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 turnout.
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
