THEY talked on and on, these three, Iden, Amadis Iden, and Alere Flamma,
with Amaryllis listening, from the end of April till near the end of
May; till "a month passed away," and still they were talking. For there
is nothing so good to the human heart as well agreed conversation, when
you know that your companion will answer to your thought as the anvil
meets the hammer, ringing sound to merry stroke; better than wine,
better than sleep, like love itself--for love is agreement of
thought--"God listens to those who pray to him; let us eat and drink,
and think of nothing," says the Arabian proverb. So they ate and
drank--very moderate the drinking--and thought of nothing, and talked,
which should be added to complete felicity. Not, of course, all of them
always together, sometimes all four, sometimes Alere, Amadis, and
Amaryllis, sometimes only the last two.
The round summer-house was their Parliament House whenever the east
winds sank and the flowers shone forth like sunshine; as the sun shines
when the clouds withdraw, so when the harsh east winds cease the May
flowers immediately bloom and glow.
It was a large round house, properly builded of brick, as a summer-house
should be--put not thy faith in lath work--and therefore dry and warm;
to sit in it was like sitting in a shell, warm and comfortable, with a
sea of meadow-grass, smooth and coloured, stretching in front, islanded
about with oak, and elm, and ash.
The finches came to the boughs that hung over the ivy-grown thatch, and
sang in the sycamore opposite the door, and in the apple-trees, whose
bloom hung down almost to the ground.
These apple-trees, which Iden had planted, flung sackfuls of bloom at
his feet. They poured themselves out in abandoned, open-armed,
spendthrift, wasteful--perfectly prodigal--quantities of rose-tinted
petal; prodigal as a river which flows full to the brim, never
questioning but what there will be plenty of water to follow.
Flowers, and trees, and grass, seemed to spring up wherever Iden set
down his foot: fruit and flowers fell from the air down upon him. It was
his genius to make things grow--like sunshine and shower; a sort of Pan,
a half-god of leaves and boughs, and reeds and streams, a sort of Nature
in human shape, moving about and sowing Plenty and Beauty.
One side of the summer-house was a thick holly-bush, Iden had set it
there; he builded the summer-house and set the ivy; and the pippin at
the back, whose bloom was white; the copper-birch near by; the great
sycamore alone had been there before him, but he set a seat under it,
and got woodbine to flower there; the drooping-ash he planted, and if
Amaryllis stood under it when the tree was in full leaf you could not
see her, it made so complete an arbour; the Spanish oak in the corner;
the box hedge along the ha-ha parapet; the red currants against the red
wall; the big peony yonder; the damsons and pear; the yellow honey-bush;
all these, and this was but one square, one mosaic of the garden, half
of it sward, too, and besides these there was the rhubarb-patch at one
corner; fruit, flowers, plants, and herbs, lavender, parsley, which has
a very pleasant green, growing in a thick bunch, roses, pale sage--read
Boccaccio and the sad story of the leaf of sage--ask Nature if you wish
to know how many things more there were.
A place to eat and drink, and think of nothing in, listening to the
goldfinches, and watching them carry up the moss, and lichen, and
slender fibres for their nest in the fork of the apple; listening to the
swallows as they twittered past, or stayed on the sharp, high top of the
pear tree; to the vehement starlings, whistling and screeching like Mrs.
Iden herself, on the chimneys; chaffinches "chink, chink," thrushes,
distant blackbirds, who like oaks; "cuckoo, cuckoo," "crake, crake,"
buzzing and burring of bees, coo of turtle-doves, now and then a neigh,
to remind you that there were horses, fulness and richness of musical
sound; a world of grass and leaf, humming like a hive with voices.
When the east wind ceases, and the sun shines above, and the flowers
beneath, "a summer's day in lusty May," then is the time an Interlude in
Heaven.
And all this, summer-house and all, had dropped out of the pocket of
Iden's ragged old coat.
There was a magic power of healing in the influences of this place which
Iden had created. Both Amadis and Alere Flamma had already changed for
the better.
That morning when Amaryllis had found them, just arrived, the one with a
portmanteau, and the other with a carpet-bag, they were both pale to the
last degree of paleness.
Three years had gone by since Amadis had stayed at Coombe Oaks before,
when Amaryllis was thirteen and he eighteen; fine romps they had then, a
great girl, and a great boy, rowing on the water, walking over the
hills, exploring the woods; Amadis shooting and fishing, and Amaryllis
going with him, a kind of gamekeeper page in petticoats. They were of
the same stock of Idens, yet no relations; he was of the older branch,
Amaryllis of the younger.
She had grown into a woman; Amadis Iden into a man.
Sadly, indeed, he had altered. Looking at him, she could scarce believe
he was the same; so pale, so thin, so drooping, and fireless--the spark
of life sunk into the very ashes. He sat at the dinner-table that
morning like a ghost. He was convalescent from low fever: that dread
disease which has taken the place of ague in the country. At one time it
was ague; in these times it is low fever.
At Coombe Oaks they had heard of his illness in a far-off way, but had
received no distinct particulars, for the news came in a roundabout way
by word of mouth, country-folk never write. The distance between the two
houses was less than ten miles, and might as well have been five hundred
for all the communication.
So that the ghastly paleness of his face came upon her as a spectre in
daylight. You could see at a glance what was wrong--the vital energy had
been sapped; as a tree fades without a branch broken, or bark scored,
fades and withers from the lack of the mysterious force which brings
forth fresh leaves, so he drooped in his chair. The body--the tree--was
there, but the life was not in it.
Alere Flamma, aged forty-nine, or nearly, was pale from other causes,
and it was a different kind of paleness; not bloodlessness, like Amadis,
but something lacking in the blood, a vitiated state. Too much Fleet
Street, in short; too much of the Oracle--Pantagruel's Oracle of the
Bottle.
His hands shook as he held his knife and fork--oddly enough, the hands
of great genius often do shake; now and then when he put his glass to
his lips, his teeth snapped on it, and chinked.
It seemed curious that such puffy, shaky hands could hold a pencil, and
draw delicate lines without a flaw.
Many who never resort to the Oracle have hands that tremble nearly as
much--the nervous constitution--and yet execute artists' work of rare
excellence.
Alere's constitution, the Flamma constitution, naturally nervous, had
been shaken as with dynamite by the bottle, and the glass chinked
against his teeth. Every two or three years, when he felt himself
toppling over like a tree half sawn through, Alere packed his
carpet-bag, and ran down to Coombe Oaks. When the rats began to run up
the wall as he sat at work in broad daylight, Alere put his slippers
into his carpet-bag and looked out some collars.
In London he never wore a collar, only a bright red scarf round his
neck; the company he kept would have shunned him--they would have looked
him up and down disdainfully:--"Got a collar on--had no breakfast." They
would have scornfully regarded him as no better than a City clerk, the
class above all others scorned by those who use tools.
"Got a collar on--had no breakfast." The City clerk, playing the Masher
on thirty shillings a week, goes without food to appear the gentleman.
Alere, the artist, drank with the men who used hammer, and file, or set
up type--a godless set, ye gods, how godless, these setters up of type
at four o'clock in the morning; oysters and stout at 4 a.m.; special
taverns they must have open for them--open before Aurora gleams in the
east--Oh! Fleet Street, Fleet Street, what a place it is!
By no possible means could Alere work himself into a dress-coat.
Could he have followed the celebrated advice--"You put on a dress-coat
and go into society"--he would soon have become a name, a fame, a taker
of big fees, a maker of ten thousand yearly.
To a man who could draw like Alere, possessed, too, of the still rarer
talent--the taste to see what to draw--there really is no limit in our
days; for as for colour, you do not require a genius for colour in an
age of dinginess--why, the point, nowadays, is to avoid colour, and in a
whole Academy you shall scarcely find as much as would tint a stick of
sealing-wax.
"You put on a black coat and go into society"--that is the secret of
commissions, and commissions are fortune. Nothing so clever in the way
of advice has been sent forth as that remark. The great Tichborne said
something about folk that had money and no brains, and folk that had
brains but no money; and they as has no brains ought to be so managed as
to supply money to those who had. But even the greatness of the great
Tichborne's observation falls into insignificance before Chesterfield in
one sentence: "Put on a black coat and go into society."
What are the sayings of the seven wise men of Greece compared to
_that_?
[Illustration]