Amaryllis at the Fair Part 27

"Play to me," said Amaryllis, and the Fleet-Street man put away his pipe, and took up his flute; he breathed soft and low--an excellent thing in a musician--delicious airs of Mozart chiefly.

The summer unfolded itself at their knees, the high b.u.t.tercups of the meadow came to the very door, the apple-bloom poured itself out before them; music all of it, music in colour, in light, in flowers, in song of happy birds. The soothing flute strung together the flow of their thoughts, they were very silent, Amaryllis and Amadis Iden--almost hand in hand--listening to his cunning lips.

He ceased, and they were still silent, listening to their own hearts.

The starlings flew by every few minutes to their nests in the thatch of the old house, and out again to the meadow.

Alere showed how impossible it was to draw a bird in flight by the starling's wings. His wings beat up and down so swiftly that the eye had not time to follow them completely; they formed a burr--an indistinct flutter; you are supposed to see the starling flying from you. The lifted tips were depressed so quickly that the impression of them in the raised position had not time to fade from the eye before a fresh impression arrived exhibiting them depressed to their furthest extent; you thus saw the wings in both positions, up and down, at once. A capital letter X may roughly represent his idea; the upper part answers to the wings lifted, the lower part to the wings down, and you see both together. Further, in actual fact, you see the wings in innumerable other positions between these two extremes; like the leaves of a book opened with your thumb quickly--as they do in legerdemain--almost as you see the spokes of a wheel run together as they revolve--a sort of burr.

To produce an image of a starling flying, you must draw all this.

The swift feathers are almost liquid; they leave a streak behind in the air like a meteor.

Thus the genial Goliath ale renewed the very blood in Alere's veins.

Amaryllis saw too that the deadly paleness of Amadis Iden's cheeks--absolute lack of blood--began to give way to the faintest colour, little more than the delicate pink of the apple-bloom, though he could take hardly a wine-gla.s.s of Goliath. If you threw a wine-gla.s.sful of the Goliath on the hearth it blazed up the chimney in the most lively manner. Fire in it--downright fire! That is the test.

Amadis could scarcely venture on a wine-gla.s.sful, yet a faint pink began to steal into his face, and his white lips grew moist. He drank deeply of another cup.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

"LET me try," said Amadis, taking the handle of the churn from Jearje.

The b.u.t.ter was obstinate, and would not come; it was eleven o'clock in the morning, and still there was the rattle of milk in the barrel, the sound of a liquid splas.h.i.+ng over and over. By the sounds Mrs. Iden knew that the fairies were in the churn. Jearje had been turning for hours.

Amadis stooped to the iron handle, polished like silver by Jearje's rough hands--a sort of skin sand-paper--and with an effort made the heavy blue-painted barrel revolve on its axis.

Mrs. Iden, her sleeves up, looked from the dairy window into the court where the churn stood.

"Ah, it's no use your trying," she said, "you'll only tire yourself."

Jearje, glad to stand upright a minute, said, "First-rate, measter."

Amaryllis cried, "Take care; you'd better not, you'll hurt yourself."

"Aw!--aw!" laughed Bill Nye, who was sitting on a form by the wall under the dairy window. He was waiting to see Iden about the mowing.

"Aw!--aw! Look 'ee thur, now!"

Heavily the blue barrel went round--thrice, four times, five times; the colour mounted into Amadis's cheeks, not so much from the labour as the unwonted stooping; his breath came harder; he had to desist, and go and sit down on the form beside Bill Nye.

"I wish you would not do it," said Amaryllis. "You know you're not strong yet." She spoke as if she had been his mother or his nurse, somewhat masterfully and reproachfully.

"I'm afraid I'm not," said poor Amadis. His chin fell and his face lengthened--his eyes grew larger--his temples pinched; disappointment wrung at his heart.

Convalescence is like walking in sacks; a short waddle and a fall.

"I can tell 'ee of a vine thing, measter," said Bill Nye, "as I knows on; you get a pint measure full of snails----"

"There, do hold your tongue, it's enough to make anyone ill to think of," said Amaryllis, angrily, and Bill was silent as to the cod-liver oil virtues of snails. Amaryllis went to fetch a gla.s.s of milk for Amadis.

A robin came into the court, and perching on the edge of a tub, fluttered his wings, cried "Check, check," "Anything for me this morning?" and so put his head on one side, languis.h.i.+ng and persuasive.

"My sister, as was in a decline, used to have snail-oil rubbed into her back," said Luce, the maid, who had been standing in the doorway with a duster.

"A pretty state of things," cried Mrs. Hen, in a pa.s.sion. "You standing there doing nothing, and it's b.u.t.ter-making morning, and everything behind, and you idling and talking,"--rus.h.i.+ng out from the dairy, and following Luce, who retreated indoors.

"Hur'll catch it," said Bill Nye.

"Missis is ----" said Jearje, supplying the blank with a wink, and meaning in a temper this morning. "Missis," like all nervous people, was always in a fury about nothing when her mind was intent on an object; in this case, the b.u.t.ter.

"Here's eleven o'clock," she cried, in the sitting-room, pointing to the clock, "and the beds ain't made."

"I've made the beds," said stolid Luce.

"And the fire isn't dusted up."

"I've dusted up the fire."

"And you're a lazy s.l.u.t"--pus.h.i.+ng Luce about the room.

"I bean't a lazy s.l.u.t."

"You haven't touched the mantelpiece; give me the duster!"--s.n.a.t.c.hing it from her.

"He be done."

"All you can do is to stand and talk with the men. There's no water taken up stairs."

"That there be."

"You know you ought to be doing something; the lazy lot of people in this house; I never saw anything like it; there's Mr. Iden's other boots to be cleaned, and there's the parlour to be swept, and the path to be weeded, and the things to be taken over for was.h.i.+ng, and the teapot ought to go in to Woolhorton, you know the lid's loose, and the children will be here in a minute for the sc.r.a.ps, and your master will be in to lunch, and there's not a soul to help me in the least," and so, flinging the duster at Luce, out she flew into the court, and thence into the kitchen, where she cut a great slice of bread and cheese, and drew a quart of ale, and took them out to Bill Nye.

"Aw, thank'ee m'm," said Bill, from the very depth of his chest, and set to work happily.

Next, she drew a mug for Jearje, who held it with one hand and sipped, while he turned with the other; his bread and cheese he ate in like manner, he could not wait till he had finished the churning.

"Verily, man is made up of impatience," said the angel Gabriel in the Koran, as you no doubt remember; Adam was made of clay (who was the sculptor's ghost that modelled him?) and when the breath of life was breathed into him, he rose on his arm and began to eat before his lower limbs were yet vivified. This is a fact. "Verily, man is made up of impatience." As the angel had never had a stomach or anything to sit upon, as the French say, he need not have made so unkind a remark; if he had had a stomach and a digestion like Bill Nye and Jearje, it is certain he would never have wanted to be an angel.