R
IGHT 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 theblue 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 thestile, 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 throughhiswork 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 theydodo 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 gleamingwater, 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 thesound 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.
S
O 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, clearingout 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 thatUlysses, 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 sovereignnow. 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 wordskept 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 hecan, 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.Theyteach 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 ofthe 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.
S
TEADILY 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 hadbeen 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, histrousers 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 totheyto what you do speak tome."
"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 ofhomage."
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 inthe 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 littleroom 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.
B
UT 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 greatcup 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 everymorning 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 itsformer 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, stayedanother 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 everaccompanieda 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.
B
UT 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 theirbusiness 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 returneddrawing, 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 (ofThe 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:—