Amaryllis at the Fair Part 13

There he stopped, muttering and mumbling, and wiped his forehead with his vast silk handkerchief. They were no longer incommoded by a crowd, but now and then folk came by hastening to the fair; lads with favours in their coats, and blue ribbons in their hats, girls in bright dresses, chiefly crude colours, who seemed out of accord with the heavy weight as it were of the great Abbey, the ponderous walls, the quiet gloom of the narrow s.p.a.ce, and the shadows that lurked behind the b.u.t.tresses.

The aged man muttered and mumbled about the porch and took Amaryllis under it, making her look up at the groining, and note the spring of the arch, which formed a sort of carved crown over them. It was a fine old porch, deep and high, in some things reminding you of the porches that are to be seen in Spain; stone made to give a pleasant shade like trees, so cut and worked as to be soft to the eye.

He pointed out to her the touches that rendered it so dear to those who value art in stone. He knew them, every one, the history and the dates, and the three stags' heads on a shield; there were broad folios in the smoky room at home, filled with every detail, Iden himself had subscribed forty pounds to the cost of ill.u.s.trating one of them. Every scholar who visited the Abbey church, called and begged to see the baker's old books.

Iden rubbed his old thumb in the grooves and went outside and hoisted himself, as it were, up from his crooked S position to look at the three stags' heads on the shield on the wall; dim stags' heads that to you, or at least to me, might have been fishes, or Jove's thunderbolts, or anything.

Amaryllis was left standing alone a moment in the porch, the deep shadow within behind her, the curve of the arch over, a fine setting for a portrait. She stood the more upright because of the fire and temper suppressed in her.

Just outside the human letter S--crooked S--clad in sad white-grey miller's garments, its old hat almost falling backwards off its old grey head, gazed up and pointed with its oaken cudgel at the coat of arms.

Seven hundred years--the weight of seven hundred years--hung over them both in that old Abbey.

Into that Past he was soon to disappear: she came out to the Future.

Thence he took her to an arched door, nail-studded, in the pa.s.sage wall, and giving her the key, told her to open it, and stood watching her in triumph, as if it had been the door to some immense treasury. She turned the lock, and he pushed her before him hastily, as if they must s.n.a.t.c.h so grand an opportunity.

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CHAPTER XV.

WITHIN there was a gravel path, and glimpses between trees of wide pleasure-grounds. Amaryllis hesitated, and looked back; Iden drew her forward, not noticing her evident disinclination to proceed. If he had, he would have put it down to awe, instead of which it was dislike.

For she guessed they were entering the lawns in front of the Hon.

Raleigh Pamment's mansion. He was the largest owner of town and country; the streets, the market-place, the open s.p.a.ces, in which the fair was being held, belonged to him; so did most of the farms and hamlets out of which the people had come. The Pamments were Tories; very important Tories indeed.

The Idens, in their little way, were Tories, too, right to the centre of the cerebellum; the Flammas were hot Republicans. Now Amaryllis, being a girl, naturally loved her father most, yet she was a wilful and rebellious revolutionist. Amaryllis, who would not be a Flamma, had imbibed all the Flamma hatred of authority from her mother.

To her the Pamments were the incarnation of everything detestable, of oppression, obstruction, and mediaeval darkness. She knew nothing of politics; at sixteen you do not need to know to feel vehemently, you feel vehemently without knowing. Still, she had heard a good deal about the Pamments.

She resented being brought there to admire the pleasure grounds and mansion, and to kow-tow to the grandeur of these mediaeval tyrants.

Old Iden led her on till they came to the smooth lawn before the front windows; three centuries of mowing had made it as smooth as the top of his own head, where the years had mown away merrily.

There was not so much as a shrub--not a daisy--between them and the great windows of the house. They stood in full view.

Amaryllis could scarcely endure herself, so keen was her vexation; her cheeks reddened. She was obliged to face the house, but her glance was downwards; she would not look at it.

Grandfather Iden was in the height of his glory. In all Woolhorton town there was not another man who could do as he was doing at that moment.

The Pamments were very exclusive people, exceptionally exclusive even for high cla.s.s Tories. Their gardens, and lawns, and grounds were jealously surrounded with walls higher than the old-fashioned houses of the street beneath them. No one dared to so much as peer through a crevice of the mighty gates. Their persons were encircled with the "divinity" that hedges the omnipotent landed proprietor. No one dared speak to a Pamment. They acknowledged no one in the town, not even the solicitors, not even the clergyman of the Abbey church; that was on account of ritual differences.

It was, indeed, whispered--high treason must always be whispered--that young Pamment, the son and heir, was by no means so exclusive, and had been known to be effusive towards ladies of low birth--and manners.

The great leaders of Greece--Alcibiades, Aristides, and so on--threw open their orchards to the people. Everyone walked in and did as he chose. These great leaders of England--the Pamments--shut up their lawns and pleasure-grounds, sealed them hermetically, you could hardly throw a stone over the walls if you tried.

But Grandfather Iden walked through those walls as if there were none; he alone of all Woolhorton town and country.

In that gossipy little town, of course, there were endless surmises as to the why and wherefore of that private key. Shrewd people said--"Ah!

you may depend they be getting summat out of him. Lent 'em some of his guineas, a' reckon. They be getting summat out of him. Hoss-leeches, they gentlefolks."

Grandfather Iden alone entered when he listed: he wandered about the lawns, he looked in at the conservatories, he took a bunch of grapes if it pleased him, or a bouquet of flowers; he actually stepped indoors occasionally and sat down on the carved old chairs, or pottered about the picture gallery. He had a private key to the nail-studded door in the wall by the Abbey church, and he looked upon that key very much as if it had been the key of Paradise.

When Grandfather Iden stood on the lawn at Pamment House he was the proudest and happiest man in what they sarcastically call "G.o.d's creation."

He was a peer at such moments; a grandee--the grandee who can wear his hat or sit down (which is it? it is most important to be accurate) in the presence of his deity, I mean his sovereign; he could actually step on the same sward pressed by the holy toes of the Pamments.

In justice to him it must be said that he was most careful not to obtrude himself into the sight of their sacred majesties. If they were at home he rarely went in, if he did he crept round unfrequented paths, the byeways of the gardens, and hid himself under the fig trees, as it were. But if by chance a Pamment did light upon him, it was noteworthy that he was literally dandled and fondled like an infant, begged to come in, and take wine, and so so, and so so.

In justice to old Iden let it be known that he was most careful not to obtrude himself; he hid himself under the fig trees.

Hardly credible is it? that a man of ninety years--a man of no common intelligence--a man of books, and coins, and antiquities, should, in this nineteenth century, bend his aged knees in such a worship.

Incredible as it may seem it is certainly true.

Such loyalty in others of old time, remember, seems very beautiful when we read of the devotion that was shown towards Charles Stuart.

With all his heart and soul he worshipped the very ground the Pamments trod on. He loved to see them in the Abbey church; when they were at home he never failed to attend service, rain, snow, thunder, ninety years notwithstanding, he always attended that he might bow his venerable head to them as they swept up the aisle, receiving the faintest, yet most gracious, smile of recognition in return.

He was quite happy in his pew if he could see them at their carved desks in the chancel; the organ sounded very beautiful then; the light came sweetly through the painted windows; a sanct.i.ty and heavenly presence was diffused around.

Rebellious Amaryllis knew all this, and hated it. Her Flamma foot tapped the sacred sward.

Grandfather Iden, after mopping his mouth with his silk handkerchief, began to point with his cudgel--a big hockey stick--at the various parts of the building. This was Elizabethan, that dated from James II., that went back to Henry VII., there were walls and foundations far more ancient still, out of sight.

Really, it was a very interesting place archaeologically, if only you could have got rid of the Pamments.

Amaryllis made no remark during this mumbling history. Iden thought she was listening intently. At the conclusion he was just moving her--for she was pa.s.sive now, like a piece of furniture--when he spied some one at a window.

Off came the great white hat, and down it swept till the top brushed the gra.s.s in the depth of his homage. It was a bow that would have delighted a lady, so evidently real in its intent, so full of the gentleman, so thoroughly courtier-like, and yet honest. There was nothing to smile at in that bow; there was not a young gentleman in Belgravia who could bow in that way, for, in truth, we have forgotten how to bow in this generation.

A writing and talking is always going on about the high place woman occupies in modern society, but the fact is, we have lost our reverence for woman as woman; it is after-dinner speech, nothing more, mere sham.

We don't venerate woman, and therefore we don't bow.

Grandfather Iden's bow would have won any woman's heart had it been addressed to her, for there was veneration and courtesy, breeding, and desire to please in it.

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