T
HE 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, glovesrolled 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 liftone.
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 theyallugly? 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 routeto 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 justisugly."
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 bestbrown 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 isinnocent 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.
T
HE 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 notaverse 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. "Ashot 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; Iwillbe 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 gota 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——"
"Yourfamily," muttered Iden. "The Flammas!"
"Yes,myfamily—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.
T
HIS 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,everybodydoes 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, makingGrand 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'scart 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 lovedherfather.
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 deadthere; 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 totown; from the edge of the grave they came back to look on their own buried lives.
If you will onlythink, you will see it was a most dreadful and miserable incident, that visit to the theatre after the funeral.
W
HEN 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 reallywonderful 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 mediæval 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 fête 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, archæologically 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 whichthe 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 notchto 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 notknow—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 foryears 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 theauction-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 anAthenæumin 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 £50, £60, £100, £200; 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 thesea 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 callrealold 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.