Amaryllis at the Fair Part 19

Watching him from the network window, Amaryllis felt her heart drooping, she knew not why, and went back to her drawing unstrung.

She worked very hard, and worked in vain. The sketches all came back to her. Some of them had a torn hole at the corner where they had been carelessly filed, others a thumb-mark, others had been folded wrongly, almost all smelt of tobacco. Neither ill.u.s.trated papers, periodicals: neither editors nor publishers would have anything to do with them. One or two took more care, and returned the drawings quite clean; one sent a note saying that they promised well.

Poor Amaryllis! They promised well, and she wanted half a sovereign _now_. If a prophet a.s.sured a man that the picture he could not now dispose of would be worth a thousand pounds in fifty years, what consolation would that be to him?

They were all a total failure. So many letters could not be received in that dull place without others in the house seeing what was going on.

Once now and then Amaryllis heard a step on the stairs--a shuffling, uncertain step--and her heart began to beat quicker, for she knew it was her mother. Somehow, although she loved her so dearly, she felt that there was not much sympathy between them. She did not understand her mother; the mother did not understand the daughter. Though she was working for her mother's sake, when she heard her mother's step she was ashamed of her work.

Mrs. Iden would come in and shuffle round the room, drawing one foot along the floor in an aggravating way she had, she was not lame, and look out of window, and presently stand behind Amaryllis, and say--

"Ah! you'll never do anything at that. Never do anything. I've seen too much of it. Better come down and warm yourself."

Now this annoyed Amaryllis so much because it seemed so inconsistent.

Mrs. Iden blew up her husband for having no enterprise, and then turned round and discouraged her daughter for being enterprising, and this, too, although she was constantly talking about the superiority of the art employments of the Flammas in London to the clodhopper work around her.

Amaryllis could never draw a line till her mother had gone downstairs again, and then the words kept repeating themselves in her ear--"Never do no good at that, never do no good at that."

If we were to stay to a.n.a.lyse deeply, perhaps we should find that Amaryllis was working for a mother of her own imagination, and not for the mother of fact.

Anyone who sits still, writing, drawing, or sewing, feels the cold very much more than those who are moving indoors or out. It was bitterly cold in the gaunt garret, the more so because the wind came unchecked through the wire network of the window in the next room. But for that her generous young heart cared nothing, nor for the still colder wind of failure.

She had no name--no repute, therefore had her drawings been equal to the finest ever produced they would not have been accepted. Until the accident of reputation arises genius is of no avail.

Except an author, or an artist, or a musician, who on earth would attempt to win success by merit? That alone proves how correct the world is in its estimation of them; they must indeed be poor confiding fools.

Succeed by merit!

Does the butcher, or the baker, or the ironmonger, or the tallow-chandler rely on personal merit, or purely personal ability for making a business? They rely on a little capital, credit, and much push.

The solicitor is first an articled clerk, and works next as a subordinate, his "footing" costs hundreds of pounds, and years of hard labour. The doctor has to "walk the hospitals," and, if he can, he buys a practice. They do not rely on merit.

The three fools--the author, the artist, and the musician--put certain lines on a sheet of paper and expect the world to at once admire their clever ideas.

In the end--but how far is it to the end!--it is true that genius is certain of recognition; the steed by then has grown used to starvation, waiting for the gra.s.s to grow. Look about you: Are the prosperous men of business men of merit? are they all clever? are they geniuses? They do not exactly seem to be so.

Nothing so hard as to succeed by merit; no path so full of disappointments; nothing so incredibly impossible.

I would infinitely rather be a tallow-chandler, with a good steady income and no thought, than an author; at the first opportunity I mean to go into the tallow business.

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 cart-horse, 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 circ.u.mstance 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER 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 fas.h.i.+on); 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 s.h.i.+lling's-worth until the s.h.i.+lling 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; coa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sion.