THE crowd began to pass more thickly, when Amaryllis saw a man coming up
the road in the opposite direction to that in which the multitude was
moving. They were going to the fair; he had his back to it, and a party
in a trap rallied him smartly for his folly.
"What! bean't you a-going to fair? Why, Measter Duck, what's up? Looking
for a thunderstorm?"--which young ducks are supposed to enjoy. "Ha! ha!
ha!"
Measter Duck, with a broad grin on his face, nevertheless plodded up the
hill, and passed beneath Amaryllis.
She knew him very well, for he lived in the hamlet, but she would not
have taken any notice of him had he not been so elaborately dressed. His
high silk hat shone glossy; his black broadcloth coat was new and
carefully brushed; he was in black all over, in contrast with the mass
of people who had gone by that morning. A blue necktie, bright and
clean, spotless linen, gloves rolled up in a ball in one hand, whiskers
brushed, boots shining, teeth clean, Johnny was off to the fair!
The coat fitted him to a nicety; it had, in fact, no chance to do
otherwise, for his great back and shoulders stretched it tight, and
would have done so had it been made like a sack. Of all the big men who
had gone by that day Jack Duck was the biggest; his back was immense,
and straight, too, for he walked upright for a farmer, nor was his bulk
altogether without effect, for he was not over-burdened with abdomen, so
that it showed to the best advantage. He was a little over the average
height, but not tall; he had grown laterally.
He could lift two sacks of wheat from the ground. You just try to lift
_one_.
His sleeves were too long, so that only the great knuckles of his
speckled hands were visible. Red whiskers, red hair, blue eyes, speckled
face, straight lips, thick, like the edge of an earthenware pitcher, and
of much the same coarse red hue, always a ready grin, a round, hard
head, which you might have hit safely with a mallet; and there is the
picture.
For some reason, very big men do not look well in glossy black coats and
silk hats; they seem to want wideawakes, bowlers, caps, anything rather
than a Paris hat, and some loose-cut jacket of a free-and-easy colour,
suitable for the field, or cricket, or boating. They do not belong to
the town and narrow doorways; Nature grew them for hills and fields.
Compared with the Continental folk, most Englishmen are big, and
therefore, as their "best" suits do not fit in with their character as
written in limbs and shoulders, the Continent thinks us clumsy. The
truth is, it is the Continent that is little.
"Isn't he ugly?" thought Amaryllis, looking down on poor John Duck.
"Isn't he ugly?" Now the top of the wall was crusted with moss, which
has a way of growing into bricks and mortar, and attaching particles of
brick to its roots. As she watched the people she unconsciously trifled
with a little piece of moss--her hand happened at the moment to project
over the wall, and as John Duck went under she dropped the bit of moss
straight on his glossy hat. Tap! the fragment of brick adhering to the
moss struck the hollow hat smartly like a drum.
She drew back quickly, laughing and blushing, and angry with herself all
at the same time, for she had done it without a thought.
Jack pulled off his hat, saw nothing, and put it on again, suspecting
that some one in a passing gig had "chucked" something at him.
In a minute Amaryllis peeped over the wall, and, seeing his broad back a
long way up the road, resumed her stand.
"How ever could I do such a stupid thing?" she thought. "But isn't he
ugly? Aren't they _all_ ugly? All of them--horridly ugly."
The entire unknown race of Man was hideous. So coarse in feature--their
noses were thick, half an inch thick, or enormously long and knobbed at
the end like a walking-stick, or curved like a reaping-hook, or slewed
to one side, or flat as if they had been smashed, or short and stumpy
and incomplete, or spotted with red blotches, or turned up in the
vulgarest manner--nobody had a good nose.
Their eyes were goggles, round and staring--like liquid marbles--they
had no eyelashes, and their eyebrows were either white and invisible, or
shaggy, as if thistles grew along their foreheads.
Their cheeks were speckled and freckled and red and brick-dust and
leather-coloured, and enclosed with scrubby whiskers, like a garden
hedge.
Upon the whole, those who shaved and were smooth looked worse than those
who did not, for they thus exposed the angularities of their chins and
jaws.
They wore such horrid hats on the top of these roughly-sketched
faces--sketched, as it were, with a bit of burnt stick. Some of them had
their hats on the backs of their heads, and some wore them aslant, and
some jammed over their brows.
They went along smoking and puffing, and talking and guffawing in the
vulgarest way, _en route_ to swill and smoke and puff and guffaw
somewhere else.
Whoever could tell what they were talking about? these creatures.
They had no form or grace like a woman--no lovely sloped shoulders, no
beautiful bosom, no sweeping curve of robe down to the feet. No softness
of cheek, or silky hair, or complexion, or taper fingers, or arched
eyebrows; no sort of style whatever. They were mere wooden figures; and,
in short, sublimely ugly.
There was a good deal of truth in Amaryllis' reflections; it was a pity
a woman was not taken into confidence when the men were made.
Suppose the women were like the men, and we had to make love to such a
set of bristly, grisly wretches!--pah! shouldn't we think them ugly! The
patience of the women, putting up with us so long!
As for the muscles on which we pride ourselves so much, in a woman's
eyes (though she prefers a strong man) they simply increase our
extraordinary ugliness.
But if we look pale, and slim, and so forth, then they despise us, and
there is no doubt that altogether the men were made wrong.
"And Jack's the very ugliest of the lot," thought Amaryllis. "He just
_is_ ugly."
Pounding up the slope, big John Duck came by-and-by to the gateway, and
entering without ceremony, as is the custom in the country, found Mr.
Iden near the back door talking to a farmer who had seated himself on a
stool.
He was a middle-aged man, stout and florid, rough as a chunk of wood,
but dressed in his best brown for the fair. Tears were rolling down his
vast round cheeks as he expatiated on his grievances to Mr. Iden:--
"Now, just you see how I be helped up with this here 'ooman," he
concluded as Duck arrived. Mr. Iden, not a little glad of an opportunity
to escape a repetition of the narrative, to which he had patiently
listened, took Jack by the arm, and led him indoors. As they went the
man on the stool extended his arm towards them hopelessly:--"Just you
see how I be helped up with this here 'ooman!"
A good many have been "helped up" with a woman before now.
Mrs. Iden met Jack with a gracious smile--she always did--yet there
could not have been imagined a man less likely to have pleased her.
A quick, nervous temperament, an eye sharp to detect failings or
foolishness, an admirer of briskness and vivacity, why did she welcome
John Duck, that incarnation of stolidity and slowness, that enormous
mountain of a man? Because extremes meet? No, since she was always
complaining of Iden's dull, motionless life; so it was not the contrast
to her own disposition that charmed her.
John Duck was Another Man--not Mr. Iden.
The best of matrons like to see Another Man enter their houses; there's
no viciousness in it, it is simply nature, which requires variety. The
best of husbands likes to have another woman--or two, or three--on a
visit; there's nothing wrong, it is innocent enough, and but gives a
spice to the monotony of existence.
Besides, John Duck, that mountain of slowness and stolidity, was not
perhaps a fool, notwithstanding his outward clumsiness. A little
attention is appreciated even by a matron of middle age.
"Will you get us some ale?" said Iden; and Mrs. Iden brought a full jug
with her own hands--a rare thing, for she hated the Goliath barrel as
Iden enjoyed it.
"Going to the fair, Mr. Duck?"
"Yes, m'm," said John, deep in his chest and gruff, about as a horse
might be expected to speak if he had a voice. "You going, m'm? I just
come up to ask if you'd ride in my dog-trap?"
John had a first-rate turn-out.
Mrs. Iden, beaming with smiles, replied that she was not going to the
fair.
"Should be glad to take you, you know," said John, dipping into the ale.
"Shall you be going presently?"--to Mr. Iden. "Perhaps you'd have a
seat?"
"Hum!" said Iden, fiddling with his chin, a trick he had when undecided.
"I don't zactly know; fine day, you see; want to see that hedge grubbed;
want to fill up the gaps; want to go over to the wood meads; thought
about----"
"There, take and go!" said Mrs. Iden. "Sit there thinking--take and go."
"I can't say zactly, John; don't seem to have anything to go vor."
"What do other people go for?" said Mrs. Iden, contemptuously. "Why
can't you do like other people? Get on your clean shirt, and go. Jack
can wait--he can talk to Amaryllis while you dress."
"Perhaps Miss would like to go," suggested John, very quietly, and as if
it was no consequence to him; the very thing he had called for, to see
if he could get Amaryllis to drive in with him. He knew that Mrs. Iden
never went anywhere, and that Mr. Iden could not make up his mind in a
minute--he would require three or four days at least--so that it was
quite safe to ask them first.
"Of course she would," said Mrs. Iden. "She is going--to dine with her
grandfather; it will save her a long walk. You had better go and ask
her; she's down at Plum Corner, watching the people."
"So I wull," said Jack, looking out of the great bow window at the
mention of Plum Corner--he could just see the flutter of Amaryllis'
dress in the distance between the trees. That part of the garden was
called Plum Corner because of a famous plum tree--the one that had not
been pruned and was sprawling about the wall.
Mr. Iden had planted that plum tree specially for Mrs. Iden, because she
was so fond of a ripe luscious plum. But of late years he had not pruned
it.
"Vine ale!" said John, finishing his mug. "Extra vine ale!"
"It be, bean't it?" said Mr. Iden.
It really was humming stuff, but John well knew how proud Iden was of
it, and how much he liked to hear it praised.
The inhabitants of the City of London conceitedly imagine that no one
can be sharp-witted outside the sound of Bow Bells--country people are
stupid. My opinion is that clumsy Jack Duck, who took about half an hour
to write his name, was equal to most of them.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]