F
ORTY-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 youdoeat!" 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 knowhowthe 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 sappossesses 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 fellexactly 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.
"Whateverareyou 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 flourypotato, 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, theywandered 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 Crœsus 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."
T
HIS 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'sThe 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 heaffected 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 around 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 thedeep 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 thelock 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, "Neverdoanything; nothing but sleep, sleep, sleep: talk, talk, talk; neverdoanything. 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 coveredeither of the tiny creatures as his shield covered Ajax.
Yet the little things fed in perfect confidence. He was so still, soverystill—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,verystill? 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.
H
E 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 seengeneralship such as the world had not known since Cæsar.
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 couldimitate: 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 Cæsar 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 toclear 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.
L
ADY-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 fourteenfeet 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 theclaws 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 theroughest 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 therewhen 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 roundabout 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. Twicewhen 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 £ 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.