not seem to see

-what she gazed at. At others she would begin to cry without cause, and

-gave indications of hysteria. The nervous Flamma family were liable to

-certain affections of that kind, and Amaryllis feared lest her mother's

-system had been overstrained by these continual worries.

-

-Poor woman! she had, indeed, been worried enough to have shaken the

-strongest; and, having nothing stolid in her nature, it pressed upon

-her.

-

-After awhile these attacks seemed to diminish, and Amaryllis hoped that

-nothing would come of it, but it left her in a state of extreme anxiety

-lest some fresh trouble should happen to renew the strain.

-

-When she thought of her mother she could not draw--the sound of her

-shuffling, nervous footstep on the landing or the path outside under the

-window stopped her at once. These things disheartened her a thousand

-times more than the returned sketches the postman was always bringing.

-

-On butter-making mornings, once a week, there was always a great to-do;

-Mrs. Iden, like nervous people, was cross and peevish when she was

-exceptionally busy, and clapper-clawed Iden to some purpose. It chanced

-that Amaryllis one day was just opening an envelope and taking out a

-returned drawing, when Iden entered, angry and fresh from Mrs. Iden's

-tongue, and, seeing the letter, began to growl:--

-

-"Better drow that there fool stuff in the vire, and zee if you can't

-help your mother. Better do zummat to be some use on. Pity as you wasn't

-a boy chap to go out and yarn summat. Humph! humph!" growl, mutter,

-growl. "Drow" was local for throw, "summat" for something, "yarn" for

-earn. Unless I give you a vocabulary you may not be able to follow him.

-

-The contemptuous allusion to her sketches as fool stuff, contrasted with

-the benefit and advantage of earning something--something real and

-solid--hit the artist very hard. That was the thought that troubled her

-so much, and paralysed her imagination. They were unsaleable--she saw

-the worthlessness of them far more than Iden. They were less in value

-than the paper on which they were traced; fool stuff, fit for the fire

-only.

-

-That was the very thought that troubled her so, and Iden hit the nail

-home with his rude speech. That was the material view; unless a thing be

-material, or will fetch something material, it is good for the fire

-only.

-

-So it came about that the portfolio was pushed aside, and dust gathered

-on it, and on the pencils, and the india-rubber, and in the little box

-of vine charcoal. Amaryllis having arranged her violets in the tumbler

-of water in the window niche, sat down at the table and leant her head

-on her hand, and tried to think what she could do, as she had thought

-these many, many days.

-

-The drawings were so unreal, and a sovereign so real. Nothing in all the

-world at these moments seemed to her to be so good and precious as the

-round disk of gold which rules everything. The good that she could do

-with it--with just one of those golden disks!

-

-Did you ever read Al Hariri? That accomplished scholar, the late Mr.

-Chenery (of _The Times_), translated twenty-six of his poems from the

-Arabic, and added most interesting notes. This curious book is a fusion

-of the Arabian Nights, Ecclesiastes, and Rabelais. There is the magical

-unexpectedness of the Arabian Nights, the vanity of vanities, all is

-vanity, of the Preacher, and the humour of the French satirist. Wisdom

-is scattered about it; at one moment you acknowledge a great thought,

-the next you are reproached for a folly, and presently laugh at a deep

-jest.

-

-Al Hariri has a bearing upon Amaryllis, because he sang of the dinar,

-the Arabian sovereign, the double-faced dinar, the reverse and the

-obverse, head and tail, one side giving everything good, and the other

-causing all evil. For the golden disk has two sides, and two Fates

-belong to it. First he chants its praises:--

-

-          How noble is that yellow one, whose yellowness is pure,

-          Which traverses the regions, and whose journeying is afar.

-          Told abroad are its fame and repute:

-          Its lines are set as the secret sign of wealth;

-          Its march is coupled with the success of endeavours;

-          Its bright look is loved by mankind,

-          As though it had been molten of their hearts.

-          By its aid whoever has got it in his purse assails boldly,

-          Though kindred be perished or tardy to help.

-          Oh! charming are its purity and brightness;

-          Charming are its sufficiency and help.

-          How many a ruler is there whose rule has been perfected by it!

-          How many a sumptuous one is there whose grief, but for it,

-                would be endless!

-          How many a host of cares has one charge of it put to flight!

-          How many a full moon has a sum of it brought down!

-          How many a one, burning with rage, whose coal is flaming,

-          Has it been secretly whispered to and then his anger has

-                softened.

-          How many a prisoner, whom his kin had yielded,

-          Has it delivered, so that his gladness has been unmingled.

-          Now by the Truth of the Lord whose creation brought it forth,

-          Were it not for His fear, I should say its power is supreme.

-

-The sovereign, our dinar, does it not answer exactly to this poem of the

-Arabian written in the days of the Crusades! It is yellow, it is pure,

-it travels vast distances, and is as valuable in India as here, it is

-famous and has a reputation, the inscription on it is the mark of its

-worth, it is the sinew of war, the world loves its brightness as if it

-was coined from their hearts, those who have it in their purses are

-bold, it helps every one who has it, it banishes all cares, and one

-might say, were it not for fear of the Lord, that the sovereign was all

-mighty.

-

-All mighty for good as it seemed to Amaryllis thinking in her garret,

-leaning her head on her hand, and gazing at her violets; all mighty for

-good--if only she could get the real solid, golden sovereign!

-

-But the golden coin has another side--the obverse--another Fate, for

-evil, clinging to it, and the poet, changing his tone, thunders:--

-

-          Ruin on it for a deceiver and insincere,

-          The yellow one with two faces like a hypocrite!

-          It shows forth with two qualities to the eye of him that

-                looks on it,

-          The adornment of the loved one, the colour of the lover.

-          Affection for it, think they who judge truly,

-          Tempts men to commit that which shall anger their Maker.

-          But for it no thief's right hand were cut off;

-          Nor would tyranny be displayed by the impious;

-          Nor would the niggardly shrink from the night-farer;

-          Nor would the delayed claimant mourn the delay of him that

-                withholds;

-          Nor would men call to God from the envious who casts at them.

-          Moreover the worst quality that it possesses

-          Is that it helps thee not in straits,

-          Save by fleeing from thee like a runaway slave.

-          Well done he who casts it away from a hilltop,

-          And who, when it whispers to him with the whispering of a

-                lover,

-          Says to it in the words of the truth-speaking, the veracious,

-          "I have no mind for intimacy with thee,--begone!"

-

-"The worst quality that it possesses" remains to this day, and could

-Amaryllis have obtained the sovereign, still it would only have helped

-her by passing from her, from her hand to that of the creditor's,

-fleeing like a runaway slave.

-

-But Amaryllis surrounded with the troubles of her father and mother, saw

-only the good side of the golden sovereign, only that it was all

-powerful to bless.

-

-How unnatural it seems that a girl like this, that young and fresh and

-full of generous feelings as she was, her whole mind should perforce be

-taken up with the question of money; an unnatural and evil state of

-things.

-

-It seems to me very wicked that it should be so.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXV.

-

-

-THOUGH the portfolio was pushed aside and dust had gathered on the

-table, except where her arm touched it, Amaryllis came daily, and often

-twice a day, to her flowers to pray.

-

-From the woods she brought the delicate primrose opening on the mossy

-bank among the grey ash-stoles; the first tender green leaflet of

-hawthorn coming before the swallow; the garden crocus from the grass of

-the garden; the first green spikelet from the sward of the meadow; the

-beautiful white wild violets gathered in the sunlit April morning while

-the nightingale sang.

-

-With these she came to pray each day, at the window-niche. After she had

-sat awhile at the table that morning, thinking, she went and knelt at

-the window with her face in her hands; the scent of the violets filled

-her hair.

-

-Her prayer was deeper than words and was not put in language, but came

-rushing through her heart;--"That her dear mother might not suffer any

-more, that the strain of ceaseless trouble might be removed from her

-mind, that peace and rest might come to her in her old age. Let her step

-become firm, and the nervousness depart, and her eyes shine like they

-used to, so clear and bright, and do not let the grey hairs show more

-than they do now, or increase in number. Let her smile and be happy and

-talk cheerfully, and take an interest in the house and all the order of

-household things, and also see and understand that her husband meant to

-please her, even in such a little thing as splitting up useful wood for

-the fire, that he intended to please her, and that she might not

-misunderstand him any more. He intended to be kind in many ways, but

-misfortune had blinded her, and she took things the wrong way. And give

-her more change and friends to ask her out from home on visits, so that

-she might be amused, and make them come to see her and pass the time in

-contentment. Give her also enough money to buy good clothes so as to

-look nice as she ought to do, and if possible a conveyance of some

-kind--not a grand carriage, she did not wish for that--but a conveyance

-to drive about now and then, because she was not so strong as she used

-to be, and could not walk far. And let me, thought Amaryllis, let me be

-able to give her a watch, for other people have watches, and my mother

-has not got one, and it does seem so strange it should be so after all

-the hard work she has done. Let me, too, get her some nice things to

-eat, some fish and wine, for she cannot eat our plain bacon now every

-day, she has not got an appetite, and her teeth too are bad, and I

-should so like to give her a set of artificial teeth that her food might

-do her more good. But what I really want is that she may be happy, and

-be like my mother herself really is when she is herself. Give my father

-money enough to pay his creditors, for I know that though he is so quiet

-and says nothing, these debts are wearing him out, and I know he wishes

-to pay them, and does not willingly keep them waiting. He is so patient,

-and so good, and bears everything, I am sure no one was ever like him,

-and it is so dreadful to see him work, work, work, every day from five

-o'clock in the morning, and yet to be always worried with these debts

-and people that will not let him have peace one single day. Do, please,

-let him have less work to do, it makes me miserable to see him in the

-rain, and he is not young now, and sometimes carrying such heavy things,

-great pieces of timber and large trusses of hay, and making his back

-ache digging. Surely it must soon be time for him to leave off working,

-he has done such a lot, and I do not think he can see quite so well as

-he used to, because he holds the paper so close to his eyes. Please let

-him leave off working soon now and have some rest and change, and go

-about with my mother, and when he is at home not have anything more to

-do than his garden, because he is so fond of that; let him love the

-flowers again as he used to, and plant some more, and have nothing

-harder to do than to gather the fruit from the trees he has planted. And

-let me get him some new books to read, because I know he is so fond of

-books; he has not had a new book for so long. Let him go to London and

-see people and things, and life, because I know he is full of ideas and

-thoughts though he works and digs, and that is what would do him good.

-Give him some money now at last, now he has worked all these years,

-forty years on this farm, and ever so much work before that; do give him

-some money at last. Do make my grandfather kinder to him and not so

-harsh for the rent, let him give the place to my father now, for it can

-be no use to him; let my father have it for his very own, and then I

-think he would be happy after all, he does so like to improve things and

-make them beautiful, and if it was his very own there is so much that he

-could do. That would be nice work and work that he would enjoy doing,

-and not just to get a few wretched shillings to pay other people. I am

-sure he would never be cross then, and he would be so kind to my mother,

-and kind and good to everybody. There is nobody like him, as you know,

-in this place; they are not clever like him, and good to the labouring

-men and their families like he is (and so is my mother too); they are so

-rough, and so unkind and stupid; I do not mean anything against them,

-but they are not like he is. And if you were to help him he would soon

-help the poor people and give them food and more wages; you know how

-good he is in his heart. And he would do it, not because other people

-should praise him, but because he would like to do it; if he does not

-go to church his heart is very true, and it is because he likes to be

-true and genuine, and not make any false show. Do, please, help him, and

-give him some money, and do, please, let him have this place for his

-very own, for I do so fear lest those who set my grandfather against

-him, should have a will made, so that my father should not have this

-house and land as he ought to do, as the son. He has made it so

-beautiful with trees, and brought the fresh spring water up to the

-house, and done so many clever things, and his heart is here, and it is

-home to him, and no other place could be like it. I think it would kill

-him not to have it, and for me, I should be so--I cannot tell, I should

-be so miserable if he did not, but I will not think of myself. There are

-so many things I know he wants to do if only he was not so worried with

-debts, and if he could feel it was his own land; he wants to plant a

-copse, and to make a pond by the brook, and have trout in it, and to

-build a wall by the rick-yard. Think how my dear father has worked all

-these years, and do help him now, and give him some money, and this

-place, and please do not let him grow any more grey than his hair is

-now, and save his eyes, for he is so fond of things that are beautiful,

-and please make my mother happy with him."

-

-When Amaryllis rose from her knees her face was quite white, emotion had

-taken away her colour, and tears were thick on her cheek. She sat a

-little while by the table to recover herself, still thinking, and

-remembered that again last night she had dreamed the same dream about

-fire in the thatch. Somehow there seemed to be an alarm in the night,

-and they ran out of doors and found the corner of the roof on fire, over

-the window with the wire network instead of glass. It ran up from the

-corner towards the chimney, where the roof was mossy by the ridge. There

-was no flame, but a deep red seething heat, as if the straw burned

-inwardly, and was glowing like molten metal. Each straw seemed to lie in

-the furious heat, and a light to flicker up and down, as if it breathed

-fire. The thatch was very thick there, she knew, and recollected it

-quite well in her dream; Iden himself had laid on two thick coats in his

-time, and it was heavy enough before then. He talked about the thatching

-of it, because it was an argument with him that straw had a great power

-of endurance, and was equal to slates for lasting. This thickness, she

-saw, was the reason the fire did not blaze up quickly, and why,

-fortunately, it was slow in moving up the roof. It had not yet eaten

-through, so that there was no draught--once it got through, it would

-burn fast--if only they could put it out before then all might yet be

-saved. In the midst of her anxiety Iden came with the largest ladder in

-the rickyard, and mounted up, carrying a bucket of water. She tried to

-follow, holding on to the rungs of the ladder with one hand, and

-dragging up a heavy bucket with the other--the strain and effort to get

-up woke her.

-

-This dream had happened to her so many times, and was so vivid and

-circumstantial--the fire seemed to glow in the thatch--that at last she

-began to dread lest it should come true. If it did not come true of the

-house itself, perhaps it would of the family, and of their affairs;

-perhaps it signified that the fire of debt, and poverty, and misfortune

-would burn them, as it were, to the ground. She tried to think whether

-in the dream they were getting the fire under before she woke, or

-whether they could not master it; it seemed dubious.

-

-She did not tell her mother of the dream, afraid lest it might excite

-her again; nor could she tell Iden, who would have laughed at her.

-

-Yet, though she knew it was but a dream, and dreams have ceased to come

-true, she did not like it; she felt uncertain, as if some indefinable

-danger was threatening round about. As she sat at the table she added to

-her prayer the supplication that the dear old house might not be burned

-down.

-

-Soon afterwards she went down stairs, and on the lower flight paused, to

-listen to voices--not those of her mother and Iden--creditors,

-doubtless, come to cry aloud, "Pay me that thou owest!"--the very sum

-and total of religion. Her heart beat quicker--the voices came again,

-and she thought she recognized them, and that they were not those of

-creditors. She entered the sitting-room, and found that two visitors,

-from widely separated places, had arrived; one with a portmanteau, the

-other with an old, many-coloured carpet-bag. They were Amadis Iden, from

-Iden Court, over the Downs, the Court Idens, as they were called, and

-Alere Flamma, from London; the Flammas were carpet-bag people.

-

-Her father was making them very welcome, after his wont, and they were

-talking of the house the Idens of yore had built in a lonely spot,

-expressly in order that they might drink, drink, drink undisturbed by

-their unreasonable wives.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXVI.

-

-

-THEY talked on and on, these three, Iden, Amadis Iden, and Alere Flamma,

-with Amaryllis listening, from the end of April till near the end of

-May; till "a month passed away," and still they were talking. For there

-is nothing so good to the human heart as well agreed conversation, when

-you know that your companion will answer to your thought as the anvil

-meets the hammer, ringing sound to merry stroke; better than wine,

-better than sleep, like love itself--for love is agreement of

-thought--"God listens to those who pray to him; let us eat and drink,

-and think of nothing," says the Arabian proverb. So they ate and

-drank--very moderate the drinking--and thought of nothing, and talked,

-which should be added to complete felicity. Not, of course, all of them

-always together, sometimes all four, sometimes Alere, Amadis, and

-Amaryllis, sometimes only the last two.

-

-The round summer-house was their Parliament House whenever the east

-winds sank and the flowers shone forth like sunshine; as the sun shines

-when the clouds withdraw, so when the harsh east winds cease the May

-flowers immediately bloom and glow.

-

-It was a large round house, properly builded of brick, as a summer-house

-should be--put not thy faith in lath work--and therefore dry and warm;

-to sit in it was like sitting in a shell, warm and comfortable, with a

-sea of meadow-grass, smooth and coloured, stretching in front, islanded

-about with oak, and elm, and ash.

-

-The finches came to the boughs that hung over the ivy-grown thatch, and

-sang in the sycamore opposite the door, and in the apple-trees, whose

-bloom hung down almost to the ground.

-

-These apple-trees, which Iden had planted, flung sackfuls of bloom at

-his feet. They poured themselves out in abandoned, open-armed,

-spendthrift, wasteful--perfectly prodigal--quantities of rose-tinted

-petal; prodigal as a river which flows full to the brim, never

-questioning but what there will be plenty of water to follow.

-

-Flowers, and trees, and grass, seemed to spring up wherever Iden set

-down his foot: fruit and flowers fell from the air down upon him. It was

-his genius to make things grow--like sunshine and shower; a sort of Pan,

-a half-god of leaves and boughs, and reeds and streams, a sort of Nature

-in human shape, moving about and sowing Plenty and Beauty.

-

-One side of the summer-house was a thick holly-bush, Iden had set it

-there; he builded the summer-house and set the ivy; and the pippin at

-the back, whose bloom was white; the copper-birch near by; the great

-sycamore alone had been there before him, but he set a seat under it,

-and got woodbine to flower there; the drooping-ash he planted, and if

-Amaryllis stood under it when the tree was in full leaf you could not

-see her, it made so complete an arbour; the Spanish oak in the corner;

-the box hedge along the ha-ha parapet; the red currants against the red

-wall; the big peony yonder; the damsons and pear; the yellow honey-bush;

-all these, and this was but one square, one mosaic of the garden, half

-of it sward, too, and besides these there was the rhubarb-patch at one

-corner; fruit, flowers, plants, and herbs, lavender, parsley, which has

-a very pleasant green, growing in a thick bunch, roses, pale sage--read

-Boccaccio and the sad story of the leaf of sage--ask Nature if you wish

-to know how many things more there were.

-

-A place to eat and drink, and think of nothing in, listening to the

-goldfinches, and watching them carry up the moss, and lichen, and

-slender fibres for their nest in the fork of the apple; listening to the

-swallows as they twittered past, or stayed on the sharp, high top of the

-pear tree; to the vehement starlings, whistling and screeching like Mrs.

-Iden herself, on the chimneys; chaffinches "chink, chink," thrushes,

-distant blackbirds, who like oaks; "cuckoo, cuckoo," "crake, crake,"

-buzzing and burring of bees, coo of turtle-doves, now and then a neigh,

-to remind you that there were horses, fulness and richness of musical

-sound; a world of grass and leaf, humming like a hive with voices.

-

-When the east wind ceases, and the sun shines above, and the flowers

-beneath, "a summer's day in lusty May," then is the time an Interlude in

-Heaven.

-

-And all this, summer-house and all, had dropped out of the pocket of

-Iden's ragged old coat.

-

-There was a magic power of healing in the influences of this place which

-Iden had created. Both Amadis and Alere Flamma had already changed for

-the better.

-

-That morning when Amaryllis had found them, just arrived, the one with a

-portmanteau, and the other with a carpet-bag, they were both pale to the

-last degree of paleness.

-

-Three years had gone by since Amadis had stayed at Coombe Oaks before,

-when Amaryllis was thirteen and he eighteen; fine romps they had then, a

-great girl, and a great boy, rowing on the water, walking over the

-hills, exploring the woods; Amadis shooting and fishing, and Amaryllis

-going with him, a kind of gamekeeper page in petticoats. They were of

-the same stock of Idens, yet no relations; he was of the older branch,

-Amaryllis of the younger.

-

-She had grown into a woman; Amadis Iden into a man.

-

-Sadly, indeed, he had altered. Looking at him, she could scarce believe

-he was the same; so pale, so thin, so drooping, and fireless--the spark

-of life sunk into the very ashes. He sat at the dinner-table that

-morning like a ghost. He was convalescent from low fever: that dread

-disease which has taken the place of ague in the country. At one time it

-was ague; in these times it is low fever.

-

-At Coombe Oaks they had heard of his illness in a far-off way, but had

-received no distinct particulars, for the news came in a roundabout way

-by word of mouth, country-folk never write. The distance between the two

-houses was less than ten miles, and might as well have been five hundred

-for all the communication.

-

-So that the ghastly paleness of his face came upon her as a spectre in

-daylight. You could see at a glance what was wrong--the vital energy had

-been sapped; as a tree fades without a branch broken, or bark scored,

-fades and withers from the lack of the mysterious force which brings

-forth fresh leaves, so he drooped in his chair. The body--the tree--was

-there, but the life was not in it.

-

-Alere Flamma, aged forty-nine, or nearly, was pale from other causes,

-and it was a different kind of paleness; not bloodlessness, like Amadis,

-but something lacking in the blood, a vitiated state. Too much Fleet

-Street, in short; too much of the Oracle--Pantagruel's Oracle of the

-Bottle.

-

-His hands shook as he held his knife and fork--oddly enough, the hands

-of great genius often do shake; now and then when he put his glass to

-his lips, his teeth snapped on it, and chinked.

-

-It seemed curious that such puffy, shaky hands could hold a pencil, and

-draw delicate lines without a flaw.

-

-Many who never resort to the Oracle have hands that tremble nearly as

-much--the nervous constitution--and yet execute artists' work of rare

-excellence.

-

-Alere's constitution, the Flamma constitution, naturally nervous, had

-been shaken as with dynamite by the bottle, and the glass chinked

-against his teeth. Every two or three years, when he felt himself

-toppling over like a tree half sawn through, Alere packed his

-carpet-bag, and ran down to Coombe Oaks. When the rats began to run up

-the wall as he sat at work in broad daylight, Alere put his slippers

-into his carpet-bag and looked out some collars.

-

-In London he never wore a collar, only a bright red scarf round his

-neck; the company he kept would have shunned him--they would have looked

-him up and down disdainfully:--"Got a collar on--had no breakfast." They

-would have scornfully regarded him as no better than a City clerk, the

-class above all others scorned by those who use tools.

-

-"Got a collar on--had no breakfast." The City clerk, playing the Masher

-on thirty shillings a week, goes without food to appear the gentleman.

-

-Alere, the artist, drank with the men who used hammer, and file, or set

-up type--a godless set, ye gods, how godless, these setters up of type

-at four o'clock in the morning; oysters and stout at 4 a.m.; special

-taverns they must have open for them--open before Aurora gleams in the

-east--Oh! Fleet Street, Fleet Street, what a place it is!

-

-By no possible means could Alere work himself into a dress-coat.

-

-Could he have followed the celebrated advice--"You put on a dress-coat

-and go into society"--he would soon have become a name, a fame, a taker

-of big fees, a maker of ten thousand yearly.

-

-To a man who could draw like Alere, possessed, too, of the still rarer

-talent--the taste to see what to draw--there really is no limit in our

-days; for as for colour, you do not require a genius for colour in an

-age of dinginess--why, the point, nowadays, is to avoid colour, and in a

-whole Academy you shall scarcely find as much as would tint a stick of

-sealing-wax.

-

-"You put on a black coat and go into society"--that is the secret of

-commissions, and commissions are fortune. Nothing so clever in the way

-of advice has been sent forth as that remark. The great Tichborne said

-something about folk that had money and no brains, and folk that had

-brains but no money; and they as has no brains ought to be so managed as

-to supply money to those who had. But even the greatness of the great

-Tichborne's observation falls into insignificance before Chesterfield in

-one sentence: "Put on a black coat and go into society."

-

-What are the sayings of the seven wise men of Greece compared to

-_that_?

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXVII.

-

-

-BY no possible means could Alere Flamma work himself into a dress coat.

-The clubs, the houses of the great, the mutual admiration dinners--those

-great institutions of the day--were all closed to him because of the

-Dress Coat.

-

-If he had really desired to enter, of course he would have squeezed into

-the evening monkey-skin somehow; but, in truth, Alere did not want to

-enter.

-

-Inside he might have finished a portrait a month at a thousand

-guineas--twelve portraits per annum equals twelve thousand guineas a

-year; you see I am looking up the multiplication table, preparatory to

-going into the tallow trade.

-

-What he actually did was to make designs for book-covers--magnificent

-book-covers that will one day fetch their weight in bank-notes--manipulating

-a good deal of it himself--"tooling"--for the libraries of noble

-connoisseurs. They were equal to anything ever done in Paris.

-

-For a week's work--say half-an-hour a day--he got perhaps about ten

-pounds. With the ten pounds he was satisfied--ten pounds represents a

-good deal of brandy, or stout, or even wine, about as much as one man

-can manage at a bout; besides tobacco, the gallery at the theatre, and

-innumerable trifles of that kind. Ten pounds represents a good deal of

-street life.

-

-Sometimes he drew--and engraved--illustrations for books, being as

-clever with the engraver's tools as with the pencil; sometimes he cut

-out those odd, fantastic "initials," "ornaments," "finials," which are

-now so commonly seen in publications, catching the classical grotesque

-of the Renaissance to perfection, and deceiving the experienced;

-sometimes he worked in the press-room in the House of Flamma, Fleet

-Street, pulling artists' proofs, or printing expensively illustrated

-volumes--numbered, and the plates destroyed--actual manual work, in his

-shirt sleeves.

-

-He could stop when he liked and take a swig of stout. That was the Alere

-style.

-

-Smoking was forbidden in the old House of Flamma because of the

-worm-eaten beams, the worm-eaten rafters and staircase, the dusty,

-decayed bookshelves, the dry, rotten planks of the floor, the thin

-wooden partitions, all ready to catch fire at the mere sight of a match.

-Also because of the piles of mouldy books which choked the place, and

-looked fit for nothing but a bonfire, but which were worth thousands of

-pounds; the plates and lithographic stones, artists' proofs, divers and

-sundry Old Masters in a room upstairs, all easily destructible.

-

-But Alere, being a son of the house, though not in command, did not

-choose to be amenable to rules and orders in fact, in fiction he was. He

-smoked and kept the glue-pot ready on the stove; if a certain step was

-known to be approaching the pipe was thrust out of sight, and some dry

-glue set melting, the powerful incense quite hiding the flavour of

-tobacco. A good deal of dry glue is used in London in this way.

-

-If I could but write the inside history of Fleet Street, I should be

-looked upon as the most wonderful exponent of human life that had ever

-touched a pen. Balzac--whom everybody talks of and nobody has read,

-because the discrimination of Paternoster Row has refused him a

-translation till quite lately--Zola, who professes to be realistic, who

-is nothing if not realistic, but whose writings are so curiously crude

-and merely skim the surface; even the great Hugo, who produced the

-masterpiece of all fiction, _Les Miserables_; all three of them, the

-entire host of manuscript-makers, I am sure I could vanquish them all,

-if I could only write the inside life of Fleet Street.

-

-Not in any grace of style or sweeping march of diction, but just

-pencil-jotted in the roughest words to hand, just as rich and poor,

-well-dressed ladies and next-door beggars are bundled into a train, so,

-without choice of language, but hustling the first words anyhow, as it

-were, into the first compartment. If I could only get Alere to tell me

-all he had seen in Fleet Street, and could just jot it down on the

-margin of a stained newspaper, all the world would laugh and weep. For

-such things do go on in Fleet Street as no man has written yet.

-

-If only Victor Hugo were alive and young again!

-

-Alere liked pulling off the proofs in his shirt-sleeves, swigging his

-stout, smoking on the sly, working with all the genius of an inspired

-mechanic one moment and dropping into absolute idleness the next,

-spending infinite pains in finishing one bit of work, as if his very

-life depended on the smoothing of an edge of paper, putting off the next

-till the end of the month, pottering, sleeping, gossiping, dreaming over

-old German works, and especially dreaming over Goethe, humming old

-German songs--for he had been a great traveller--sometimes scrawling a

-furious Mazzinian onslaught in a semi-Nihilist foreign print, collecting

-stray engravings, wandering hither and thither.

-

-Alere Flamma, artist, engraver, bookbinder, connoisseur, traveller,

-printer, Republican, conspirator, sot, smoker, dreamer, poet,

-kind-hearted, good-natured, prodigal, shiftless, man of Fleet Street,

-carpet-bag man, gentleman shaken to pieces.

-

-He worked in his shirt-sleeves and drank stout, but nothing vulgar had

-ever been recorded against Alere Flamma. He frequented strong

-company--very strong meat--but no vile word left his lips.

-

-There was a delicacy in all his ways in the midst of the coarsest

-surroundings, just as he appeared in the press-room among the printer's

-ink in the whitest of clean shirt-sleeves, fit to wear with the

-abhorred dress-coat.

-

-In his rooms at his lodgings there were literally hundreds of sketches,

-done on all sorts and sizes of paper, from the inside of an envelope

-hastily torn open to elephant. The bureau was full of them, crammed in

-anyhow, neither sorted nor arranged; nothing, of course, could be found

-if it was wanted. The drawers of the bookcase--it was his own

-furniture--were full of them; the writing-table drawer; a box in one

-corner; some were on the mantelpiece smoked and gritty; some inside his

-books, most of which were interleaved in this manner; literally hundreds

-of sketches, the subjects as numerous and varied.

-

-Views in English country lanes, views on the Danube, bands playing in

-band-loving Vienna, old Highgate Archway, studies from Canterbury

-Cathedral, statuary in the Louvre, ships battling with the north wind in

-the North Sea--a savage fight between sail and gale--horses in the

-meadow, an aged butler, a boy whipping a top, charcoal-burners in the

-Black Forest, studies from the nude--Parisian models, Jewesses, almost

-life-size, a drayman heaving up a huge tankard, overshadowing his face

-like Mount Atlas turned over his thumb, designs to illustrate classical

-mythology, outlines expressing the ideas of Goethe--outlines of

-Marguerite and Faust among the roses--"He loves me; he loves me not,"

-big-armed Flemish beauties with breasts as broad as the Zuyder-Zee was

-deep in the song, roofs of Nuremberg, revolutionary heroes charging

-their muskets in the famous year '48, when Alere had a bullet through

-his hat, in Vienna, I think; no end to them.

-

-Sometimes when Alere had done no work for a month or two, and his ten

-pounds were spent, if he wanted a few guineas he would take a small

-selection of these round to the office of a certain illustrated paper;

-the Editor would choose, and hand over the money at once, well aware

-that it was ready money his friend needed. They were not exactly

-friends--there are no friends in London, only acquaintances--but a

-little chummy, because the Editor himself had had a fiery youth, and

-they had met in sunny Wien. That was the only paper that ever got

-sketches out of Alere.

-

-If only Alere would have gone and sketched what he was _asked_ to

-sketch! Ah! there is the difference; he could not do it, his nature

-would not let him; he could draw what he saw with his own eyes, but not

-what other people wanted him to see. A merry income he might have made

-if he would only have consented to see what other eyes--common, vulgar

-eyes--wanted to see, and which he could so easily have drawn for them.

-

-Out of these piles of varied sketches there were two kinds the Editor

-instantly snapped at: the one was wild flowers, the other little

-landscape bits.

-

-Wild flowers were his passion. They were to Flamma as Juliet to Romeo.

-Romeo's love, indeed, rushed up like straw on fire, a great blaze of

-flame; he perished in it as the straw; perhaps he might not have

-worshipped Juliet next year. Flamma had loved his wild flowers close

-upon forty years, ever since he could remember; most likely longer, for

-doubtless the dumb infant loved the daisies put in his chubby hand.

-

-His passion they were still as he drew near fifty, and saw all things

-become commonplace. That is the saddest of thoughts--as we grow older

-the romance fades, and all things become commonplace.

-

-Half our lives are spent in wishing for to-morrow, the other half in

-wishing for yesterday.

-

-Wild flowers alone never become commonplace. The white wood-sorrel at

-the foot of the oak, the violet in the hedge of the vale, the thyme on

-the wind-swept downs, they were as fresh this year as last, as dear

-to-day as twenty years since, even dearer, for they grow now, as it

-were, in the earth we have made for them of our hopes, our prayers, our

-emotions, our thoughts.

-

-Sketch-book upon sketch-book in Alere's room was full of wild flowers,

-drawn as he had found them in the lanes and woods at Coombe Oaks--by the

-footpaths, by the lake and the lesser ponds, on the hills--as he had

-found them, not formed into an artificial design, not torn up by the

-roots, or cut and posed for the occasion--exactly as they were when his

-eye caught sight of them. A difficult thing to do, but Alere did it.

-

-In printing engravings of flowers the illustrated magazines usually

-make one of two mistakes; either the flower is printed without any

-surroundings or background, and looks thin, quite without interest,

-however cleverly drawn, or else it is presented with a heavy black pall

-of ink which dabs it out altogether.

-

-These flowers the Editor bought eagerly, and the little landscapes. From

-a stile, beside a rick, through a gap in a hedge, odd, unexpected

-places, Alere caught views of the lake, the vale, the wood, groups of

-trees, old houses, and got them in his magical way on a few square

-inches of paper. They were very valuable for book illustration. They

-were absolutely true to nature and fact.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXVIII.

-

-

-PERHAPS the reason Alere never took to colours was because of his

-inherent and unswerving truthfulness of character. Genuine to a degree,

-he could not make believe--could not deceive--could not masquerade in a

-dress-coat.

-

-Now, most of the landscape-painting in vogue to-day is nature in a

-dress-coat.

-

-In a whole saloon of water colours, in a whole Academy, or Grosvenor

-Gallery you shall hardly find three works that represent any real scene

-in the fields.

-

-I have walked about the fields a good deal in my brief, fretful hour,

-yet I have never seen anything resembling the strange apparitions that

-are hung on these walls every spring. Apparitions--optical illusions,

-lit up with watery, greenish, ghastly, ghost-light--nothing like them on

-earth I swear, and I suspect not in Heaven or Hades.

-

-Touched-up designs: a tree taken from one place, a brook from another, a

-house from another--_and mixed to order_, like a prescription by the

-chemist--xv. grs. grass, 3 dr. stile, iiij. grs. rustic bridge. Nature

-never plants--nature is no gardener--no design, no proportion in the

-fields.

-

-Colours! Passing a gasworks perhaps you may have noticed that the

-surface of the water in the ditch by the roadside bears a greenish scum,

-a pale prismatic scum; this is the colour-box of modern landscape.

-

-How horrible the fields would look if they wore such hues in reality as

-are accepted on canvas at the galleries! Imagine these canvas tints

-transferred to the sward, the woods, the hills, the streams, the sky!

-_Dies irae, dies illae_--it would, indeed, be an awful day, the Last Day

-of Doom, and we should need the curtain at Drury Lane drawn before our

-eyes to shut it out of sight.

-

-There are some who can go near to paint dogs and horses, but a meadow of

-mowing grass, not one of them can paint that.

-

-Many can _draw_ nature--drawings are infinitely superior generally to

-the painting that follows; scarce one now paints real nature.

-

-Alere could not squeeze his sketches into the dress-coat of sham colour

-for any sacred exhibition wall whatever.

-

-One thing Alere never attempted to draw--a bird in flight. He recognized

-that it was impossible; his taste rejected every conventional attitude

-that has been used for the purpose; the descending pigeon, the Japanese

-skewered birds, the swallow skimming as heavily as a pillow. You cannot

-draw a bird in flight. Swallows are attempted oftenest, and done worst

-of all.

-

-How can you draw life itself? What is life? you cannot even define it.

-The swallow's wing has the motion of life--its tremble--its wonderful

-delicacy of vibration--the instant change--the slip of the air;--no man

-will ever be able to draw a flying swallow.

-

-At the feet of this Gamaliel of Fleet Street, Amaryllis had sat much,

-from time to time, when the carpet-bag was packed and Alere withdrew to

-his Baden-Baden--_i.e._, to Coombe Oaks and apple-bloom, singing finch,

-and wild-flowers.

-

-There were no "properties" in Alere's room at his lodgings; no odd bits

-collected during his wanderings to come in useful some day as make-up,

-realistic rock work, as it were, in the picture. No gauntlets or

-breast-plates, scraps of old iron; no Turkish guns or yataghans, no

-stags' horns, china, or carvings to be copied some day into an

-illustration. No "properties."

-

-No studio effects. The plaster bust that strikes the key and tones the

-visitors' mind to "Art," the etchings, the wall or panel decorations,

-the sliding curtains, the easels in the corner, the great

-portfolios--the well-known "effects" were absent.

-

-A plain room, not even with a north light, plain old furniture, but not

-very old--not ostensibly ancient, somewhere about 1790 say--and this

-inherited and not purchased; Flamma cared not one atom for furniture,

-itself, old or new; dusty books everywhere, under the table, on the

-mantelpiece, beside the coal scuttle; heaps on chairs, quartos on the

-sofa, crowds more in his bedroom, besides the two bookcases and drawers;

-odd books most of them, Cornelius Agrippa, _Le Petit Albert_, French

-illustrated works, editions of Faust, music, for Flamma was fond of his

-many-keyed flute.

-

-Great people once now and then called and asked to see Alere Flamma at

-the business place in Fleet Street; people with titles, curiously out of

-place, in the press-room, gold leaf on the floor, odour of printer's

-ink, dull blows of machinery, rotten planking, partitions pasted over

-with illustrations and stained with beer, the old place trembling as the

-engine worked; Flamma, in his shirt-sleeves, talking to "His

-Excellency."

-

-Flamma's opinion, information he could give, things he knew; abroad they

-thought much of him.

-

-Presents came occasionally--a boar's head from Germany; fine Havana

-cigars--Alere always had a supply of the best cigars and Turkish

-tobacco, a perennial stream of tobacco ran for him; English venison;

-once a curious dagger from Italy, the strangest present good-natured

-Alere could possibly have received!

-

-Sometimes there came a pressing invitation from a noble connoisseur to

-his country seat; Flamma's views were wanted about the re-arrangement of

-the library, the re-binding of some treasure picked up in a cover all

-too poor for its value, the building of another wing, for the artist is

-the true architect, as the princes of Italy knew of old time. Till the

-artist is called in we shall never again see real architecture in the

-world. Did not Benvenuto design fortifications? Did not Michael Angelo

-build St. Peter's at Rome?

-

-If my lord duke wants a palace he cannot have it till he calls in the

-artist, the Alere Flamma, to draw it for him; if my lord bishop needs a

-cathedral he cannot have it till he calls in the poet-draughtsman, till

-he goes to Alere Flamma.

-

-Our so-called architects are mere surveyors, engineers, educated

-bricklayers, men of hard straight ruler and square, mathematically

-accurate, and utterly devoid of feeling.

-

-The princes of Italy knew better--they called in the poet and the

-painter, the dreamers to dream for them.

-

-You call in your "practical" architect, and he builds you a brick box;

-not for a hundred thousand pounds in fees could he build you a palace or

-a cathedral.

-

-The most ignorant of men are the "practical" people. It is meet and

-fitting that they should be worshipped and set on high. The calf

-worshipped of old was at least golden, and these are of lead.

-

-But Alere could not go; he would do anything he was asked in this way;

-he would take infinite pains to please, but he could not leave Fleet

-Street for any mansion.

-

-When a man once gets into Fleet Street he cannot get out.

-

-Conventionally, I suppose, it would be the right thing to represent

-Alere as a great genius neglected, or as a genius destroyed by

-intemperance. The conventional type is so easy--so accepted--so popular;

-it would pay better, perhaps, to make him out a victim in some way.

-

-He was not neglected, neither was he the victim of intemperance in the

-usual sense.

-

-The way to fame and fortune had always been wide open to him; there were

-long intervals when he did not drink, nor did drink enfeeble his touch;

-it was not half so much to struggle against as the chest diseases from

-which professional men so often suffer; I believe if he had really tried

-or wished he could have conquered his vice altogether. Neither of these

-causes kept him from the foremost rank.

-

-There was no ambition, and there was no business-avarice. So many who

-have no ideal are kept hard at work by the sheer desire of money, and

-thus spurred onward, achieve something approaching greatness. Alere did

-not care for money.

-

-He could not get out of Fleet Street. Ten pounds was a large sum in the

-company he frequented; he did not want any more.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXIX.

-

-

-SOMETHING in Fleet Street holds tight those who once come within its

-influence. The cerebellum of the world, the "grey matter" of the world's

-brain, lies somewhere thereabouts. The thoughts of our time issue

-thence, like the radiating spokes of a wheel, to all places of the

-earth. There you have touch of the throbbing pulse of the vast

-multitudes that live and breathe. Their ideas come from Fleet Street.

-

-From the printing-press and the engraver's wood-block, the

-lithographic-stone, the etcher's plate, from book and magazine,

-periodical and pamphlet, from world-read newspaper.

-

-From Fleet Street, the centre whence ideas flow outwards.

-

-It is joyous to be in the flower-grown meads; it is sweet to be on the

-hill-top; delicious to feel the swell and the long roll of the hexameter

-of the seas; doubtless there is a wild rapture on the summit of the

-Himalayas; triumph in the heart of the African explorer at the river's

-source. But if once the mind has been dipped in Fleet Street, let the

-meads be never so sweet, the mountain-top never so exalted, still to

-Fleet Street the mind will return, because there is that other Mind,

-without whose sympathy even success is nothing--the Mind of the world.

-

-I am, of course, thinking not only of the thoroughfare, Fleet Street,

-but of all that the printing-press means.

-

-Alere was no leader of thought, but it was necessary to him to live and

-breathe in the atmosphere of thought--to feel the throb and swell around

-him--to be near the "grey matter" of the world's brain.

-

-Once a man gets into Fleet Street he cannot get out. Flamma would not

-leave it for months of gilded idleness in any nobleman's mansion.

-

-The flame must be fed. His name had some connection with the design of

-the Roman lamp on the splendid bindings of the books tooled in the House

-of Flamma. _Alere Flammam_--feed the flame. The flame of the mind must

-be fed.

-

-Sad things happen on the stones of Fleet Street; if I could but get at

-it all to write the inside life of it, it would, indeed, be a book.

-Stone-cold poverty hovers about. The rich, living in the fool's paradise

-of money, think they know life, but they do not, for, as was said of the

-sea----

-

-          Only those who share its dangers

-             Comprehend its mystery.

-

-Only those who have shared the struggle literally for bread--for a

-real, actual loaf--understand the dread realities of man's existence.

-

-Let but a morsel of wood--a little splinter of deal, a curl of

-carpenter's shaving--lie in Fleet Street, and it draws to it the

-wretched human beasts as surely as the offal draws the beast of the

-desert to the camp. A morsel of wood in the streets that are paved with

-gold!

-

-It is so valuable. Women snatch it up and roll it in their aprons,

-clasping it tightly, lest it should somehow disappear. Prowling about

-from street to street, mile after mile, they fill their aprons with

-these precious splinters of deal, for to those who are poor fuel is as

-life itself.

-

-Even the wealthy, if they have once been ill, especially of

-blood-thinning diseases (as rheumatism), sometimes say they would rather

-go without food than coal. Rather emptiness than chill.

-

-These women know where there are hoardings erected by builders, where

-shop-fronts are being rebuilt, where fires have taken place, where

-alterations are proceeding; they know them as the birds know the places

-where they are likely to find food, and visit them day by day for the

-scraps of wood and splinters that drop on the pavement.

-

-Or they send their children, ragged urchins, battling for a knot of

-pine-wood.

-

-The terror of frost to these creatures is great indeed. Frost is the

-King of Terrors to them--not Death; they sleep and live with death

-constantly, the dead frequently in the room with the living, and with

-the unborn that is near birth.

-

-Alere's ten pounds helped them. The drunkard's wife knew that Flamma,

-the drinker, would certainly give her the silver in his pocket.

-

-The ragged urchins, battling for a knot of pine-wood, knew that they

-could charm the pennies and the threepenny bits out of his waistcoat;

-the baked potatoes and the roasted chestnuts looked so nice on the

-street stove.

-

-Wretched girls whose power of tempting had gone, and with it their means

-of subsistence, begged, and not in vain, of shaky Alere Flamma. There

-are many of these wretches in Fleet Street. There is no romance about

-them to attract the charity of the world.

-

-Once a flower-girl, selling flowers without a licence in the street, was

-charged by the police. How this harshness to the flower-girl--the human

-representation of Flora--roused up sentiment in her behalf!

-

-But not every starving girl has the fortune to rouse up sentiment and to

-be fed. Their faces disfigured with eruptions, their thin shoulders,

-their dry, disordered hair--hair never looks nice unless soft with its

-natural oil--their dingy complexions, their threadbare shawls, tempt no

-one. They cannot please, therefore they must starve.

-

-The good turn from them with horror--Are they not sin made manifest? The

-trembling hand of Alere fed them.

-

-Because the boys bawl do you suppose they are happy? It is curious that

-people should associate noise with a full stomach. The shoeblack boys,

-the boys that are gathered into institutions and training ships, are

-expected to bawl and shout their loudest at the annual fetes when

-visitors are present. Your bishops and deans forthwith feel assured that

-their lives are consequently joyous.

-

-Why then do they set fire to training ships? Why do they break out of

-reformatory institutions? Bawling is not necessarily happiness. Yet

-fatuous fools are content if only they can hear a good uproar of

-bawling.

-

-I have never walked up Fleet Street and the Strand yet without seeing a

-starving woman and child. The children are indeed dreadful; they run

-unguarded and unwatched out of the side courts into the broader and more

-lively Strand--the ceaseless world pushes past--they play on the

-pavement unregarded. Hatless, shoeless, bound about with rags, their

-faces white and scarred with nameless disease, their eyes bleared, their

-hair dirty; little things, such as in happy homes are sometimes set on

-the table to see how they look.

-

-How _can_ people pass without seeing them?

-

-Alere saw them, and his hand went to his waistcoat pocket.

-

-The rich folk round about this great Babylon of Misery, where cruel Want

-sits on the Seven Hills--make a cartoon of that!--the rich folk who

-receive hundreds on the turn of a stock, who go to the Bank of England

-on dividend days--how easily the well-oiled doors swing open for

-them!--who dwell in ease and luxury at Sydenham, at Norwood, at

-Surbiton, at Streatham, at Brighton, at Seven-oaks, wherever there is

-pure air, have distinguished themselves lately in the giving of alms,

-ordained by the Lord whom they kneel before each Sunday, clad in silk,

-scarlet, and fine linen, in their cushioned pews.

-

-They have established Homes for Lost Dogs and Homes for Lost Cats,

-neither of which are such nuisances as human beings.

-

-In the dog institution they have set up an apparatus specially designed

-by one of the leading scientific men of the age. The dogs that are not

-claimed in a certain time, or that have become diseased--like the human

-nuisances--are put into this apparatus, into a comfortable sort of

-chamber, to gnaw their last bone. By-and-by, a scientific vapour enters

-the chamber, and breathing this, the animal falls calmly to death,

-painlessly poisoned in peace.

-

-Seven thousand dogs were thus happily chloroformed "into eternity" in

-one season. Jubilant congratulations were exchanged at the success of

-the apparatus. Better than shooting, drowning, hanging, vivisection, or

-starvation!

-

-Let a dog die in peace. Is not this an age of humanity indeed? To sell

-all you have and give to the poor was nothing compared to this. We have

-progressed since Anno Domini I. We know better how to do it now.

-

-Alere did not seem to trouble himself much about the dogs; he saw so

-much of the human nuisances.

-

-What a capital idea it would be to set up an apparatus like this in the

-workhouses and in conjunction with the hospitals!

-

-Do you know, thoughtless, happy maiden, singing all the day, that one

-out of every five people who die in London, die in the workhouse or the

-hospital?

-

-Eighty-two thousand people died in London in 1882, and of these,

-fourteen thousand expired in the workhouses, and six thousand in

-hospitals!

-

-Are not these ghastly figures? By just setting up a few Apparatuses, see

-what an immense amount of suffering would be saved, and consider what a

-multitude of human nuisances would he "moved on!"

-

-The poor have a saying that none live long after they have been in a

-certain hospital. "He's been in that hospital--he won't live long." They

-carry out such wonderful operations there--human vivisections, but

-strictly painless, of course, under chloroform--true Christian

-chopping-up--still the folk do not live long when they come out.

-

-Why not set up the Apparatus? But a man must not die in peace.

-Starvation is for human nuisances.

-

-These rich folk dwelling round about the great Babylon of Misery, where

-Want sits on the Seven Hills, have also distinguished themselves by yet

-another invention. This is the organization of alms. Charity is so holy

-we will not leave it to chance--to the stray penny--we will organize it.

-The system is very simple: it is done by ticket. First you subscribe a

-few shillings to some organization, with its secretary, its clerks, its

-offices, board-room, and "machinery." For this you receive tickets.

-

-If a disagreeable woman with a baby in her arms, or a ragged boy, or a

-maimed man asks you for a "copper," you hand him a ticket. This saves

-trouble and responsibility.

-

-The beggar can take the ticket to the "office" and get his case

-"investigated." After an inquiry, and an adjournment for a week; another

-inquiry, and another adjournment for a week; a third inquiry, and a

-third adjournment, then, if he be of high moral character and highly

-recommended, he may get his dinner.

-

-One great advantage is conspicuous in this system: by no possible means

-can you risk giving a penny to a man not of high moral character, though

-he be perishing of starvation.

-

-If a man asks for bread, will ye give him a stone? Certainly not; give

-him a ticket.

-

-They did not understand how to do things in Judea Anno Domini I.

-

-This organization of charity saves such a lot of money: where people

-used to give away five pounds they now pay five shillings.

-

-Nothing like saving money. And, besides, you walk about with a clear

-conscience. No matter how many maimed men, or disagreeable women, or

-ragged boys you see, you can stroll on comfortably and never think about

-them; your charity is organized.

-

-If the German thinkers had not found out twenty years ago that there was

-no Devil, one would be inclined to ascribe this spurious, lying, false,

-and abominable mockery to the direct instigation of a Satan.

-

-The organization of charity! The very nature of charity is

-spontaneousness.

-

-You should have heard Alere lash out about this business; he called it

-charity suppression.

-

-Have you ever seen London in the early winter morning, when the frost

-lies along the kerb, just melting as the fires are lit; cold, grey,

-bitter, stony London?

-

-Whatever _can_ morning seem like to the starved and chilly wretches who

-have slept on the floor, and wake up to frost in Fleet Street?

-

-The pavements are covered with expectoration, indicating the chest

-diseases and misery that thousands are enduring. But I must not write

-too plainly; it would offend.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXX.

-

-

-A PRINTER in the office crawled under the bed of the machine to replace

-something--a nut that had dropped; it was not known that he was there;

-the crank came round and crushed him against the brickwork. The embrace

-of iron is death.

-

-Alere fed his helpless children, and apprenticed them when they were old

-enough.

-

-Ten pounds was enough for him--without ambition, and without

-business-avarice; ten pounds was enough for his Fleet Street life.

-

-It was not only the actual money he gave away, but the kindness of the

-man. Have you ever noticed the boys who work in printing-offices?--their

-elbows seem so sharp and pointed, bony, and without flesh. Instead of

-the shirt-sleeve being turned up, it looks as if the pointed elbow had

-thrust its way through.

-

-He always had something for them;--a plate of beef, soup, beer to be

-shared, apples, baked potatoes, now and then half-a-dozen mild cigars.

-Awful this, was it not? Printers' boys _will_ smoke; they had better

-have Flamma's fine tobacco than the vile imitation they buy.

-

-They always had a tale for him; either their mothers, or sisters, or

-some one was in trouble; Flamma was certain to do something, however

-little might be within his power. At least he went to see.

-

-Had a man an income of a million he could not relieve the want of

-London; the wretch relieved to-day needs again to-morrow. But Alere went

-to see.

-

-Ten pounds did much in the shaky hands of a man without ambition, and

-without business-avarice, who went to see the unfortunate.

-

-His own palsied mother, at the verge of life, looked to Alere for all

-that the son can do for the parent. Other sons seemed more capable of

-such duty; yet it invariably fell upon Alere. He was the Man. And for

-those little luxuries and comforts that soothe the dull hours of

-trembling age she depended entirely upon him.

-

-So you see the ten-pound notes that satisfied him were not all spent in

-drink.

-

-But alas! once now and then the rats began to run up the wall in broad

-daylight, and foolish Alere, wise in this one thing, immediately began

-to pack his carpet-bag. He put in his collars, his slippers, his

-sketch-books and pencils, some of his engraving tools, and a few blocks

-of boxwood, his silver-mounted flute, and a book for Amaryllis. He

-packed his carpet-bag and hastened away to his Baden-Baden, to Coombe

-Oaks, his spa among the apple-bloom, the song of finches, and rustle of

-leaves.

-

-They sat and talked in the round summer-house in Iden's garden, with the

-summer unfolding at their knees; Amaryllis, Amadis, Iden, and Flamma.

-

-By Flamma's side there stood a great mug of the Goliath ale, and between

-his lips there was a long churchwarden pipe.

-

-The Goliath ale was his mineral water; his gaseous, alkaline, chalybeate

-liquor; better by far than Kissingen, Homburg, Vichy; better by far than

-mud baths and hot springs. There is no medicine in nature, or made by

-man, like good ale. He who drinks ale is strong.

-

-The bitter principle of the aromatic hops went to his nervous system, to

-the much-suffering liver, to the clogged and weary organs, bracing and

-stimulating, urging on, vitalizing anew.

-

-The spirit drawn from the joyous barley warmed his heart; a cordial

-grown on the sunny hill-side, watered with dew and sweet rain, coloured

-by the light, a liquor of sunshine, potable sunbeam.

-

-Age mingling hops and barley in that just and equitable proportion, no

-cunning of hand, no science can achieve, gave to it the vigour of years,

-the full manhood of strength.

-

-There was in it an alchemic power analysis cannot define. The chemist

-analyzes, and he finds of ten parts, there are this and there are that,

-and the residue is "volatile principle," for which all the dictionaries

-of science have no explanation.

-

-"Volatile principle"--there it is, that is the secret. That is the life

-of the thing; by no possible means can you obtain that volatile

-principle--that alchemic force--except contained in genuine old ale.

-

-Only it must be genuine, and it must be old; such as Iden brewed.

-

-The Idens had been famous for ale for generations.

-

-By degrees Alere's hand grew less shaky; the glass ceased to chink

-against his teeth; the strong, good ale was setting his Fleet Street

-liver in order.

-

-You have "liver," you have "dyspepsia," you have "kidneys," you have

-"abdominal glands," and the doctor tells you you must take bitters,

-_i.e._, quassia, buchu, gentian, cascarilla, calumba; aperients and

-diluents, podophyllin, taraxacum, salts; physic for the nerves and

-blood, quinine, iron, phosphorus; this is but the briefest outline of

-your draughts and preparations; add to it for various purposes, liquor

-arsenicalis, bromide of potassium, strychnia, belladonna.

-

-Weary and disappointed, you turn to patent medicines--American and

-French patent physic is very popular now--and find the same things

-precisely under taking titles, enormously advertised.

-

-It is a fact that nine out of ten of the medicines compounded are

-intended to produce exactly the same effects as are caused by a few

-glasses of good old ale. The objects are to set the great glands in

-motion, to regulate the stomach, brace the nerves, and act as a tonic

-and cordial; a little ether put in to aid the digestion of the

-compound. This is precisely what good old ale does, and digests itself

-very comfortably. Above all things, it contains the volatile principle,

-which the prescriptions have not got.

-

-Many of the compounds actually are beer, bittered with quassia instead

-of hops; made nauseous in order that you may have faith in them.

-

-"Throw physic to the dogs," get a cask of the true Goliath, and "_drenk

-un down to the therd hoop_."

-

-Long before Alere had got to the first hoop the rats ceased to run up

-the wall, his hand became less shaky, he began to play a very good knife

-and fork at the bacon and Iden's splendid potatoes; by-and-by he began

-to hum old German songs.

-

-But you may ask, how do _you_ know, you're not a doctor, you're a mere

-story-spinner, you're no authority? I reply that I am in a position to

-know much more than a doctor.

-

-How can that be?

-

-Because I have been a Patient. It is so much easier to be a doctor than

-a patient. The doctor imagines what his prescriptions are like and what

-they will do; he imagines, but the Patient _knows_.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXXI.

-

-

-SOME noble physicians have tried the effect of drugs upon themselves in

-order to advance their art; for this they have received Gold Medals, and

-are alluded to as Benefactors of Mankind.

-

-I have tried the effects of forty prescriptions upon My Person. With the

-various combinations, patent medicines, and so forth, the total would, I

-verily believe, reach eighty drugs.

-

-Consequently, it is clear I ought to receive eighty gold medals. I am a

-Benefactor eighty times multiplied; the incarnation of virtue; a sort of

-Buddha, kiss my knees, ye slaves!

-

-I have a complaisant feeling as I walk about that I have thus done more

-good than any man living.

-

-I am still very ill.

-

-The curious things an invalid is gravely recommended to try! One day I

-was sitting in that great cosmopolitan museum, the waiting-room at

-Charing Cross station, wearily glancing from time to time at the clock,

-and reckoning how long it would be before I could get home. There is

-nothing so utterly tiring to the enfeebled as an interview with a London

-physician. So there I sat, huddled of a heap, quite knocked up, and, I

-suppose, must have coughed from time to time. By-and-by, a tall

-gentleman came across the room and sat down beside me. "I hope I don't

-intrude," said he, in American accents. "I was obliged to come and speak

-to you--you look bad. I _hate_ to hear anybody cough." He put an

-emphasis on hate, a long-drawn nasal _haate_, hissing it out with

-unmeasured ferocity. "I _haate_ to hear anybody cough. Now I should like

-to tell you how to cure it, if you don't mind."

-

-"By all means--very interesting," I replied.

-

-"I was bad at home, in the States," said he. "I was on my back four

-years with a cough. I couldn't do anything--couldn't help myself; four

-years, and I got down to eighty-seven pounds. That's a fact, I weighed

-eighty-seven pounds."

-

-"Very little," I said, looking him over; he was tall and

-broad-shouldered, not very thick, a square-set man.

-

-"I tried everything the doctors recommended--it was no use; they had to

-give me up. At last a man cured me; and how do you think he did it?"

-

-"Can't think--should much like to know."

-

-"Crude petroleum," said the American. "That was it. Crude petroleum! You

-take it just as it comes from the wells; not refined, mind. Just crude.

-Ten drops on a bit of sugar three times a day, before meals. Taste it?

-No, not to speak of; you don't mind it after a little while. I had in a

-ten-gallon keg. I got well. I got up to two hundred and fifty pounds.

-That's true. I got too fat, had to check it. But I take the drops still,

-if I feel out of sorts. Guess I'm strong enough now. Been all over

-Europe."

-

-I looked at him again; certainly, he did appear strong enough.

-

-"But you Britishers won't try anything, I suppose, from the States,

-now."

-

-I hastened to assure him I had no prejudice of that sort--if it would

-cure me, it might come from anywhere.

-

-"You begin with five drops," he said, solemnly. "Or three, if you like,

-and work up to ten. It soon gets easy to take. You'll soon pick up. But

-I doubt if you'll get a keg of the crude oil in this country; you'll

-have to send over for it. I _haate_ to hear anybody cough"--and so we

-parted.

-

-He was so much in earnest, that if I had egged him on, I verily believe

-he would have got the keg for me himself. It seemed laughable at the

-time; but I don't laugh now. I almost think that good-natured American

-was right; he certainly meant well.

-

-Crude petroleum! Could anything be more nauseous? But probably it acts

-as a kind of cod-liver oil. Sometimes I wish I had tried it. Like him,

-I hate to hear anybody cough! Better take a ten-gallon keg of petroleum.

-

-Alere's crude petroleum was the Goliath ale, and he had hardly begun to

-approach the first hoop, when, as I tell you, he was heard to hum old

-German songs; it was the volatile principle.

-

-Songs about the Pope and the Sultan

-

-          But yet he's not a happy man,

-          He must obey the Alcoran,

-          He dares not touch one drop of wine,

-          I'm glad the Sultan's lot's not mine.

-

-Songs about the rat that dwelt in the cellar, and fed on butter till he

-raised a paunch that would have done credit to Luther; songs about a

-King in Thule and the cup his mistress gave him, a beautiful old song

-that, none like it--

-

-          He saw it fall, he watched it fill,

-            And sink deep, deep into the main;

-          Then sorrow o'er his eyelids fell,

-            He never drank a drop again.

-

-Or his thought slipped back to his school-days, and beating the seat in

-the summer-house with his hand for time, Alere ran on:--

-

-          Horum scorum suntivorum,

-          Harum scarum divo,

-          Tag-rag, merry derry, perriwig, and a hatband,

-          Hic hoc horum genitivo--

-

-To be said in one breath.

-

-          Oh, my Ella--my blue bella,

-            A secula seculorum,

-          If I have luck, sir, she's my uxor,

-            O dies Benedictorum!

-

-Or something about:

-

-          Sweet cowslips grace, the nominative case,

-          And She's of the feminine gender.

-

-Days of Valpy the Vulture, eating the schoolboy's heart out, Eton Latin

-grammar, accidence--do _not_ pause, traveller, if you see _his_ tomb!

-

-"Play to me," said Amaryllis, and the Fleet-Street man put away his

-pipe, and took up his flute; he breathed soft and low--an excellent

-thing in a musician--delicious airs of Mozart chiefly.

-

-The summer unfolded itself at their knees, the high buttercups of the

-meadow came to the very door, the apple-bloom poured itself out before

-them; music all of it, music in colour, in light, in flowers, in song of

-happy birds. The soothing flute strung together the flow of their

-thoughts, they were very silent, Amaryllis and Amadis Iden--almost hand

-in hand--listening to his cunning lips.

-

-He ceased, and they were still silent, listening to their own hearts.

-

-The starlings flew by every few minutes to their nests in the thatch of

-the old house, and out again to the meadow.

-

-Alere showed how impossible it was to draw a bird in flight by the

-starling's wings. His wings beat up and down so swiftly that the eye had

-not time to follow them completely; they formed a burr--an indistinct

-flutter; you are supposed to see the starling flying from you. The

-lifted tips were depressed so quickly that the impression of them in the

-raised position had not time to fade from the eye before a fresh

-impression arrived exhibiting them depressed to their furthest extent;

-you thus saw the wings in both positions, up and down, at once. A

-capital letter X may roughly represent his idea; the upper part answers

-to the wings lifted, the lower part to the wings down, and you see both

-together. Further, in actual fact, you see the wings in innumerable

-other positions between these two extremes; like the leaves of a book

-opened with your thumb quickly--as they do in legerdemain--almost as you

-see the spokes of a wheel run together as they revolve--a sort of burr.

-

-To produce an image of a starling flying, you must draw all this.

-

-The swift feathers are almost liquid; they leave a streak behind in the

-air like a meteor.

-

-Thus the genial Goliath ale renewed the very blood in Alere's veins.

-

-Amaryllis saw too that the deadly paleness of Amadis Iden's

-cheeks--absolute lack of blood--began to give way to the faintest

-colour, little more than the delicate pink of the apple-bloom, though he

-could take hardly a wine-glass of Goliath. If you threw a wine-glassful

-of the Goliath on the hearth it blazed up the chimney in the most

-lively manner. Fire in it--downright fire! That is the test.

-

-Amadis could scarcely venture on a wine-glassful, yet a faint pink began

-to steal into his face, and his white lips grew moist. He drank deeply

-of another cup.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXXII.

-

-

-"LET me try," said Amadis, taking the handle of the churn from Jearje.

-The butter was obstinate, and would not come; it was eleven o'clock in

-the morning, and still there was the rattle of milk in the barrel, the

-sound of a liquid splashing over and over. By the sounds Mrs. Iden knew

-that the fairies were in the churn. Jearje had been turning for hours.

-

-Amadis stooped to the iron handle, polished like silver by Jearje's

-rough hands--a sort of skin sand-paper--and with an effort made the

-heavy blue-painted barrel revolve on its axis.

-

-Mrs. Iden, her sleeves up, looked from the dairy window into the court

-where the churn stood.

-

-"Ah, it's no use your trying," she said, "you'll only tire yourself."

-

-Jearje, glad to stand upright a minute, said, "First-rate, measter."

-

-Amaryllis cried, "Take care; you'd better not, you'll hurt yourself."

-

-"Aw!--aw!" laughed Bill Nye, who was sitting on a form by the wall

-under the dairy window. He was waiting to see Iden about the mowing.

-"Aw!--aw! Look 'ee thur, now!"

-

-Heavily the blue barrel went round--thrice, four times, five times; the

-colour mounted into Amadis's cheeks, not so much from the labour as the

-unwonted stooping; his breath came harder; he had to desist, and go and

-sit down on the form beside Bill Nye.

-

-"I wish you would not do it," said Amaryllis. "You know you're not

-strong yet." She spoke as if she had been his mother or his nurse,

-somewhat masterfully and reproachfully.

-

-"I'm afraid I'm not," said poor Amadis. His chin fell and his face

-lengthened--his eyes grew larger--his temples pinched; disappointment

-wrung at his heart.

-

-Convalescence is like walking in sacks; a short waddle and a fall.

-

-"I can tell 'ee of a vine thing, measter," said Bill Nye, "as I knows

-on; you get a pint measure full of snails----"

-

-"There, do hold your tongue, it's enough to make anyone ill to think

-of," said Amaryllis, angrily, and Bill was silent as to the cod-liver

-oil virtues of snails. Amaryllis went to fetch a glass of milk for

-Amadis.

-

-A robin came into the court, and perching on the edge of a tub,

-fluttered his wings, cried "Check, check," "Anything for me this

-morning?" and so put his head on one side, languishing and persuasive.

-

-"My sister, as was in a decline, used to have snail-oil rubbed into her

-back," said Luce, the maid, who had been standing in the doorway with a

-duster.

-

-"A pretty state of things," cried Mrs. Hen, in a passion. "You standing

-there doing nothing, and it's butter-making morning, and everything

-behind, and you idling and talking,"--rushing out from the dairy, and

-following Luce, who retreated indoors.

-

-"Hur'll catch it," said Bill Nye.

-

-"Missis is ----" said Jearje, supplying the blank with a wink, and

-meaning in a temper this morning. "Missis," like all nervous people, was

-always in a fury about nothing when her mind was intent on an object; in

-this case, the butter.

-

-"Here's eleven o'clock," she cried, in the sitting-room, pointing to the

-clock, "and the beds ain't made."

-

-"I've made the beds," said stolid Luce.

-

-"And the fire isn't dusted up."

-

-"I've dusted up the fire."

-

-"And you're a lazy slut"--pushing Luce about the room.

-

-"I bean't a lazy slut."

-

-"You haven't touched the mantelpiece; give me the duster!"--snatching it

-from her.

-

-"He be done."

-

-"All you can do is to stand and talk with the men. There's no water

-taken up stairs."

-

-"That there be."

-

-"You know you ought to be doing something; the lazy lot of people in

-this house; I never saw anything like it; there's Mr. Iden's other boots

-to be cleaned, and there's the parlour to be swept, and the path to be

-weeded, and the things to be taken over for washing, and the teapot

-ought to go in to Woolhorton, you know the lid's loose, and the children

-will be here in a minute for the scraps, and your master will be in to

-lunch, and there's not a soul to help me in the least," and so, flinging

-the duster at Luce, out she flew into the court, and thence into the

-kitchen, where she cut a great slice of bread and cheese, and drew a

-quart of ale, and took them out to Bill Nye.

-

-"Aw, thank'ee m'm," said Bill, from the very depth of his chest, and set

-to work happily.

-

-Next, she drew a mug for Jearje, who held it with one hand and sipped,

-while he turned with the other; his bread and cheese he ate in like

-manner, he could not wait till he had finished the churning.

-

-"Verily, man is made up of impatience," said the angel Gabriel in the

-Koran, as you no doubt remember; Adam was made of clay (who was the

-sculptor's ghost that modelled him?) and when the breath of life was

-breathed into him, he rose on his arm and began to eat before his lower

-limbs were yet vivified. This is a fact. "Verily, man is made up of

-impatience." As the angel had never had a stomach or anything to sit

-upon, as the French say, he need not have made so unkind a remark; if he

-had had a stomach and a digestion like Bill Nye and Jearje, it is

-certain he would never have wanted to be an angel.

-

-Next, there were four cottage children now in the court, waiting for

-scraps.

-

-Mrs. Iden, bustling to and fro like a whirlwind, swept the poor little

-things into the kitchen and filled two baskets for them with slices of

-bread and butter, squares of cheese, a beef bone, half a rabbit, a dish

-of cold potatoes, two bottles of beer from the barrel, odds and ends,

-and so swept them off again in a jiffy.

-

-Mrs. Iden! Mrs. Iden! you ought to be ashamed of yourself, that is not

-the way to feed the poor. What _could_ you be thinking of, you ignorant

-farmer's wife!

-

-You should go to London, Mrs. Iden, and join a Committee with duchesses

-and earlesses, and wives of rich City tradesfolk; much more important

-these than the duchesses, they will teach you manners. They will teach

-you how to feed the poor with the help of the Rev. Joseph Speechify, and

-the scientific Dr. Amoeba Bacillus; Joe has Providence at his fingers'

-ends, and guides it in the right way; Bacillus knows everything to a

-particle; with Providence and Science together they _must_ do it

-properly.

-

-The scientific dinner for the poor must be composed of the principles of

-food in the right proportion: (1) Albuminates, (2) Hydro-Carbons, (3)

-Carbo-hydrates. Something juicy coming now!

-

-The scientific dinner consists of haricot beans, or lentil soup, or

-oatmeal porridge, or vegetable pot-bouilli; say twopence a quart. They

-can get all the proteids out of that, and lift the requisite foot-tons.

-

-No wasteful bread and butter, no scandalous cheese, no abominable beef

-bone, no wretched rabbit, no prodigal potatoes, above all, No immoral

-ale!

-

-There, Mrs. Iden.

-

-Go to the famous Henry Ward Beecher, that shining light and apostle,

-Mrs. Iden, and read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest what he says:--

-

-"A man who cannot live on bread is not fit to live. A family may live,

-laugh, love and be happy that eats bread in the morning with good water,

-and water and good bread at noon, and water and bread at night."

-

-Does that sound like an echo of the voice that ceased on the Cross?

-

-Guilty Mrs Iden, ignorant farmer's wife; hide your beef and ale, your

-rabbit and potatoes.

-

-To duchesses and earlesses, and plump City ladies riding in carriages,

-and all such who eat and drink five times a day, and have six or eight

-courses at dinner, doubtless once now and then a meal of vegetable

-pot-bouilli, or oatmeal porridge, or lentil soup (three halfpence a

-pound lentils), or haricot beans and water would prove a scientifically

-wholesome thing.

-

-But to those who exist all the week on hunches of dry bread, and not

-much of that, oatmeal porridge doesn't seem to come as a luxury. They

-would like something juicy; good rumpsteak now, with plenty of rich

-gravy, broad slices from legs of mutton, and foaming mugs of ale. They

-need something to put fresh blood and warmth into them.

-

-You sometimes hear people remark: "How strange it is--the poor never buy

-oatmeal, or lentils!"

-

-Of course they don't; if by any chance they do get a shilling to spend,

-they like a mutton chop. They have enough of farinaceous fare.

-

-What Mrs. Iden ought to have done had she been scientific, was to have

-given each of these poor hungry children a nicely printed little

-pamphlet, teaching them how to cook.

-

-Instead of which, she set all their teeth going; infinitely wicked Mrs.

-Iden!

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXXIII.

-

-

-"YOU must drink it all--every drop," said Amaryllis, masterfully, as

-Amadis lingered over the glass of milk she had brought him. He had but

-half finished it; she insisted, "Come, drink it all." Amadis made an

-effort, and obeyed.

-

-But his heart was bitter as absinthe.

-

-Everyone else was strong, and hardy, and manly; even the women were

-manly, they could eat and drink.

-

-Rough-headed Jearje, at the churn, ate hard cheese, and drank ale, and

-turned the crank at the same time.

-

-Round-headed Bill Nye sat on the form, happily munching cheese, oh so

-happily! Gabriel (of the Koran) would never believe how happily, sipping

-his tall quart-mug.

-

-Mrs. Iden bustled to and fro, for all her fifty years, more energetic

-than all the hamlet put together.

-

-Luce, the maid, had worked since six, and would go on hours longer.

-

-Alere Flamma was smoking and sipping Goliath ale in the summer-house; he

-could eat, and drink, and walk about as a man should.

-

-Amaryllis was as strong as a young lioness; he had seen her turn the

-heavy cheese-tub round as if it were a footstool.

-

-He alone was weak, pale, contemptible; unable to eat strong meat; unable

-to drink strong drink; put down to sip milk as an infant; unable to walk

-farther than Plum Corner in the garden; unable to ride even; a mere

-shadow, a thing of contempt.

-

-They told him he was better. There was just a trifle of pink in his

-face, and he could walk to Plum Corner in the garden without clinging to

-Amaryllis's arm, or staying to steady himself and get his balance more

-than three or four times. He had even ventured a little way up the

-meadow-path, but it made him giddy to stoop to pick a buttercup. They

-told him he was better; he could eat a very little more, and sip a

-wine-glassful of Goliath.

-

-Better! What a mockery to a man who could once row, and ride, and shoot,

-and walk his thirty miles, and play his part in any sport you chose! It

-was absinthe to him.

-

-He could not stoop to turn the churn--he had to sip milk in the presence

-of strong men drinking strong drink; to be despised; the very

-servant-maid talking of him as in a decline.

-

-And before Amaryllis; before whom he wished to appear a man.

-

-And full of ideas, too; he felt that he had ideas, that he could think,

-yet he could scarce set one foot safely before the other, not without

-considering first and feeling his way.

-

-Rough-headed Jearje, without a thought, was as strong as the horses he

-led in the waggon.

-

-Round-headed Bill Nye, without an idea, could mow all day in the heat of

-July.

-

-He, with all his ideas, his ambitions, his exalted hopes, his worship of

-Amaryllis--he was nothing. Less than nothing--a shadow.

-

-To despise oneself is more bitter than absinthe.

-

-Let us go to Al Hariri once again, and hear what he says. The speaker

-has been very, very ill, but is better:--

-

-          And he prostrated himself long in prayer: then

-          raised his head, and said:--

-

-  "Despair not in calamities of a gladdening that shall wipe away

-                thy sorrows;

-  For how many a simoom blows, then turns to a gentle breeze, and

-                is changed!

-  How many a hateful cloud arises, then passes away, and pours not

-                forth!

-  And the smoke of the wood, fear is conceived of it, yet no blaze

-                appears from it;

-  And oft sorrow rises, and straightway sets again.

-  So be patient when fear assails, for Time is the Father of Wonders;

-  And hope from the peace of God blessings not to be reckoned!"

-

-

-

-How should such a chant as this enter a young man's heart who felt

-himself despicable in the sight of his mistress?

-

-"Should you like a little more?" asked Amaryllis, in a very gentle tone,

-now he had obeyed her.

-

-"I would rather not," said Amadis, still hanging his head.

-

-His days were mixed of honey and wormwood; sweet because of Amaryllis,

-absinthe because of his weakness.

-

-A voice came from the summer-house; Flamma was shouting an old song,

-with heavy emphasis here and there, with big capital letters:--

-

-          The jolly old Sun, where goes he at night?

-          And what does he Do, when he's out of Sight?

-              All Insinuation Scorning;

-          I don't mean to Say that he Tipples apace,

-          I only Know he's a very Red Face

-              When he gets up in the Morning!

-

-"Haw! Haw! Haw!" laughed Bill Nye, with his mouth full. "Th' zun do look

-main red in the marning, surely."

-

-They heard the front door open and shut; Iden had come in for his lunch,

-and, by the sound of the footsteps, had brought one of his gossips with

-him.

-

-At this Mrs. Iden began to ruffle up her feathers for battle.

-

-Iden came through into the dairy.

-

-"Now, you ain't wanted here," she said. "Poking your nose into

-everything. Wonder you don't help Luce make the beds and sweep the

-floor!"

-

-"Can I help'ee?" said Iden, soothingly. "Want any wood for the fire--or

-anything?"

-

-"As if Luce couldn't fetch the wood--and chop it, as well as you. Why

-can't you mind your business? Here's Bill Nye been waiting these two

-hours to see you"--following Iden towards the sitting-room. "Who have

-you brought in with you now? Of course, everybody comes in of a

-butter-making morning, just the busiest time! Oh! it's you! Sit still,

-Mr. Duck; I don't mind _you_. What will you take?"

-

-More ale and cheese here, too; Iden and Jack Duck sat in the bow-window

-and went at their lunch. So soon as they were settled, out flounced Mrs.

-Iden into the dairy: "The lazy lot of people in this house--I never saw

-anything like it!"

-

-It was true.

-

-There was Alere Flamma singing in the summer-house; Amadis Iden resting

-on the form; Amaryllis standing by him; Bill Nye munching; Jearje

-indolently rotating the churn with one hand, and feeding himself with

-the other; Luce sitting down to her lunch in the kitchen; Iden lifting

-his mug in the bow-window; Jack Duck with his great mouth full; eight

-people--and four little children trotting down the road with baskets of

-food.

-

-"The lazy lot of people in this house; I never saw anything like it."

-

-And that was the beauty of the place, the "Let us not trouble

-ourselves;" "a handful in Peace and Quiet" is better than set banquets;

-crumbs for everybody, and for the robin too; "God listens to those who

-pray to him. Let us eat, and drink, and think of nothing;" believe me,

-the plain plenty, and the rest, and peace, and sunshine of an old

-farmhouse, there is nothing like it in this world!

-

-"I never saw anything like it. Nothing done; nothing done; the morning

-gone and nothing done; and the butter's not come yet!"

-

-Homer is thought much of; now, his heroes are always eating. They eat

-all through the Iliad, they eat at Patroclus' tomb; Ulysses eats a good

-deal in the Odyssey: Jupiter eats. They only did at Coombe-Oaks as was

-done on Olympus.

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration]

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXXIV.

-

-

-AMARYLLIS went outside the court, and waited; Amadis rose and followed

-her. "Come a little way into the Brook-Field," she said.

-

-They left the apple-bloom behind them, and going down the gravel-path

-passed the plum trees--the daffodils there were over now--by the

-strawberry patch which Iden had planted under the parlour window; by the

-great box-hedge where a thrush sat on her nest undisturbed, though

-Amaryllis's dress brushed the branches; by the espalier apple, to the

-little orchard-gate.

-

-The parlour-window--there are no parlours now, except in old country

-houses; there were parlours in the days of Queen Anne; in the modern

-villas they have drawing-rooms.

-

-The parlour-window hung over with pear-tree branches, planted beneath

-with strawberry; white blossom above, white flower beneath; birds' nests

-in the branches of the pear--that was Iden.

-

-They opened the little orchard-gate which pushed heavily against the

-tall meadow-grass growing between the bars. The path was almost

-gone--grown out with grass, and as they moved they left a broad trail

-behind them.

-

-Bill Nye the mower, had he seen, would have muttered to himself; they

-were trespassing on his mowing-grass, trampling it, and making it more

-difficult to cut.

-

-Her dress swept over the bennets and shook the thick-stemmed

-butter-cups--branched like the golden candlestick, and with flowers of

-golden flame. For the burnished petals reflect the sun, and throw light

-back into the air.

-

-Amadis began to drag behind--he could not walk much farther; they sat

-down together on the trunk of an oak that had been felled by a gateway

-close to the horse-chestnut trees Iden had planted. Even with his back

-leaning against a limb of the oak, Amadis had to partly support himself

-with his hands.

-

-What was the use of such a man?--He had nothing but his absurdly

-romantic name from Don Quixote to recommend him.

-

-That was the very thought that gnawed at poor Amadis's heart as he sat

-by her side. What use to care for him?

-

-Iden's flag-basket of tools lay by the gate, it was a new gate, and he

-had been fitting it before he went in to lunch. His basket was of flag

-because the substance of the flag is soft, and the tools, chisels, and

-so on, laid pleasant in it; he must have everything right. The new gate

-was of solid oak, no "sappy" stuff, real heart of oak, well-seasoned,

-without a split, fine, close-grained timber, cut on the farm, and kept

-till it was thoroughly fit, genuine English oak. If you would only

-consider Iden's gate you might see there the man.

-

-This gateway was only between two meadows, and the ordinary farmer, when

-the old gate wore out, would have stopped it with a couple of rails, or

-a hurdle or two, something very, very cheap and rough; at most a gate

-knocked up by the village carpenter of ash and willow, at the lowest

-possible charge.

-

-Iden could not find a carpenter good enough to make _his_ gate in the

-hamlet; he sent for one ten miles, and paid him full carpenter's wages.

-He was not satisfied then, he watched the man at his work to see that

-the least little detail was done correctly, till the fellow would have

-left the job, had he not been made pliable by the Goliath ale. So he

-just stretched the job out as long as he could, and talked and talked

-with Iden, and stroked him the right way, and drank the ale, and "played

-it upon me and on William, That day in a way I despise." Till what with

-the planing, and shaving, and smoothing, and morticing, and ale, and

-time, it footed up a pretty bill, enough for three commonplace gates,

-not of the Iden style.

-

-Why, Iden had put away those pieces of timber years before for this very

-purpose, and had watched the sawyers saw them out at the pit. They would

-have made good oak furniture. There was nothing special or particular

-about this gateway; he had done the same in turn for every gateway on

-the farm; it was the Iden way.

-

-A splendid gate it was, when it was finished, fit for a nobleman's Home

-Park. I doubt, if you would find such a gate, so well proportioned, and

-made of such material on any great estate in the kingdom. For not even

-dukes can get an Iden to look after their property. An Iden is not to be

-"picked up," I can tell you.

-

-The neighbourhood round about had always sneered in the broad country

-way at Iden's gates. "Vit for m' Lard's park. What do _he_ want wi' such

-geates? A' ain't a got no cattle to speak on; any ould rail ud do as

-good as thuck geat."

-

-The neighbourhood round about could never understand Iden, never could

-see why he had gone to such great trouble to render the homestead

-beautiful with trees, why he had re-planted the orchard with pleasant

-eating apples in the place of the old cider apples, hard and sour. "Why

-wouldn't thaay a' done for he as well as for we?"

-

-All the acts of Iden seemed to the neighbourhood to be the acts of a

-"vool."

-

-When he cut a hedge, for instance, Iden used to have the great bushes

-that bore unusually fine May bloom saved from the billhook, that they

-might flower in the spring. So, too, with the crab-apples--for the sake

-of the white blossom; so, too, with the hazel--for the nuts.

-

-But what caused the most "wonderment" was the planting of the

-horse-chestnuts in the corner of the meadow? Whatever did he want with

-horse-chestnuts? No other horse-chestnuts grew about there. You couldn't

-eat the horse-chestnuts when they dropped in autumn.

-

-In truth Iden built for all time, and not for the little circumstance of

-the hour. His gate was meant to last for years, rain and shine, to

-endure any amount of usage, to be a work of Art in itself.

-

-His gate as the tangible symbol of his mind--was at once his strength

-and his folly. His strength, for it was such qualities as these that

-made Old England famous, and set her on the firm base whereon she now

-stands--built for all Time. His folly, because he made too much of

-little things, instead of lifting his mind higher.

-

-If only he could have lived three hundred years the greater world would

-have begun to find out Iden and to idolize him, and make pilgrimages

-from over sea to Coombe Oaks, to hear him talk, for Iden could talk of

-the trees and grass, and all that the Earth bears, as if one had

-conversed face to face with the great god Pan himself.

-

-But while Iden slumbered with his head against the panel--think, think,

-think--this shallow world of ours, this petty threescore years and ten,

-was slipping away. Already Amaryllis had marked with bitterness at heart

-the increasing stoop of the strong back.

-

-Iden was like the great engineer who could never build a bridge, because

-he knew so well how a bridge ought to be built.

-

-"Such a fuss over a mess of a gate," said Mrs. Iden, "making yourself

-ridiculous: I believe that carpenter is just taking advantage of you.

-Why can't you go into town and see your father?--it would be a hundred

-pounds in your pocket"--as it would have been, no doubt. If only Mrs.

-Iden had gone about her lecture in a pleasanter manner perhaps he would

-have taken her advice.

-

-Resting upon the brown timber in the grass Amaryllis and Amadis could

-just see a corner of the old house through the spars of the new gate.

-Coombe Oaks was a grown house, if you understand; a house that had grown

-in the course of many generations, not built to set order; it had grown

-like a tree that adapts itself to circumstances, and, therefore, like

-the tree it was beautiful to look at. There were windows in deep

-notches, between gables where there was no look-out except at the pears

-on the wall, awkward windows, quite bewildering. A workman came to mend

-one one day, and could not get at it. "Darned if I ever seed such a

-crooked picter of a house!" said he.

-

-A kingfisher shot across above the golden surface of the buttercups,

-straight for the brook, moving, as it seemed, without wings, so swiftly

-did he vibrate them, that only his azure hue was visible, drawn like a

-line of peacock blue over the gold.

-

-In the fitness of things Amaryllis ought not to have been sitting there

-like this, with Amadis lost in the sweet summer dream of love.

-

-She ought to have loved and married a Launcelot du Lake, a hero of the

-mighty arm, only with the income of Sir Gorgius Midas: that is the

-proper thing.

-

-But the fitness of things never comes to pass--everything happens in the

-Turkish manner.

-

-Here was Amaryllis, very strong and full of life, very, very young and

-inexperienced, very poor and without the least expectation whatever (for

-who could reconcile the old and the older Iden?), the daughter of poor

-and embarrassed parents, whom she wished and prayed to help in their

-coming old age. Here was Amaryllis, full of poetic feeling and half a

-painter at heart, full of generous sentiments--what a nature to be

-ground down in the sordidness of married poverty!

-

-Here was Amadis, extremely poor, quite feeble, and unable to earn a

-shilling, just talking of seeing the doctor again about this fearful

-debility, full too, as he thought at least, of ideas--what a being to

-think of her!

-

-Nothing ever happens in the fitness of things. If only now he could have

-regained the health and strength of six short months ago--if only that,

-but you see, he had not even that. He might get better; true--he

-_might_, I have tried 80 drugs and I am no better, I hope he will.

-

-Could any blundering Sultan in the fatalistic East have put things

-together for them with more utter contempt of fitness? It is all in the

-Turkish manner, you see.

-

-There they sat, happier and happier, and deeper and deeper in love every

-moment, on the brown timber in the long grass, their hearts as full of

-love as the meadow was of sunshine.

-

-You have heard of the Sun's Golden Cup, in which after sunset he was

-carried over Ocean's stream, while we slumber in the night, to land

-again in the East and give us the joy of his rising. The great Golden

-Cup in which Hercules, too, was taken over; it was as if that Cup had

-been filled to the brim with the nectar of love and placed at the lips

-to drink, inexhaustible.

-

-In the play of Faust--Alere's _Faust_--Goethe has put an interlude, an

-Intermezzo; I shall leave Amaryllis and Amadis in their Interlude in

-Heaven. Let the Play of Human Life, with its sorrows and its Dread,

-pause awhile; let Care go aside behind the wings, let Debt and Poverty

-unrobe, let Age stand upright, let Time stop still (oh, Miracle! as the

-Sun did in the Vale of Ajalon). Let us leave our lovers in the Interlude

-in Heaven.

-

-And as I must leave them (I trust but for a little while) I will leave

-them on the brown oak timber, sap-stain brown, in the sunshine and

-dancing shadow of summer, among the long grass and the wild flowers.

-

-

-

-          CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,

-                             CHANCERY LANE.

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