That glove had been worn at the old “Ship” at Brighton years and years ago in the honeymoon trip: in those days bridal parties went down by coach. Faded with years, it had also faded from the tears that had fallen upon it. She turned it over in her hands, and her tears spotted it once more.
Amaryllis went on with the tea-making; for her mother to rush away in that manner was nothing new. She toasted her father a piece of toast—he affected to despise toast, but he always ate it if it was there, and looked about for it if it was not, though he never said anything. The clock struck five, and out she went to tell him tea was ready. Coming round the house she found her daffodil crushed to pieces.
“Oh!” The blood rushed to her forehead; then her beautiful lips pouted and quivered; tears filled her eyes, and her breast panted. She knew immediately who had done it; she ran to her bedroom to cry and to hide her grief and indignation.
VI
Lady-day Fair came round by and by, and Amaryllis, about eleven o’clock in the morning, went down the garden to the end of the orchard, where she could overlook the highway without being seen, and watch the folk go past. Just there the road began to descend into a hollow, while the garden continued level, so that Amaryllis, leaning her arm on the top of the wall, was much higher up than those who went along. The wall dropped quite fourteen feet down to the road, a rare red brick wall—thick and closely-built, the bricks close together with thin seams of mortar, so that the fibres of the whole mass were worked and compressed and bound firm, like the fibres of a piece of iron. The deep red bricks had a colour—a certain richness of stability—and at the top this good piece of workmanship was protected from the weather by a kind of cap, and ornamented with a projecting ridge. Within the wall Amaryllis could stand on a slight bank, and easily look over it. Without there was a sheer red precipice of fourteen feet down to the dusty sward and nettles beside the road.
Some bare branches of a plum tree trained against the wall rose thin and tapering above it in a bunch, a sign of bad gardening, for they ought to have been pruned, and the tree, indeed, had an appearance of neglect. One heavy bough had broken away from the nails and list, and drooped to the ground, and the shoots of last year, not having been trimmed, thrust themselves forward presumptuously.
Behind the bunch of thin and tapering branches rising above the wall Amaryllis was partly hidden, but she relied a great deal more for concealment upon a fact Iden had taught her, that people very seldom look up; and consequently if you are only a little higher they will not see you. This she proved that morning, for not one of all who passed glanced up from the road. The shepherd kept his eye fixed on his sheep, and the drover on his bullocks; the boys were in a hurry to get to the fair and spend their pennies; the wenches had on a bit of blue ribbon or a new bonnet, and were perpetually looking at the traps that overtook them to see if the men admired their finery. No one looked up from the road they were pursuing.
The photographer fixes the head of the sitter by a sort of stand at the back, which holds it steady in one position while the camera takes the picture. In life most people have their heads fixed in the claws of some miserable pettiness, which interests them so greatly that they tramp on steadily forward, staring ahead, and there’s not the slightest fear of their seeing anything outside the rut they are travelling.
Amaryllis did not care anything about the fair or the people either, knowing very well what sort they would be; but I suspect, if it had been possible to have got at the cause which brought her there, it would have been traced to the unconscious influence of sex, a perfectly innocent prompting, quite unrecognised by the person who feels it, and who would indignantly deny it if rallied on the subject, but which leads girls of her age to seize opportunities of observing the men, even if of an uninteresting order. Still they are men, those curious beings, that unknown race, and little bits of knowledge about them may, perhaps, be picked up by a diligent observer.
The men who drifted along the road towards the Fair were no “mashers, by Jove!” Some of them, though young, were clad antiquely enough in breeches and gaiters—not sportsmen’s breeches and gaiters, but old-fashioned “granfer” things; the most of them were stout and sturdy, in drab and brown suits of good cloth, cut awry. Hundreds of them on foot, in traps, gigs, fourwheels, and on horseback, went under Amaryllis: but, though they were all Christians, there was not one “worth a Jewess’ eye.”
She scorned them all.
This member of the unknown race was too thickly made, short set, and squat; this one too fair—quite white and moist-sugar looking; this one had a straight leg.
Another went by with a great thick and long black beard—what a horrid thing, now, when kissing!—and as he walked he wiped it with his sleeve, for he had just washed down the dust with a glass of ale. His neck, too, was red and thick; hideous, yet
