THIS discordance between her father and mother hurt Amaryllis'
affectionate heart exceedingly. It seemed to be always breaking out all
the year round.
Of a summer's eve, when the day's work among the hot hay was done, Iden
would often go out and sit under the russet apple till the dew had
filled the grass like a green sea. When the tide of the dew had risen he
would take off his heavy boots and stockings, and so walk about in the
cool shadows of eve, paddling in the wet grass. He liked the refreshing
coolness and the touch of the sward. It was not for washing, because he
was scrupulously clean under the ragged old coat; it was because he
liked the grass. There was nothing very terrible in it; men, and women,
too, take off their shoes and stockings, and wade about on the sands at
the sea, and no one thinks that it is anything but natural, reasonable,
and pleasant. But, then, you see, _everybody_ does it at the seaside,
and Iden alone waded in the dew, and that was his crime--that he alone
did it.
The storm and rage of Mrs. Iden whenever she knew he was paddling in the
grass was awful. She would come shuffling out--she had a way of rubbing
her shoes along the ground when irritated with her hands under her
apron, which she twisted about--and pelt him with scorn.
"There, put your boots on--do, and hide your nasty feet!" (Iden had a
particularly white skin, and feet as white as a lady's.) "Disgusting!
Nobody ever does it but you, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself!
Anything more disgusting I never heard of. Nobody else but you would
ever think of such a thing; makes me feel queer to see you."
Shuffling about, and muttering to herself, "Nobody else"--that was the
sin and guilt of it--by-and-by Mrs. Iden would circle round to where he
had left his boots, and, suddenly seizing them, would fling them in the
ditch.
And I verily believe, in the depth of her indignation, if she had not
been afraid to touch firearms, she would have brought out the gun, and
had a shot at him.
After a time Iden left his old post at the russet apple, and went up the
meadow to the horse-chestnut trees that he himself had planted, and
there, in peace and quietness and soft cool shadow, waded about in the
dew, without any one to grumble at him.
How crookedly things are managed in this world!
It is the modern fashion to laugh at the East, and despise the Turks and
all their ways, making Grand Viziers of barbers, and setting waiters in
high places, with the utmost contempt for anything reasonable--all so
incongruous and chance-ruled. In truth, all things in our very midst go
on in the Turkish manner; crooked men are set in straight places, and
straight people in crooked places, just the same as if we had all been
dropped promiscuously out of a bag and shook down together on the earth
to work out our lives, quite irrespective of our abilities and natures.
Such an utter jumble!
Here was Iden, with his great brain and wonderful power of observation,
who ought to have been a famous traveller in unexplored Africa or
Thibet, bringing home rarities and wonders; or, with his singular
capacity for construction, a leading engineer, boring Mont Cenis Tunnels
and making Panama Canals; or, with his Baconian intellect, forming a new
school of philosophy--here was Iden, tending cows, and sitting, as the
old story goes, undecidedly on a stile--sitting astride--eternally
sitting, and unable to make up his mind to get off on one side or the
other.
Here was Mrs. Iden, who had had a beautiful shape and expressive eyes,
full in her youth of life and fire, who ought to have led the gayest
life in London and Paris alternately, riding in a carriage, and flinging
money about in the most extravagant, joyous, and good-natured
manner--here was Mrs. Iden making butter in a dull farmhouse, and
wearing shoes out at the toes.
So our lives go on, rumble-jumble, like a carrier's cart over ruts and
stones, thumping anyhow instead of running smoothly on new-mown sward
like a cricket-ball.
It all happens in the Turkish manner.
Another time there would come a letter from one of the Flammas in
London. Could they spare a little bag of lavender?--they grew such
lovely sweet lavender at Coombe Oaks. Then you might see Mr. and Mrs.
Iden cooing and billing, soft as turtle-doves, and fraternising in the
garden over the lavender hedge. Here was another side, you see, to the
story.
Mrs. Iden was very fond of lavender, the scent, and the plant in every
form. She kept little bags of it in all her drawers, and everything at
Coombe Oaks upstairs in the bedrooms had a faint, delicious lavender
perfume. There is nothing else that smells so sweet and clean and dry.
You cannot imagine a damp sheet smelling of lavender.
Iden himself liked lavender, and used to rub it between his finger and
thumb in the garden, as he did, too, with the black-currant leaves and
walnut-leaves, if he fancied anything he had touched might have left an
unpleasant odour adhering to his skin. He said it cleaned his hands as
much as washing them.
Iden liked Mrs. Iden to like lavender because his mother had been so
fond of it, and all the sixteen carved oak-presses which had been so
familiar to him in boyhood were full of a thick atmosphere of the
plant.
Long since, while yet the honeymoon bouquet remained in the wine of
life, Iden had set a hedge of lavender to please his wife. It was so
carefully chosen, and set, and watched, that it grew to be the finest
lavender in all the country. People used to come for it from round
about, quite certain of a favourable reception, for there was nothing so
sure to bring peace at Coombe Oaks as a mention of lavender.
But the letter from the Flammas was the great event--from London, all
that way, asking for some Coombe Oaks lavender! Then there was billing
and cooing, and fraternising, and sunshine in the garden over the hedge
of lavender. If only it could have lasted! Somehow, as people grow older
there seems so much grating of the wheels.
In time, long time, people's original feelings get strangely confused
and overlaid. The churchwardens of the eighteenth century plastered the
fresco paintings of the fourteenth in their churches--covered them over
with yellowish mortar. The mould grows up, and hides the capital of the
fallen column; the acanthus is hidden in earth. At the foot of the oak,
where it is oldest, the bark becomes dense and thick, impenetrable, and
without sensitiveness; you may cut off an inch thick without reaching
the sap. A sort of scale or caking in long, long time grows over
original feelings.
There was no one in the world so affectionate and loving as Mrs.
Iden--no one who loved a father so dearly; just as Amaryllis loved _her_
father.
But after they had lived at Coombe Oaks thirty years or so, and the
thick dull bark had grown, after the scales or caking had come upon the
heart, after the capital of the column had fallen, after the painting
had been blurred, it came about that old Flamma, Mrs. Iden's father,
died in London.
After thirty years of absolute quiet at Coombe Oaks, husband and wife
went up to London to the funeral, which took place at one of those
fearful London cemeteries that strike a chill at one's very soul. Of all
the horrible things in the world there is nothing so calmly ghastly as a
London cemetery.
In the evening, after the funeral, Mr. and Mrs. Iden went to the
theatre.
"How frivolous! How unfeeling!" No, nothing of the sort; how truly sad
and human, for to be human is to be sad. That men and women should be so
warped and twisted by the pressure of the years out of semblance to
themselves; that circumstances should so wall in their lives with
insurmountable cliffs of granite facts, compelling them to tread the
sunless gorge; that the coldness of death alone could open the door to
pleasure.
They sat at the theatre with grey hearts. With the music and the song,
the dancing, the colours and gay dresses, it was sadder there than in
the silent rooms at the house where the dead had been. Old Flamma alone
had been dead _there_; they were dead here. Dead in life--at the
theatre.
They had used to go joyously to the theatre thirty years before, when
Iden came courting to town; from the edge of the grave they came back
to look on their own buried lives.
If you will only _think_, you will see it was a most dreadful and
miserable incident, that visit to the theatre after the funeral.
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