This raging old Tory of ninety years would give a shilling for the earliest primrose the boys could find for him in the woods. Someone got him a peacock’s feather which had fallen from Beaconsfield’s favourites—a real Beaconsfield peacock-feather—which he had set in the centre of a splendid screen of feathers that cost him twenty guineas. The screen was upstairs in the great drawing-room near a bow window which overlooked the fair.
People, you see, took pains to get him feathers and anything he fancied, on account of the twenty thousand spade guineas in the iron box under the bed.
His daughters, elderly, uninteresting married folk, begged him not to keep a peacock’s feather in the house—it would certainly bring misfortune. The superstition was so firmly rooted in their minds that they actually argued with him—argued with Grandfather Iden!—pointing out to him the fearful risk he was running. He puffed and coughed, and grew red in the face—the great grey hat shook and tottered with anger; not for all the Powers of Darkness would he have given up that feather.
The chairs round the large table were arranged in accordance with the age of the occupants. There were twenty-one grandchildren, and a number of aunts, uncles, and so on; a vague crowd that does not concern us. The eldest sat at the head of the table, the next in age followed, and so all round the dishes. This arrangement placed Amaryllis rather low down—a long way from the top and fountain of honour—and highly displeased her. She despised and disliked the whole vague crowd of her relations, yet being there, she felt that she ought to have had a position above them all. Her father—Iden, junior—was old Iden’s only son and natural heir; therefore her father’s chair ought to have been at the top of the table, and hers ought to have been next to his.
Instead of which, as her father was not the eldest, his seat was some distance from the top, and hers again, was a long way from his.
All the other chairs were full, but her father’s chair was empty.
The vague crowd were so immensely eager to pay their despicable court to the Spade-Guinea Man, not one of them stopped away; the old, the young, the lame, the paralytic, all found means to creep in to Grandfather Iden’s annual dinner. His only son and natural heir was alone absent. How eagerly poor Amaryllis glanced from time to time at that empty chair, hoping against hope that her dear father would come in at the Psalms, or even at the sermon, and disappoint the venomous, avaricious hearts of the enemies around her.
For well she knew how delighted they were to see his chair empty, as a visible sign and token of the gulf between father and son, and well she knew how diligently each laboured to deepen the misunderstanding and set fuel to the flame of the quarrel. If the son were disinherited, consider the enormous profit to the rest of them!
Grandfather Iden made no secret of the fact that he had not signed a will. It was believed that several rough drafts had been sketched out for him, but, in his own words—and he was no teller of falsehoods—he had not decided on his will. If only they could persuade him to make his will they might feel safe of something; but suppose he went off pop, all in a moment, as these extraordinarily healthy old people are said to do, and the most of his estate in land! Consider what a contingency—almost all of it would go to his own son. Awful thing!
Amaryllis was aware how they all stared at her and quizzed her over and over; her hair, her face, her form, but most of all her dress. They were so poor at home she had not had a new dress this twelvemonth past; it was true her dress was decent and comfortable, and she really looked very nice in it to any man’s eye; but a girl does not want a comfortable dress, she wants something in the style of the day, and just sufficiently advanced to make the women’s eyes turn green with envy. It is not the men’s eyes; it is the women’s eyes.
Amaryllis sat up very quiet and unconcerned, trying with all her might to make them feel she was the Heiress, not only an only son’s only daughter, but the only son’s only offspring—doubly the Heiress of Grandfather Iden.
The old folk, curious in such matters, had prophesied so soon as she was born that there would be no more children at Coombe Oaks, and so it fell out. For it had been noticed in the course of generations, that in the direct line of Iden when the first child was a daughter there were none to follow. And further, that there never was but one Miss Iden at a time.
If the Direct Line had a daughter first, they never had any more children; consequently that daughter was the only Miss Iden.
If the Direct Line had a son, they never had a second son, though they might have daughters; but then, in order that there should still be only one Miss Iden, it always happened that the first died, or was married early, before the second came into existence.
Such was the tradition of the Iden family; they had a long pedigree, the Idens, reaching farther back than the genealogies of many a peer, and it had been observed that this was the rule of their descent.
Amaryllis was the only Miss Iden, and the heiress, through her father, of the Spade-Guinea Man. She tried to make them feel that she knew it and felt it; that she was the Iden of the Idens. Her proud face—it was a very proud face naturally—darkened a little, and grew still more disdainful in its
