SO 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, clearing out 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 that Ulysses, 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 sovereign
_now_. 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 words kept 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 he can, 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. _They_ teach 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 of the 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]