' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 277 



Mrs. Iden is watching him through the window, shaking 

 her fist at the thinker who was so still lest he should 

 frighten the mice, which at other times he killed without 

 mercy. After this Iden has a baked apple, and then has to 

 be nagged at by his wife, who can only now clear away 

 the dinner-things and get ready for tea. But she rushes 

 away, with tea unmade, to trample the daffodil violently 

 underfoot, and then, locking herself in her bedroom, to 

 cry over an old glove. 



In the summer evening, after haymaking, Iden would 

 often go out and paddle barefoot in the sweet wet grass, 

 and Mrs. Iden would nag again, because nobody else did 

 that. They have lavender in the garden, and when the 

 London Flammas ask for some Coombe Oaks lavender, 

 husband and wife are drawn together ' over the hedge of 

 lavender ' for a little while. 



One day Amaryllis comes down after dreaming — she 

 often dreamed it — that the thatch was on fire, and finds 

 Iden talking with Amadis and Alere, newly arrived. Iden 

 is making them welcome, and they are talking of the house 

 which ' the Idens of yore had built in a lonely spot, ex- 

 pressly in order that they might drink, drink, drink, 

 undisturbed by their unreasonable wives.' Then they 

 talk in the garden. It is all Iden's work, and it was said 

 that his father first quarrelled with him because he had 

 made it beautiful with trees and flowers. The apple- 

 bloom falls at his feet. Iden had planted the trees. ' It 

 was his genius to make things grow ... a sort of Pan, a 

 half-god of leaves and boughs, and reeds and streams, a 

 sort of Nature in human shape, moving about and sowing 

 Plenty and Beauty.' He could never hurry, but did the 

 work that lay about him — a man more clearly than most 

 others a part of the creative power of the world, at one 

 with earth and wind and sea. He should have had a life 

 as long as Jefferies desired — long life, long sleep — ' forty 

 hours of night and sleep would not be too much.' * 

 He lived as if this desire would be fulfilled, making 

 immortal oaken gates where the ordinary farmer would 



* The Story of My Heart. 



