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 carthorse, 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.
XXII
Steadily they came over from the town, dunning Iden and distracting Amaryllis in her garret. She heard the heavy footsteps on the path to the door, the thump, thump with the fist (there was neither knocker nor bell, country fashion); more thumping, and then her mother’s excuses, so oft repeated, so wearisome, so profitless. “But where is he?” the creditor would persist. “He’s up at the Hayes,” or “He’s gone to Green Hills.” “Well, when will he be in?” “Don’t know.” “But I wants to know when this yer little account is going to be settled.” Then a long narration of his wrongs, threats of “doing summat,” i.e., summoning, grumble, grumble, and so slow, unwilling steps departing.
Very rude men came down from the villages demanding payment in their rough way—a raw, crude way, brutally insulting to a lady. Iden had long since exhausted his credit in the town; neither butcher, baker, draper, nor anyone else would let them have a shilling’s-worth until the shilling had been placed on the counter. He had been forced lately to deal with the little men of the villages—the little butcher who killed once a fortnight; the petty cottagers’ baker, and people of that kind. Inferior meat and inferior bread on credit first; coarse language and rudeness afterwards.
One day, the village baker, having got inside the door as Mrs. Iden incautiously opened it, stood there and argued with her, while Amaryllis in the garret put down her trembling pencil to listen.
“Mr. Iden will send it up,” said her mother.
“Oh, he’ll send it up. When will he send it up?”
“He’ll send it up.”
“He’ve a’ said that every time, but it beant come yet. You tell un I be come to vetch it.”
“Mr. Iden’s not in.”
“I’ll bide till he be in.”
“He’ll only tell you he’ll send it up.”
“I’ll bide and see un. You’ve served I shameful. It’s nothing but cheating—that’s what I calls it—to have things and never pay for um. It’s cheating.”
Amaryllis tore downstairs, flushed with passion.
“How dare you say such a thing? How dare you insult my mother? Leave the house this moment!”
And with both hands she literally pushed the man, unwilling, but not absolutely resisting, outside, grumbling as he moved that he never insulted nobody, only asked for his money.
A pleasing preparation this for steadiness of hand, calculated to encourage the play of imagination! She could do nothing for hours afterwards.
Just as often Iden was at home, and then it was worse, because it lasted longer. First they talked by the potato-patch almost under the window; then they talked on the path; then they came indoors, and then there were words and grumbling sounds that rose up the staircase. By-and-by they went out again and talked by the gate. At last the creditor departed, and Iden returned indoors to take a glass of ale and sit a moment till the freshness of the annoyance had left his mind. Mrs. Iden then had her turn at him: the old story—why didn’t he do something? Amaryllis knew every word as well as if she had been sitting in the room.
How Iden had patience with them Amaryllis could not think; how he could stand, and be argued with, and abused, and threatened, and yet not take the persecutor by the collar and quietly put him in the road, she could not understand.
The truth was he could not help himself; violence would have availed nothing. But to youth it
