Amaryllis at the Fair

by Richard Jefferies

Here was Iden, with his great brain and wonderful power of observation, who ought to have been a famous traveller in unexplored Africa or Thibet, bringing home rarities and wonders; or, with his singular capacity for construction, a leading engineer, boring Mont Cenis Tunnels and making Panama Canals; or, with his Baconian intellect, forming a new school of philosophy—here was Iden, tending cows, and sitting, as the old story goes, undecidedly on a stile—sitting astride—eternally sitting, and unable to make up his mind to get off on one side or the other.

Here was Mrs. Iden, who had had a beautiful shape and expressive eyes, full in her youth of life and fire, who ought to have led the gayest life in London and Paris alternately, riding in a carriage, and flinging money about in the most extravagant, joyous, and good-natured manner—here was Mrs. Iden making butter in a dull farmhouse, and wearing shoes out at the toes.

So our lives go on, rumble-jumble, like a carrier's cart over ruts and stones, thumping anyhow instead of running smoothly on new-mown sward like a cricket-ball.

It all happens in the Turkish manner.

Another time there would come a letter from one of the Flammas in London. Could they spare a little bag of lavender?—they grew such lovely sweet lavender at Coombe Oaks. Then you might see Mr. and Mrs. Iden cooing and billing, soft as turtle-doves, and fraternising in the garden over the lavender hedge. Here was another side, you see, to the story.

Mrs. Iden was very fond of lavender, the scent, and the plant in every form. She kept little bags of it in all her drawers, and everything at Coombe Oaks upstairs in the bedrooms had a faint, delicious lavender perfume. There is nothing else that smells so sweet and clean and dry. You cannot imagine a damp sheet smelling of lavender.

Iden himself liked lavender, and used to rub it between his finger and thumb in the garden, as he did, too, with the black-currant leaves and walnut-leaves, if he fancied anything he had touched might have left an unpleasant odour adhering to his skin. He said it cleaned his hands as much as washing them.

Iden liked Mrs. Iden to like lavender because his mother had been so fond of it, and all the sixteen carved oak-presses which had been so familiar to him in boyhood were full of a thick atmosphere of the plant.

Long since, while yet the honeymoon bouquet remained in the wine of life, Iden had set a hedge of lavender to please his wife. It was so carefully chosen, and set, and watched, that it grew to be the finest lavender in all the country. People used to come for it from round about, quite certain of a favourable reception, for there was nothing so sure to bring peace at Coombe Oaks as a mention of lavender.

But the letter from the Flammas was the great event—from London, all that way, asking for some Coombe Oaks lavender! Then there was billing and cooing, and fraternising, and sunshine in the garden over the hedge of lavender. If only it could have lasted! Somehow, as people grow older there seems so much grating of the wheels.