Her father was making them very welcome, after his wont, and they were talking of the house the Idens of yore had built in a lonely spot, expressly in order that they might drink, drink, drink undisturbed by their unreasonable wives.

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CHAPTER XXVI.

THEY talked on and on, these three, Iden, Amadis Iden, and Alere Flamma, with Amaryllis listening, from the end of April till near the end of May; till "a month pa.s.sed away," and still they were talking. For there is nothing so good to the human heart as well agreed conversation, when you know that your companion will answer to your thought as the anvil meets the hammer, ringing sound to merry stroke; better than wine, better than sleep, like love itself--for love is agreement of thought--"G.o.d listens to those who pray to him; let us eat and drink, and think of nothing," says the Arabian proverb. So they ate and drank--very moderate the drinking--and thought of nothing, and talked, which should be added to complete felicity. Not, of course, all of them always together, sometimes all four, sometimes Alere, Amadis, and Amaryllis, sometimes only the last two.

The round summer-house was their Parliament House whenever the east winds sank and the flowers shone forth like sunshine; as the sun shines when the clouds withdraw, so when the harsh east winds cease the May flowers immediately bloom and glow.

It was a large round house, properly builded of brick, as a summer-house should be--put not thy faith in lath work--and therefore dry and warm; to sit in it was like sitting in a sh.e.l.l, warm and comfortable, with a sea of meadow-gra.s.s, smooth and coloured, stretching in front, islanded about with oak, and elm, and ash.

The finches came to the boughs that hung over the ivy-grown thatch, and sang in the sycamore opposite the door, and in the apple-trees, whose bloom hung down almost to the ground.

These apple-trees, which Iden had planted, flung sackfuls of bloom at his feet. They poured themselves out in abandoned, open-armed, spendthrift, wasteful--perfectly prodigal--quant.i.ties of rose-tinted petal; prodigal as a river which flows full to the brim, never questioning but what there will be plenty of water to follow.

Flowers, and trees, and gra.s.s, seemed to spring up wherever Iden set down his foot: fruit and flowers fell from the air down upon him. It was his genius to make things grow--like sunshine and shower; a sort of Pan, a half-G.o.d of leaves and boughs, and reeds and streams, a sort of Nature in human shape, moving about and sowing Plenty and Beauty.

One side of the summer-house was a thick holly-bush, Iden had set it there; he builded the summer-house and set the ivy; and the pippin at the back, whose bloom was white; the copper-birch near by; the great sycamore alone had been there before him, but he set a seat under it, and got woodbine to flower there; the drooping-ash he planted, and if Amaryllis stood under it when the tree was in full leaf you could not see her, it made so complete an arbour; the Spanish oak in the corner; the box hedge along the ha-ha parapet; the red currants against the red wall; the big peony yonder; the damsons and pear; the yellow honey-bush; all these, and this was but one square, one mosaic of the garden, half of it sward, too, and besides these there was the rhubarb-patch at one corner; fruit, flowers, plants, and herbs, lavender, parsley, which has a very pleasant green, growing in a thick bunch, roses, pale sage--read Boccaccio and the sad story of the leaf of sage--ask Nature if you wish to know how many things more there were.

A place to eat and drink, and think of nothing in, listening to the goldfinches, and watching them carry up the moss, and lichen, and slender fibres for their nest in the fork of the apple; listening to the swallows as they twittered past, or stayed on the sharp, high top of the pear tree; to the vehement starlings, whistling and screeching like Mrs.

Iden herself, on the chimneys; chaffinches "c.h.i.n.k, c.h.i.n.k," thrushes, distant blackbirds, who like oaks; "cuckoo, cuckoo," "crake, crake,"

buzzing and burring of bees, coo of turtle-doves, now and then a neigh, to remind you that there were horses, fulness and richness of musical sound; a world of gra.s.s and leaf, humming like a hive with voices.

When the east wind ceases, and the sun shines above, and the flowers beneath, "a summer's day in l.u.s.ty May," then is the time an Interlude in Heaven.

And all this, summer-house and all, had dropped out of the pocket of Iden's ragged old coat.

There was a magic power of healing in the influences of this place which Iden had created. Both Amadis and Alere Flamma had already changed for the better.

That morning when Amaryllis had found them, just arrived, the one with a portmanteau, and the other with a carpet-bag, they were both pale to the last degree of paleness.

Three years had gone by since Amadis had stayed at Coombe Oaks before, when Amaryllis was thirteen and he eighteen; fine romps they had then, a great girl, and a great boy, rowing on the water, walking over the hills, exploring the woods; Amadis shooting and fishing, and Amaryllis going with him, a kind of gamekeeper page in petticoats. They were of the same stock of Idens, yet no relations; he was of the older branch, Amaryllis of the younger.

She had grown into a woman; Amadis Iden into a man.

Sadly, indeed, he had altered. Looking at him, she could scarce believe he was the same; so pale, so thin, so drooping, and fireless--the spark of life sunk into the very ashes. He sat at the dinner-table that morning like a ghost. He was convalescent from low fever: that dread disease which has taken the place of ague in the country. At one time it was ague; in these times it is low fever.

At Coombe Oaks they had heard of his illness in a far-off way, but had received no distinct particulars, for the news came in a roundabout way by word of mouth, country-folk never write. The distance between the two houses was less than ten miles, and might as well have been five hundred for all the communication.

So that the ghastly paleness of his face came upon her as a spectre in daylight. You could see at a glance what was wrong--the vital energy had been sapped; as a tree fades without a branch broken, or bark scored, fades and withers from the lack of the mysterious force which brings forth fresh leaves, so he drooped in his chair. The body--the tree--was there, but the life was not in it.

Alere Flamma, aged forty-nine, or nearly, was pale from other causes, and it was a different kind of paleness; not bloodlessness, like Amadis, but something lacking in the blood, a vitiated state. Too much Fleet Street, in short; too much of the Oracle--Pantagruel's Oracle of the Bottle.

His hands shook as he held his knife and fork--oddly enough, the hands of great genius often do shake; now and then when he put his gla.s.s to his lips, his teeth snapped on it, and c.h.i.n.ked.

It seemed curious that such puffy, shaky hands could hold a pencil, and draw delicate lines without a flaw.

Many who never resort to the Oracle have hands that tremble nearly as much--the nervous const.i.tution--and yet execute artists' work of rare excellence.

Alere's const.i.tution, the Flamma const.i.tution, naturally nervous, had been shaken as with dynamite by the bottle, and the gla.s.s c.h.i.n.ked against his teeth. Every two or three years, when he felt himself toppling over like a tree half sawn through, Alere packed his carpet-bag, and ran down to Coombe Oaks. When the rats began to run up the wall as he sat at work in broad daylight, Alere put his slippers into his carpet-bag and looked out some collars.

In London he never wore a collar, only a bright red scarf round his neck; the company he kept would have shunned him--they would have looked him up and down disdainfully:--"Got a collar on--had no breakfast." They would have scornfully regarded him as no better than a City clerk, the cla.s.s above all others scorned by those who use tools.

"Got a collar on--had no breakfast." The City clerk, playing the Masher on thirty shillings a week, goes without food to appear the gentleman.

Alere, the artist, drank with the men who used hammer, and file, or set up type--a G.o.dless set, ye G.o.ds, how G.o.dless, these setters up of type at four o'clock in the morning; oysters and stout at 4 a.m.; special taverns they must have open for them--open before Aurora gleams in the east--Oh! Fleet Street, Fleet Street, what a place it is!

By no possible means could Alere work himself into a dress-coat.

Could he have followed the celebrated advice--"You put on a dress-coat and go into society"--he would soon have become a name, a fame, a taker of big fees, a maker of ten thousand yearly.

To a man who could draw like Alere, possessed, too, of the still rarer talent--the taste to see what to draw--there really is no limit in our days; for as for colour, you do not require a genius for colour in an age of dinginess--why, the point, nowadays, is to avoid colour, and in a whole Academy you shall scarcely find as much as would tint a stick of sealing-wax.

"You put on a black coat and go into society"--that is the secret of commissions, and commissions are fortune. Nothing so clever in the way of advice has been sent forth as that remark. The great Tichborne said something about folk that had money and no brains, and folk that had brains but no money; and they as has no brains ought to be so managed as to supply money to those who had. But even the greatness of the great Tichborne's observation falls into insignificance before Chesterfield in one sentence: "Put on a black coat and go into society."

What are the sayings of the seven wise men of Greece compared to _that_?

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CHAPTER XXVII.

BY no possible means could Alere Flamma work himself into a dress coat.

The clubs, the houses of the great, the mutual admiration dinners--those great inst.i.tutions of the day--were all closed to him because of the Dress Coat.

If he had really desired to enter, of course he would have squeezed into the evening monkey-skin somehow; but, in truth, Alere did not want to enter.

Inside he might have finished a portrait a month at a thousand guineas--twelve portraits per annum equals twelve thousand guineas a year; you see I am looking up the multiplication table, preparatory to going into the tallow trade.

What he actually did was to make designs for book-covers--magnificent book-covers that will one day fetch their weight in bank-notes--manipulating a good deal of it himself--"tooling"--for the libraries of n.o.ble connoisseurs. They were equal to anything ever done in Paris.

For a week's work--say half-an-hour a day--he got perhaps about ten pounds. With the ten pounds he was satisfied--ten pounds represents a good deal of brandy, or stout, or even wine, about as much as one man can manage at a bout; besides tobacco, the gallery at the theatre, and innumerable trifles of that kind. Ten pounds represents a good deal of street life.

Sometimes he drew--and engraved--ill.u.s.trations for books, being as clever with the engraver's tools as with the pencil; sometimes he cut out those odd, fantastic "initials," "ornaments," "finials," which are now so commonly seen in publications, catching the cla.s.sical grotesque of the Renaissance to perfection, and deceiving the experienced; sometimes he worked in the press-room in the House of Flamma, Fleet Street, pulling artists' proofs, or printing expensively ill.u.s.trated volumes--numbered, and the plates destroyed--actual manual work, in his shirt sleeves.