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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Under the Greenwood Tree, by Thomas Hardy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Under the Greenwood Tree
+
+Author: Thomas Hardy
+
+Release Date: June, 2001 [eBook #2662]
+[Most recently updated: November 17, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: David Price, Margaret Rose Price and Dagny
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE ***
+
+
+
+
+UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
+
+or
+
+THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE
+A RURAL PAINTING OF THE DUTCH SCHOOL
+
+by Thomas Hardy
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+ PREFACE
+
+ PART THE FIRST—WINTER
+ CHAPTER I. MELLSTOCK-LANE
+ CHAPTER II. THE TRANTER’S
+ CHAPTER III. THE ASSEMBLED QUIRE
+ CHAPTER IV. GOING THE ROUNDS
+ CHAPTER V. THE LISTENERS
+ CHAPTER VI. CHRISTMAS MORNING
+ CHAPTER VII. THE TRANTER’S PARTY
+ CHAPTER VIII. THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY
+ CHAPTER IX. DICK CALLS AT THE SCHOOL
+
+ PART THE SECOND—SPRING
+ CHAPTER I. PASSING BY THE SCHOOL
+ CHAPTER II. A MEETING OF THE QUIRE
+ CHAPTER III. A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION
+ CHAPTER IV. THE INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR
+ CHAPTER V. RETURNING HOME WARD
+ CHAPTER VI. YALBURY WOOD AND THE KEEPER’S HOUSE
+ CHAPTER VII. DICK MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL
+ CHAPTER VIII. DICK MEETS HIS FATHER
+
+ PART THE THIRD—SUMMER
+ CHAPTER I. DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH
+ CHAPTER II. FURTHER ALONG THE ROAD
+ CHAPTER III. A CONFESSION
+ CHAPTER IV. AN ARRANGEMENT
+
+ PART THE FOURTH—AUTUMN
+ CHAPTER I. GOING NUTTING
+ CHAPTER II. HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS
+ CHAPTER III. FANCY IN THE RAIN
+ CHAPTER IV. THE SPELL
+ CHAPTER V. AFTER GAINING HER POINT
+ CHAPTER VI. INTO TEMPTATION
+ CHAPTER VII. SECOND THOUGHTS
+
+ PART THE FIFTH: CONCLUSION
+ CHAPTER I. ‘THE KNOT THERE’S NO UNTYING’
+ CHAPTER II. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This story of the Mellstock Quire and its old established west-gallery
+musicians, with some supplementary descriptions of similar officials in
+_Two on a Tower, A Few Crusted Characters_, and other places, is
+intended to be a fairly true picture, at first hand, of the personages,
+ways, and customs which were common among such orchestral bodies in the
+villages of fifty or sixty years ago.
+
+One is inclined to regret the displacement of these ecclesiastical
+bandsmen by an isolated organist (often at first a barrel-organist) or
+harmonium player; and despite certain advantages in point of control
+and accomplishment which were, no doubt, secured by installing the
+single artist, the change has tended to stultify the professed aims of
+the clergy, its direct result being to curtail and extinguish the
+interest of parishioners in church doings. Under the old plan, from
+half a dozen to ten full-grown players, in addition to the numerous
+more or less grown-up singers, were officially occupied with the Sunday
+routine, and concerned in trying their best to make it an artistic
+outcome of the combined musical taste of the congregation. With a
+musical executive limited, as it mostly is limited now, to the parson’s
+wife or daughter and the school-children, or to the school-teacher and
+the children, an important union of interests has disappeared.
+
+The zest of these bygone instrumentalists must have been keen and
+staying to take them, as it did, on foot every Sunday after a toilsome
+week, through all weathers, to the church, which often lay at a
+distance from their homes. They usually received so little in payment
+for their performances that their efforts were really a labour of love.
+In the parish I had in my mind when writing the present tale, the
+gratuities received yearly by the musicians at Christmas were somewhat
+as follows: From the manor-house ten shillings and a supper; from the
+vicar ten shillings; from the farmers five shillings each; from each
+cottage-household one shilling; amounting altogether to not more than
+ten shillings a head annually—just enough, as an old executant told me,
+to pay for their fiddle-strings, repairs, rosin, and music-paper (which
+they mostly ruled themselves). Their music in those days was all in
+their own manuscript, copied in the evenings after work, and their
+music-books were home-bound.
+
+It was customary to inscribe a few jigs, reels, horn-pipes, and ballads
+in the same book, by beginning it at the other end, the insertions
+being continued from front and back till sacred and secular met
+together in the middle, often with bizarre effect, the words of some of
+the songs exhibiting that ancient and broad humour which our
+grandfathers, and possibly grandmothers, took delight in, and is in
+these days unquotable.
+
+The aforesaid fiddle-strings, rosin, and music-paper were supplied by a
+pedlar, who travelled exclusively in such wares from parish to parish,
+coming to each village about every six months. Tales are told of the
+consternation once caused among the church fiddlers when, on the
+occasion of their producing a new Christmas anthem, he did not come to
+time, owing to being snowed up on the downs, and the straits they were
+in through having to make shift with whipcord and twine for strings. He
+was generally a musician himself, and sometimes a composer in a small
+way, bringing his own new tunes, and tempting each choir to adopt them
+for a consideration. Some of these compositions which now lie before
+me, with their repetitions of lines, half-lines, and half-words, their
+fugues and their intermediate symphonies, are good singing still,
+though they would hardly be admitted into such hymn-books as are
+popular in the churches of fashionable society at the present time.
+
+_August 1896._
+
+
+_Under the Greenwood Tree_ was first brought out in the summer of 1872
+in two volumes. The name of the story was originally intended to be,
+more appropriately, _The Mellstock Quire_, and this has been appended
+as a sub-title since the early editions, it having been thought
+unadvisable to displace for it the title by which the book first became
+known.
+
+In rereading the narrative after a long interval there occurs the
+inevitable reflection that the realities out of which it was spun were
+material for another kind of study of this little group of church
+musicians than is found in the chapters here penned so lightly, even so
+farcically and flippantly at times. But circumstances would have
+rendered any aim at a deeper, more essential, more transcendent
+handling unadvisable at the date of writing; and the exhibition of the
+Mellstock Quire in the following pages must remain the only extant one,
+except for the few glimpses of that perished band which I have given in
+verse elsewhere.
+
+T. H.
+
+
+_April_ 1912.
+
+
+
+
+PART THE FIRST—WINTER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+MELLSTOCK-LANE
+
+
+To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as
+well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and
+moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it
+battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech
+rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies
+the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its
+individuality.
+
+On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was
+passing up a lane towards Mellstock Cross in the darkness of a
+plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence. All
+the evidences of his nature were those afforded by the spirit of his
+footsteps, which succeeded each other lightly and quickly, and by the
+liveliness of his voice as he sang in a rural cadence:
+
+    “With the rose and the lily
+    And the daffodowndilly,
+The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go.”
+
+
+The lonely lane he was following connected one of the hamlets of
+Mellstock parish with Upper Mellstock and Lewgate, and to his eyes,
+casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches with
+their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the
+dark-creviced elm, all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the
+sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their
+flickering seemed like the flapping of wings. Within the woody pass, at
+a level anything lower than the horizon, all was dark as the grave. The
+copse-wood forming the sides of the bower interlaced its branches so
+densely, even at this season of the year, that the draught from the
+north-east flew along the channel with scarcely an interruption from
+lateral breezes.
+
+After passing the plantation and reaching Mellstock Cross the white
+surface of the lane revealed itself between the dark hedgerows like a
+ribbon jagged at the edges; the irregularity being caused by temporary
+accumulations of leaves extending from the ditch on either side.
+
+The song (many times interrupted by flitting thoughts which took the
+place of several bars, and resumed at a point it would have reached had
+its continuity been unbroken) now received a more palpable check, in
+the shape of “Ho-i-i-i-i-i!” from the crossing lane to Lower Mellstock,
+on the right of the singer who had just emerged from the trees.
+
+“Ho-i-i-i-i-i!” he answered, stopping and looking round, though with no
+idea of seeing anything more than imagination pictured.
+
+“Is that thee, young Dick Dewy?” came from the darkness.
+
+“Ay, sure, Michael Mail.”
+
+“Then why not stop for fellow-craters—going to thy own father’s house
+too, as we be, and knowen us so well?”
+
+Dick Dewy faced about and continued his tune in an under-whistle,
+implying that the business of his mouth could not be checked at a
+moment’s notice by the placid emotion of friendship.
+
+Having come more into the open he could now be seen rising against the
+sky, his profile appearing on the light background like the portrait of
+a gentleman in black cardboard. It assumed the form of a low-crowned
+hat, an ordinary-shaped nose, an ordinary chin, an ordinary neck, and
+ordinary shoulders. What he consisted of further down was invisible
+from lack of sky low enough to picture him on.
+
+Shuffling, halting, irregular footsteps of various kinds were now heard
+coming up the hill, and presently there emerged from the shade
+severally five men of different ages and gaits, all of them working
+villagers of the parish of Mellstock. They, too, had lost their
+rotundity with the daylight, and advanced against the sky in flat
+outlines, which suggested some processional design on Greek or Etruscan
+pottery. They represented the chief portion of Mellstock parish choir.
+
+The first was a bowed and bent man, who carried a fiddle under his arm,
+and walked as if engaged in studying some subject connected with the
+surface of the road. He was Michael Mail, the man who had hallooed to
+Dick.
+
+The next was Mr. Robert Penny, boot- and shoemaker; a little man, who,
+though rather round-shouldered, walked as if that fact had not come to
+his own knowledge, moving on with his back very hollow and his face
+fixed on the north-east quarter of the heavens before him, so that his
+lower waist-coat-buttons came first, and then the remainder of his
+figure. His features were invisible; yet when he occasionally looked
+round, two faint moons of light gleamed for an instant from the
+precincts of his eyes, denoting that he wore spectacles of a circular
+form.
+
+The third was Elias Spinks, who walked perpendicularly and
+dramatically. The fourth outline was Joseph Bowman’s, who had now no
+distinctive appearance beyond that of a human being. Finally came a
+weak lath-like form, trotting and stumbling along with one shoulder
+forward and his head inclined to the left, his arms dangling
+nervelessly in the wind as if they were empty sleeves. This was Thomas
+Leaf.
+
+“Where be the boys?” said Dick to this somewhat indifferently-matched
+assembly.
+
+The eldest of the group, Michael Mail, cleared his throat from a great
+depth.
+
+“We told them to keep back at home for a time, thinken they wouldn’t be
+wanted yet awhile; and we could choose the tuens, and so on.”
+
+“Father and grandfather William have expected ye a little sooner. I
+have just been for a run round by Ewelease Stile and Hollow Hill to
+warm my feet.”
+
+“To be sure father did! To be sure ’a did expect us—to taste the little
+barrel beyond compare that he’s going to tap.”
+
+“’Od rabbit it all! Never heard a word of it!” said Mr. Penny, gleams
+of delight appearing upon his spectacle-glasses, Dick meanwhile singing
+parenthetically—
+
+“The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go.”
+
+
+“Neighbours, there’s time enough to drink a sight of drink now afore
+bedtime?” said Mail.
+
+“True, true—time enough to get as drunk as lords!” replied Bowman
+cheerfully.
+
+This opinion being taken as convincing they all advanced between the
+varying hedges and the trees dotting them here and there, kicking their
+toes occasionally among the crumpled leaves. Soon appeared glimmering
+indications of the few cottages forming the small hamlet of Upper
+Mellstock for which they were bound, whilst the faint sound of
+church-bells ringing a Christmas peal could be heard floating over upon
+the breeze from the direction of Longpuddle and Weatherbury parishes on
+the other side of the hills. A little wicket admitted them to the
+garden, and they proceeded up the path to Dick’s house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+THE TRANTER’S
+
+
+It was a long low cottage with a hipped roof of thatch, having dormer
+windows breaking up into the eaves, a chimney standing in the middle of
+the ridge and another at each end. The window-shutters were not yet
+closed, and the fire- and candle-light within radiated forth upon the
+thick bushes of box and laurestinus growing in clumps outside, and upon
+the bare boughs of several codlin-trees hanging about in various
+distorted shapes, the result of early training as espaliers combined
+with careless climbing into their boughs in later years. The walls of
+the dwelling were for the most part covered with creepers, though these
+were rather beaten back from the doorway—a feature which was worn and
+scratched by much passing in and out, giving it by day the appearance
+of an old keyhole. Light streamed through the cracks and joints of
+outbuildings a little way from the cottage, a sight which nourished a
+fancy that the purpose of the erection must be rather to veil bright
+attractions than to shelter unsightly necessaries. The noise of a
+beetle and wedges and the splintering of wood was periodically heard
+from this direction; and at some little distance further a steady
+regular munching and the occasional scurr of a rope betokened a stable,
+and horses feeding within it.
+
+The choir stamped severally on the door-stone to shake from their boots
+any fragment of earth or leaf adhering thereto, then entered the house
+and looked around to survey the condition of things. Through the open
+doorway of a small inner room on the right hand, of a character between
+pantry and cellar, was Dick Dewy’s father Reuben, by vocation a
+“tranter,” or irregular carrier. He was a stout florid man about forty
+years of age, who surveyed people up and down when first making their
+acquaintance, and generally smiled at the horizon or other distant
+object during conversations with friends, walking about with a steady
+sway, and turning out his toes very considerably. Being now occupied in
+bending over a hogshead, that stood in the pantry ready horsed for the
+process of broaching, he did not take the trouble to turn or raise his
+eyes at the entry of his visitors, well knowing by their footsteps that
+they were the expected old comrades.
+
+The main room, on the left, was decked with bunches of holly and other
+evergreens, and from the middle of the beam bisecting the ceiling hung
+the mistletoe, of a size out of all proportion to the room, and
+extending so low that it became necessary for a full-grown person to
+walk round it in passing, or run the risk of entangling his hair. This
+apartment contained Mrs. Dewy the tranter’s wife, and the four
+remaining children, Susan, Jim, Bessy, and Charley, graduating
+uniformly though at wide stages from the age of sixteen to that of four
+years—the eldest of the series being separated from Dick the firstborn
+by a nearly equal interval.
+
+Some circumstance had apparently caused much grief to Charley just
+previous to the entry of the choir, and he had absently taken down a
+small looking-glass, holding it before his face to learn how the human
+countenance appeared when engaged in crying, which survey led him to
+pause at the various points in each wail that were more than ordinarily
+striking, for a thorough appreciation of the general effect. Bessy was
+leaning against a chair, and glancing under the plaits about the waist
+of the plaid frock she wore, to notice the original unfaded pattern of
+the material as there preserved, her face bearing an expression of
+regret that the brightness had passed away from the visible portions.
+Mrs. Dewy sat in a brown settle by the side of the glowing wood fire—so
+glowing that with a heedful compression of the lips she would now and
+then rise and put her hand upon the hams and flitches of bacon lining
+the chimney, to reassure herself that they were not being broiled
+instead of smoked—a misfortune that had been known to happen now and
+then at Christmas-time.
+
+“Hullo, my sonnies, here you be, then!” said Reuben Dewy at length,
+standing up and blowing forth a vehement gust of breath. “How the blood
+do puff up in anybody’s head, to be sure, a-stooping like that! I was
+just going out to gate to hark for ye.” He then carefully began to wind
+a strip of brown paper round a brass tap he held in his hand. “This in
+the cask here is a drop o’ the right sort” (tapping the cask); “’tis a
+real drop o’ cordial from the best picked apples—Sansoms, Stubbards,
+Five-corners, and such-like—you d’mind the sort, Michael?” (Michael
+nodded.) “And there’s a sprinkling of they that grow down by the
+orchard-rails—streaked ones—rail apples we d’call ’em, as ’tis by the
+rails they grow, and not knowing the right name. The water-cider from
+’em is as good as most people’s best cider is.”
+
+“Ay, and of the same make too,” said Bowman. “‘It rained when we wrung
+it out, and the water got into it,’ folk will say. But ’tis on’y an
+excuse. Watered cider is too common among us.”
+
+“Yes, yes; too common it is!” said Spinks with an inward sigh, whilst
+his eyes seemed to be looking at the case in an abstract form rather
+than at the scene before him. “Such poor liquor do make a man’s throat
+feel very melancholy—and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent.”
+
+“Come in, come in, and draw up to the fire; never mind your shoes,”
+said Mrs. Dewy, seeing that all except Dick had paused to wipe them
+upon the door-mat. “I am glad that you’ve stepped up-along at last;
+and, Susan, you run down to Grammer Kaytes’s and see if you can borrow
+some larger candles than these fourteens. Tommy Leaf, don’t ye be
+afeard! Come and sit here in the settle.”
+
+This was addressed to the young man before mentioned, consisting
+chiefly of a human skeleton and a smock-frock, who was very awkward in
+his movements, apparently on account of having grown so very fast that
+before he had had time to get used to his height he was higher.
+
+“Hee—hee—ay!” replied Leaf, letting his mouth continue to smile for
+some time after his mind had done smiling, so that his teeth remained
+in view as the most conspicuous members of his body.
+
+“Here, Mr. Penny,” resumed Mrs. Dewy, “you sit in this chair. And how’s
+your daughter, Mrs. Brownjohn?”
+
+“Well, I suppose I must say pretty fair.” He adjusted his spectacles a
+quarter of an inch to the right. “But she’ll be worse before she’s
+better, ’a b’lieve.”
+
+“Indeed—poor soul! And how many will that make in all, four or five?”
+
+“Five; they’ve buried three. Yes, five; and she not much more than a
+maid yet. She do know the multiplication table onmistakable well.
+However, ’twas to be, and none can gainsay it.”
+
+Mrs. Dewy resigned Mr. Penny. “Wonder where your grandfather James is?”
+she inquired of one of the children. “He said he’d drop in to-night.”
+
+“Out in fuel-house with grandfather William,” said Jimmy.
+
+“Now let’s see what we can do,” was heard spoken about this time by the
+tranter in a private voice to the barrel, beside which he had again
+established himself, and was stooping to cut away the cork.
+
+“Reuben, don’t make such a mess o’ tapping that barrel as is mostly
+made in this house,” Mrs. Dewy cried from the fireplace. “I’d tap a
+hundred without wasting more than you do in one. Such a squizzling and
+squirting job as ’tis in your hands! There, he always was such a clumsy
+man indoors.”
+
+“Ay, ay; I know you’d tap a hundred beautiful, Ann—I know you would;
+two hundred, perhaps. But I can’t promise. This is a’ old cask, and the
+wood’s rotted away about the tap-hole. The husbird of a feller Sam
+Lawson—that ever I should call’n such, now he’s dead and gone, poor
+heart!—took me in completely upon the feat of buying this cask. ‘Reub,’
+says he—’a always used to call me plain Reub, poor old heart!—‘Reub,’
+he said, says he, ‘that there cask, Reub, is as good as new; yes, good
+as new. ’Tis a wine-hogshead; the best port-wine in the commonwealth
+have been in that there cask; and you shall have en for ten shillens,
+Reub,’—’a said, says he—‘he’s worth twenty, ay, five-and-twenty, if
+he’s worth one; and an iron hoop or two put round en among the wood
+ones will make en worth thirty shillens of any man’s money, if—’”
+
+“I think I should have used the eyes that Providence gave me to use
+afore I paid any ten shillens for a jimcrack wine-barrel; a saint is
+sinner enough not to be cheated. But ’tis like all your family was, so
+easy to be deceived.”
+
+“That’s as true as gospel of this member,” said Reuben.
+
+Mrs. Dewy began a smile at the answer, then altering her lips and
+refolding them so that it was not a smile, commenced smoothing little
+Bessy’s hair; the tranter having meanwhile suddenly become oblivious to
+conversation, occupying himself in a deliberate cutting and arrangement
+of some more brown paper for the broaching operation.
+
+“Ah, who can believe sellers!” said old Michael Mail in a
+carefully-cautious voice, by way of tiding-over this critical point of
+affairs.
+
+“No one at all,” said Joseph Bowman, in the tone of a man fully
+agreeing with everybody.
+
+“Ay,” said Mail, in the tone of a man who did not agree with everybody
+as a rule, though he did now; “I knowed a’ auctioneering feller once—a
+very friendly feller ’a was too. And so one hot day as I was walking
+down the front street o’ Casterbridge, jist below the King’s Arms, I
+passed a’ open winder and see him inside, stuck upon his perch,
+a-selling off. I jist nodded to en in a friendly way as I passed, and
+went my way, and thought no more about it. Well, next day, as I was
+oilen my boots by fuel-house door, if a letter didn’t come wi’ a bill
+charging me with a feather-bed, bolster, and pillers, that I had bid
+for at Mr. Taylor’s sale. The slim-faced martel had knocked ’em down to
+me because I nodded to en in my friendly way; and I had to pay for ’em
+too. Now, I hold that that was coming it very close, Reuben?”
+
+“’Twas close, there’s no denying,” said the general voice.
+
+“Too close, ’twas,” said Reuben, in the rear of the rest. “And as to
+Sam Lawson—poor heart! now he’s dead and gone too!—I’ll warrant, that
+if so be I’ve spent one hour in making hoops for that barrel, I’ve
+spent fifty, first and last. That’s one of my hoops”—touching it with
+his elbow—“that’s one of mine, and that, and that, and all these.”
+
+“Ah, Sam was a man,” said Mr. Penny, contemplatively.
+
+“Sam was!” said Bowman.
+
+“Especially for a drap o’ drink,” said the tranter.
+
+“Good, but not religious-good,” suggested Mr. Penny.
+
+The tranter nodded. Having at last made the tap and hole quite ready,
+“Now then, Suze, bring a mug,” he said. “Here’s luck to us, my
+sonnies!”
+
+The tap went in, and the cider immediately squirted out in a horizontal
+shower over Reuben’s hands, knees, and leggings, and into the eyes and
+neck of Charley, who, having temporarily put off his grief under
+pressure of more interesting proceedings, was squatting down and
+blinking near his father.
+
+“There ’tis again!” said Mrs. Dewy.
+
+“Devil take the hole, the cask, and Sam Lawson too, that good cider
+should be wasted like this!” exclaimed the tranter. “Your thumb! Lend
+me your thumb, Michael! Ram it in here, Michael! I must get a bigger
+tap, my sonnies.”
+
+“Idd it cold inthide te hole?” inquired Charley of Michael, as he
+continued in a stooping posture with his thumb in the cork-hole.
+
+“What wonderful odds and ends that chiel has in his head to be sure!”
+Mrs. Dewy admiringly exclaimed from the distance. “I lay a wager that
+he thinks more about how ’tis inside that barrel than in all the other
+parts of the world put together.”
+
+All persons present put on a speaking countenance of admiration for the
+cleverness alluded to, in the midst of which Reuben returned. The
+operation was then satisfactorily performed; when Michael arose and
+stretched his head to the extremest fraction of height that his body
+would allow of, to re-straighten his back and shoulders—thrusting out
+his arms and twisting his features to a mass of wrinkles to emphasize
+the relief aquired. A quart or two of the beverage was then brought to
+table, at which all the new arrivals reseated themselves with
+wide-spread knees, their eyes meditatively seeking out any speck or
+knot in the board upon which the gaze might precipitate itself.
+
+“Whatever is father a-biding out in fuel-house so long for?” said the
+tranter. “Never such a man as father for two things—cleaving up old
+dead apple-tree wood and playing the bass-viol. ’A’d pass his life
+between the two, that ’a would.” He stepped to the door and opened it.
+
+“Father!”
+
+“Ay!” rang thinly from round the corner.
+
+“Here’s the barrel tapped, and we all a-waiting!”
+
+A series of dull thuds, that had been heard without for some time past,
+now ceased; and after the light of a lantern had passed the window and
+made wheeling rays upon the ceiling inside the eldest of the Dewy
+family appeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+THE ASSEMBLED QUIRE
+
+
+William Dewy—otherwise grandfather William—was now about seventy; yet
+an ardent vitality still preserved a warm and roughened bloom upon his
+face, which reminded gardeners of the sunny side of a ripe
+ribstone-pippin; though a narrow strip of forehead, that was protected
+from the weather by lying above the line of his hat-brim, seemed to
+belong to some town man, so gentlemanly was its whiteness. His was a
+humorous and kindly nature, not unmixed with a frequent melancholy; and
+he had a firm religious faith. But to his neighbours he had no
+character in particular. If they saw him pass by their windows when
+they had been bottling off old mead, or when they had just been called
+long-headed men who might do anything in the world if they chose, they
+thought concerning him, “Ah, there’s that good-hearted man—open as a
+child!” If they saw him just after losing a shilling or half-a-crown,
+or accidentally letting fall a piece of crockery, they thought,
+“There’s that poor weak-minded man Dewy again! Ah, he’s never done much
+in the world either!” If he passed when fortune neither smiled nor
+frowned on them, they merely thought him old William Dewy.
+
+“Ah, so’s—here you be!—Ah, Michael and Joseph and John—and you too,
+Leaf! a merry Christmas all! We shall have a rare log-wood fire
+directly, Reub, to reckon by the toughness of the job I had in cleaving
+’em.” As he spoke he threw down an armful of logs which fell in the
+chimney-corner with a rumble, and looked at them with something of the
+admiring enmity he would have bestowed on living people who had been
+very obstinate in holding their own. “Come in, grandfather James.”
+
+Old James (grandfather on the maternal side) had simply called as a
+visitor. He lived in a cottage by himself, and many people considered
+him a miser; some, rather slovenly in his habits. He now came forward
+from behind grandfather William, and his stooping figure formed a
+well-illuminated picture as he passed towards the fire-place. Being by
+trade a mason, he wore a long linen apron reaching almost to his toes,
+corduroy breeches and gaiters, which, together with his boots,
+graduated in tints of whitish-brown by constant friction against lime
+and stone. He also wore a very stiff fustian coat, having folds at the
+elbows and shoulders as unvarying in their arrangement as those in a
+pair of bellows: the ridges and the projecting parts of the coat
+collectively exhibiting a shade different from that of the hollows,
+which were lined with small ditch-like accumulations of stone and
+mortar-dust. The extremely large side-pockets, sheltered beneath wide
+flaps, bulged out convexly whether empty or full; and as he was often
+engaged to work at buildings far away—his breakfasts and dinners being
+eaten in a strange chimney-corner, by a garden wall, on a heap of
+stones, or walking along the road—he carried in these pockets a small
+tin canister of butter, a small canister of sugar, a small canister of
+tea, a paper of salt, and a paper of pepper; the bread, cheese, and
+meat, forming the substance of his meals, hanging up behind him in his
+basket among the hammers and chisels. If a passer-by looked hard at him
+when he was drawing forth any of these, “My buttery,” he said, with a
+pinched smile.
+
+“Better try over number seventy-eight before we start, I suppose?” said
+William, pointing to a heap of old Christmas-carol books on a side
+table.
+
+“Wi’ all my heart,” said the choir generally.
+
+“Number seventy-eight was always a teaser—always. I can mind him ever
+since I was growing up a hard boy-chap.”
+
+“But he’s a good tune, and worth a mint o’ practice,” said Michael.
+
+“He is; though I’ve been mad enough wi’ that tune at times to seize en
+and tear en all to linnit. Ay, he’s a splendid carrel—there’s no
+denying that.”
+
+“The first line is well enough,” said Mr. Spinks; “but when you come to
+‘O, thou man,’ you make a mess o’t.”
+
+“We’ll have another go into en, and see what we can make of the martel.
+Half-an-hour’s hammering at en will conquer the toughness of en; I’ll
+warn it.”
+
+“’Od rabbit it all!” said Mr. Penny, interrupting with a flash of his
+spectacles, and at the same time clawing at something in the depths of
+a large side-pocket. “If so be I hadn’t been as scatter-brained and
+thirtingill as a chiel, I should have called at the schoolhouse wi’ a
+boot as I cam up along. Whatever is coming to me I really can’t
+estimate at all!”
+
+“The brain has its weaknesses,” murmured Mr. Spinks, waving his head
+ominously. Mr. Spinks was considered to be a scholar, having once kept
+a night-school, and always spoke up to that level.
+
+“Well, I must call with en the first thing to-morrow. And I’ll empt my
+pocket o’ this last too, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Dewy.” He drew forth a
+last, and placed it on a table at his elbow. The eyes of three or four
+followed it.
+
+“Well,” said the shoemaker, seeming to perceive that the interest the
+object had excited was greater than he had anticipated, and warranted
+the last’s being taken up again and exhibited; “now, whose foot do ye
+suppose this last was made for? It was made for Geoffrey Day’s father,
+over at Yalbury Wood. Ah, many’s the pair o’ boots he’ve had off the
+last! Well, when ’a died, I used the last for Geoffrey, and have ever
+since, though a little doctoring was wanted to make it do. Yes, a very
+queer natured last it is now, ’a b’lieve,” he continued, turning it
+over caressingly. “Now, you notice that there” (pointing to a lump of
+leather bradded to the toe), “that’s a very bad bunion that he’ve had
+ever since ’a was a boy. Now, this remarkable large piece” (pointing to
+a patch nailed to the side), “shows a’ accident he received by the
+tread of a horse, that squashed his foot a’most to a pomace. The
+horseshoe cam full-butt on this point, you see. And so I’ve just been
+over to Geoffrey’s, to know if he wanted his bunion altered or made
+bigger in the new pair I’m making.”
+
+During the latter part of this speech, Mr. Penny’s left hand wandered
+towards the cider-cup, as if the hand had no connection with the person
+speaking; and bringing his sentence to an abrupt close, all but the
+extreme margin of the bootmaker’s face was eclipsed by the circular
+brim of the vessel.
+
+“However, I was going to say,” continued Penny, putting down the cup,
+“I ought to have called at the school”—here he went groping again in
+the depths of his pocket—“to leave this without fail, though I suppose
+the first thing to-morrow will do.”
+
+He now drew forth and placed upon the table a boot—small, light, and
+prettily shaped—upon the heel of which he had been operating.
+
+“The new schoolmistress’s!”
+
+“Ay, no less, Miss Fancy Day; as neat a little figure of fun as ever I
+see, and just husband-high.”
+
+“Never Geoffrey’s daughter Fancy?” said Bowman, as all glances present
+converged like wheel-spokes upon the boot in the centre of them.
+
+“Yes, sure,” resumed Mr. Penny, regarding the boot as if that alone
+were his auditor; “’tis she that’s come here schoolmistress. You knowed
+his daughter was in training?”
+
+“Strange, isn’t it, for her to be here Christmas night, Master Penny?”
+
+“Yes; but here she is, ’a b’lieve.”
+
+“I know how she comes here—so I do!” chirruped one of the children.
+
+“Why?” Dick inquired, with subtle interest.
+
+“Pa’son Maybold was afraid he couldn’t manage us all to-morrow at the
+dinner, and he talked o’ getting her jist to come over and help him
+hand about the plates, and see we didn’t make pigs of ourselves; and
+that’s what she’s come for!”
+
+“And that’s the boot, then,” continued its mender imaginatively, “that
+she’ll walk to church in to-morrow morning. I don’t care to mend boots
+I don’t make; but there’s no knowing what it may lead to, and her
+father always comes to me.”
+
+There, between the cider-mug and the candle, stood this interesting
+receptacle of the little unknown’s foot; and a very pretty boot it was.
+A character, in fact—the flexible bend at the instep, the rounded
+localities of the small nestling toes, scratches from careless scampers
+now forgotten—all, as repeated in the tell-tale leather, evidencing a
+nature and a bias. Dick surveyed it with a delicate feeling that he had
+no right to do so without having first asked the owner of the foot’s
+permission.
+
+“Now, neighbours, though no common eye can see it,” the shoemaker went
+on, “a man in the trade can see the likeness between this boot and that
+last, although that is so deformed as hardly to recall one of God’s
+creatures, and this is one of as pretty a pair as you’d get for
+ten-and-sixpence in Casterbridge. To you, nothing; but ’tis father’s
+voot and daughter’s voot to me, as plain as houses.”
+
+“I don’t doubt there’s a likeness, Master Penny—a mild likeness—a
+fantastical likeness,” said Spinks. “But _I_ han’t got imagination
+enough to see it, perhaps.”
+
+Mr. Penny adjusted his spectacles.
+
+“Now, I’ll tell ye what happened to me once on this very point. You
+used to know Johnson the dairyman, William?”
+
+“Ay, sure; I did.”
+
+“Well, ’twasn’t opposite his house, but a little lower down—by his
+paddock, in front o’ Parkmaze Pool. I was a-bearing across towards
+Bloom’s End, and lo and behold, there was a man just brought out o’ the
+Pool, dead; he had un’rayed for a dip, but not being able to pitch it
+just there had gone in flop over his head. Men looked at en; women
+looked at en; children looked at en; nobody knowed en. He was covered
+wi’ a sheet; but I catched sight of his voot, just showing out as they
+carried en along. ‘I don’t care what name that man went by,’ I said, in
+my way, ‘but he’s John Woodward’s brother; I can swear to the family
+voot.’ At that very moment up comes John Woodward, weeping and teaving,
+‘I’ve lost my brother! I’ve lost my brother!’”
+
+“Only to think of that!” said Mrs. Dewy.
+
+“’Tis well enough to know this foot and that foot,” said Mr. Spinks.
+“’Tis long-headed, in fact, as far as feet do go. I know little, ’tis
+true—I say no more; but show _me_ a man’s foot, and I’ll tell you that
+man’s heart.”
+
+“You must be a cleverer feller, then, than mankind in jineral,” said
+the tranter.
+
+“Well, that’s nothing for me to speak of,” returned Mr. Spinks. “A man
+lives and learns. Maybe I’ve read a leaf or two in my time. I don’t
+wish to say anything large, mind you; but nevertheless, maybe I have.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Michael soothingly, “and all the parish knows, that
+ye’ve read sommat of everything a’most, and have been a great filler of
+young folks’ brains. Learning’s a worthy thing, and ye’ve got it,
+Master Spinks.”
+
+“I make no boast, though I may have read and thought a little; and I
+know—it may be from much perusing, but I make no boast—that by the time
+a man’s head is finished, ’tis almost time for him to creep
+underground. I am over forty-five.”
+
+Mr. Spinks emitted a look to signify that if his head was not finished,
+nobody’s head ever could be.
+
+“Talk of knowing people by their feet!” said Reuben. “Rot me, my
+sonnies, then, if I can tell what a man is from all his members put
+together, oftentimes.”
+
+“But still, look is a good deal,” observed grandfather William
+absently, moving and balancing his head till the tip of grandfather
+James’s nose was exactly in a right line with William’s eye and the
+mouth of a miniature cavern he was discerning in the fire. “By the
+way,” he continued in a fresher voice, and looking up, “that young
+crater, the schoolmis’ess, must be sung to to-night wi’ the rest? If
+her ear is as fine as her face, we shall have enough to do to be
+up-sides with her.”
+
+“What about her face?” said young Dewy.
+
+“Well, as to that,” Mr. Spinks replied, “’tis a face you can hardly
+gainsay. A very good pink face, as far as that do go. Still, only a
+face, when all is said and done.”
+
+“Come, come, Elias Spinks, say she’s a pretty maid, and have done wi’
+her,” said the tranter, again preparing to visit the cider-barrel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+GOING THE ROUNDS
+
+
+Shortly after ten o’clock the singing-boys arrived at the tranter’s
+house, which was invariably the place of meeting, and preparations were
+made for the start. The older men and musicians wore thick coats, with
+stiff perpendicular collars, and coloured handkerchiefs wound round and
+round the neck till the end came to hand, over all which they just
+showed their ears and noses, like people looking over a wall. The
+remainder, stalwart ruddy men and boys, were dressed mainly in
+snow-white smock-frocks, embroidered upon the shoulders and breasts, in
+ornamental forms of hearts, diamonds, and zigzags. The cider-mug was
+emptied for the ninth time, the music-books were arranged, and the
+pieces finally decided upon. The boys in the meantime put the old
+horn-lanterns in order, cut candles into short lengths to fit the
+lanterns; and, a thin fleece of snow having fallen since the early part
+of the evening, those who had no leggings went to the stable and wound
+wisps of hay round their ankles to keep the insidious flakes from the
+interior of their boots.
+
+Mellstock was a parish of considerable acreage, the hamlets composing
+it lying at a much greater distance from each other than is ordinarily
+the case. Hence several hours were consumed in playing and singing
+within hearing of every family, even if but a single air were bestowed
+on each. There was Lower Mellstock, the main village; half a mile from
+this were the church and vicarage, and a few other houses, the spot
+being rather lonely now, though in past centuries it had been the most
+thickly-populated quarter of the parish. A mile north-east lay the
+hamlet of Upper Mellstock, where the tranter lived; and at other points
+knots of cottages, besides solitary farmsteads and dairies.
+
+Old William Dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass; his grandson
+Dick the treble violin; and Reuben and Michael Mail the tenor and
+second violins respectively. The singers consisted of four men and
+seven boys, upon whom devolved the task of carrying and attending to
+the lanterns, and holding the books open for the players. Directly
+music was the theme, old William ever and instinctively came to the
+front.
+
+“Now mind, neighbours,” he said, as they all went out one by one at the
+door, he himself holding it ajar and regarding them with a critical
+face as they passed, like a shepherd counting out his sheep. “You two
+counter-boys, keep your ears open to Michael’s fingering, and don’t ye
+go straying into the treble part along o’ Dick and his set, as ye did
+last year; and mind this especially when we be in ‘Arise, and hail.’
+Billy Chimlen, don’t you sing quite so raving mad as you fain would;
+and, all o’ ye, whatever ye do, keep from making a great scuffle on the
+ground when we go in at people’s gates; but go quietly, so as to strike
+up all of a sudden, like spirits.”
+
+“Farmer Ledlow’s first?”
+
+“Farmer Ledlow’s first; the rest as usual.”
+
+“And, Voss,” said the tranter terminatively, “you keep house here till
+about half-past two; then heat the metheglin and cider in the warmer
+you’ll find turned up upon the copper; and bring it wi’ the victuals to
+church-hatch, as th’st know.”
+
+Just before the clock struck twelve they lighted the lanterns and
+started. The moon, in her third quarter, had risen since the snowstorm;
+but the dense accumulation of snow-cloud weakened her power to a faint
+twilight, which was rather pervasive of the landscape than traceable to
+the sky. The breeze had gone down, and the rustle of their feet and
+tones of their speech echoed with an alert rebound from every post,
+boundary-stone, and ancient wall they passed, even where the distance
+of the echo’s origin was less than a few yards. Beyond their own slight
+noises nothing was to be heard, save the occasional bark of foxes in
+the direction of Yalbury Wood, or the brush of a rabbit among the grass
+now and then, as it scampered out of their way.
+
+Most of the outlying homesteads and hamlets had been visited by about
+two o’clock; they then passed across the outskirts of a wooded park
+toward the main village, nobody being at home at the Manor. Pursuing no
+recognized track, great care was necessary in walking lest their faces
+should come in contact with the low-hanging boughs of the old
+lime-trees, which in many spots formed dense over-growths of interlaced
+branches.
+
+“Times have changed from the times they used to be,” said Mail,
+regarding nobody can tell what interesting old panoramas with an inward
+eye, and letting his outward glance rest on the ground, because it was
+as convenient a position as any. “People don’t care much about us now!
+I’ve been thinking we must be almost the last left in the county of the
+old string players? Barrel-organs, and the things next door to ’em that
+you blow wi’ your foot, have come in terribly of late years.”
+
+“Ay!” said Bowman, shaking his head; and old William, on seeing him,
+did the same thing.
+
+“More’s the pity,” replied another. “Time was—long and merry ago
+now!—when not one of the varmits was to be heard of; but it served some
+of the quires right. They should have stuck to strings as we did, and
+kept out clarinets, and done away with serpents. If you’d thrive in
+musical religion, stick to strings, says I.”
+
+“Strings be safe soul-lifters, as far as that do go,” said Mr. Spinks.
+
+“Yet there’s worse things than serpents,” said Mr. Penny. “Old things
+pass away, ’tis true; but a serpent was a good old note: a deep rich
+note was the serpent.”
+
+“Clar’nets, however, be bad at all times,” said Michael Mail. “One
+Christmas—years agone now, years—I went the rounds wi’ the Weatherbury
+quire. ’Twas a hard frosty night, and the keys of all the clar’nets
+froze—ah, they did freeze!—so that ’twas like drawing a cork every time
+a key was opened; and the players o’ ’em had to go into a
+hedger-and-ditcher’s chimley-corner, and thaw their clar’nets every now
+and then. An icicle o’ spet hung down from the end of every man’s
+clar’net a span long; and as to fingers—well, there, if ye’ll believe
+me, we had no fingers at all, to our knowing.”
+
+“I can well bring back to my mind,” said Mr. Penny, “what I said to
+poor Joseph Ryme (who took the treble part in Chalk-Newton Church for
+two-and-forty year) when they thought of having clar’nets there.
+‘Joseph,’ I said, says I, ‘depend upon’t, if so be you have them
+tooting clar’nets you’ll spoil the whole set-out. Clar’nets were not
+made for the service of the Lard; you can see it by looking at ’em,’ I
+said. And what came o’t? Why, souls, the parson set up a barrel-organ
+on his own account within two years o’ the time I spoke, and the old
+quire went to nothing.”
+
+“As far as look is concerned,” said the tranter, “I don’t for my part
+see that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar’net. ’Tis further
+off. There’s always a rakish, scampish twist about a fiddle’s looks
+that seems to say the Wicked One had a hand in making o’en; while
+angels be supposed to play clar’nets in heaven, or som’at like ’em, if
+ye may believe picters.”
+
+“Robert Penny, you was in the right,” broke in the eldest Dewy. “They
+should ha’ stuck to strings. Your brass-man is a rafting dog—well and
+good; your reed-man is a dab at stirring ye—well and good; your
+drum-man is a rare bowel-shaker—good again. But I don’t care who hears
+me say it, nothing will spak to your heart wi’ the sweetness o’ the man
+of strings!”
+
+“Strings for ever!” said little Jimmy.
+
+“Strings alone would have held their ground against all the new comers
+in creation.” (“True, true!” said Bowman.) “But clarinets was death.”
+(“Death they was!” said Mr. Penny.) “And harmonions,” William continued
+in a louder voice, and getting excited by these signs of approval,
+“harmonions and barrel-organs” (“Ah!” and groans from Spinks) “be
+miserable—what shall I call ’em?—miserable—”
+
+“Sinners,” suggested Jimmy, who made large strides like the men, and
+did not lag behind like the other little boys.
+
+“Miserable dumbledores!”
+
+“Right, William, and so they be—miserable dumbledores!” said the choir
+with unanimity.
+
+By this time they were crossing to a gate in the direction of the
+school, which, standing on a slight eminence at the junction of three
+ways, now rose in unvarying and dark flatness against the sky. The
+instruments were retuned, and all the band entered the school
+enclosure, enjoined by old William to keep upon the grass.
+
+“Number seventy-eight,” he softly gave out as they formed round in a
+semicircle, the boys opening the lanterns to get a clearer light, and
+directing their rays on the books.
+
+Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time-worn hymn,
+embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father
+to son through several generations down to the present characters, who
+sang them out right earnestly:
+
+“Remember Adam’s fall,
+    O thou Man:
+Remember Adam’s fall
+    From Heaven to Hell.
+Remember Adam’s fall;
+How he hath condemn’d all
+In Hell perpetual
+    There for to dwell.
+
+Remember God’s goodnesse,
+    O thou Man:
+Remember God’s goodnesse,
+    His promise made.
+Remember God’s goodnesse;
+He sent His Son sinlesse
+Our ails for to redress;
+    Be not afraid!
+
+In Bethlehem He was born,
+    O thou Man:
+In Bethlehem He was born,
+    For mankind’s sake.
+In Bethlehem He was born,
+Christmas-day i’ the morn:
+Our Saviour thought no scorn
+    Our faults to take.
+
+Give thanks to God alway,
+    O thou Man:
+Give thanks to God alway
+    With heart-most joy.
+Give thanks to God alway
+On this our joyful day:
+Let all men sing and say,
+    Holy, Holy!”
+
+
+Having concluded the last note, they listened for a minute or two, but
+found that no sound issued from the schoolhouse.
+
+“Four breaths, and then, ‘O, what unbounded goodness!’ number
+fifty-nine,” said William.
+
+This was duly gone through, and no notice whatever seemed to be taken
+of the performance.
+
+“Good guide us, surely ’tisn’t a’ empty house, as befell us in the year
+thirty-nine and forty-three!” said old Dewy.
+
+“Perhaps she’s jist come from some musical city, and sneers at our
+doings?” the tranter whispered.
+
+“’Od rabbit her!” said Mr. Penny, with an annihilating look at a corner
+of the school chimney, “I don’t quite stomach her, if this is it. Your
+plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a’
+b’lieve, souls; so say I.”
+
+“Four breaths, and then the last,” said the leader authoritatively.
+“‘Rejoice, ye Tenants of the Earth,’ number sixty-four.”
+
+At the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud
+voice, as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the
+previous forty years—“A merry Christmas to ye!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+THE LISTENERS
+
+
+When the expectant stillness consequent upon the exclamation had nearly
+died out of them all, an increasing light made itself visible in one of
+the windows of the upper floor. It came so close to the blind that the
+exact position of the flame could be perceived from the outside.
+Remaining steady for an instant, the blind went upward from before it,
+revealing to thirty concentrated eyes a young girl, framed as a picture
+by the window architrave, and unconsciously illuminating her
+countenance to a vivid brightness by a candle she held in her left
+hand, close to her face, her right hand being extended to the side of
+the window. She was wrapped in a white robe of some kind, whilst down
+her shoulders fell a twining profusion of marvellously rich hair, in a
+wild disorder which proclaimed it to be only during the invisible hours
+of the night that such a condition was discoverable. Her bright eyes
+were looking into the grey world outside with an uncertain expression,
+oscillating between courage and shyness, which, as she recognized the
+semicircular group of dark forms gathered before her, transformed
+itself into pleasant resolution.
+
+Opening the window, she said lightly and warmly—“Thank you, singers,
+thank you!”
+
+Together went the window quickly and quietly, and the blind started
+downward on its return to its place. Her fair forehead and eyes
+vanished; her little mouth; her neck and shoulders; all of her. Then
+the spot of candlelight shone nebulously as before; then it moved away.
+
+“How pretty!” exclaimed Dick Dewy.
+
+“If she’d been rale wexwork she couldn’t ha’ been comelier,” said
+Michael Mail.
+
+“As near a thing to a spiritual vision as ever _I_ wish to see!” said
+tranter Dewy.
+
+“O, sich I never, never see!” said Leaf fervently.
+
+All the rest, after clearing their throats and adjusting their hats,
+agreed that such a sight was worth singing for.
+
+“Now to Farmer Shiner’s, and then replenish our insides, father?” said
+the tranter.
+
+“Wi’ all my heart,” said old William, shouldering his bass-viol.
+
+Farmer Shiner’s was a queer lump of a house, standing at the corner of
+a lane that ran into the principal thoroughfare. The upper windows were
+much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad
+bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the
+aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and
+wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the roof
+upon the sky.
+
+The front of this building was reached, and the preliminaries arranged
+as usual.
+
+“Four breaths, and number thirty-two, ‘Behold the Morning Star,’” said
+old William.
+
+They had reached the end of the second verse, and the fiddlers were
+doing the up bow-stroke previously to pouring forth the opening chord
+of the third verse, when, without a light appearing or any signal being
+given, a roaring voice exclaimed—
+
+“Shut up, woll ’ee! Don’t make your blaring row here! A feller wi’ a
+headache enough to split his skull likes a quiet night!”
+
+Slam went the window.
+
+“Hullo, that’s a’ ugly blow for we!” said the tranter, in a keenly
+appreciative voice, and turning to his companions.
+
+“Finish the carrel, all who be friends of harmony!” commanded old
+William; and they continued to the end.
+
+“Four breaths, and number nineteen!” said William firmly. “Give it him
+well; the quire can’t be insulted in this manner!”
+
+A light now flashed into existence, the window opened, and the farmer
+stood revealed as one in a terrific passion.
+
+“Drown en!—drown en!” the tranter cried, fiddling frantically. “Play
+fortissimy, and drown his spaking!”
+
+“Fortissimy!” said Michael Mail, and the music and singing waxed so
+loud that it was impossible to know what Mr. Shiner had said, was
+saying, or was about to say; but wildly flinging his arms and body
+about in the forms of capital Xs and Ys, he appeared to utter enough
+invectives to consign the whole parish to perdition.
+
+“Very onseemly—very!” said old William, as they retired. “Never such a
+dreadful scene in the whole round o’ my carrel practice—never! And he a
+churchwarden!”
+
+“Only a drap o’ drink got into his head,” said the tranter. “Man’s well
+enough when he’s in his religious frame. He’s in his worldly frame now.
+Must ask en to our bit of a party to-morrow night, I suppose, and so
+put en in humour again. We bear no mortal man ill-will.”
+
+They now crossed Mellstock Bridge, and went along an embowered path
+beside the Froom towards the church and vicarage, meeting Voss with the
+hot mead and bread-and-cheese as they were approaching the churchyard.
+This determined them to eat and drink before proceeding further, and
+they entered the church and ascended to the gallery. The lanterns were
+opened, and the whole body sat round against the walls on benches and
+whatever else was available, and made a hearty meal. In the pauses of
+conversation there could be heard through the floor overhead a little
+world of undertones and creaks from the halting clockwork, which never
+spread further than the tower they were born in, and raised in the more
+meditative minds a fancy that here lay the direct pathway of Time.
+
+Having done eating and drinking, they again tuned the instruments, and
+once more the party emerged into the night air.
+
+“Where’s Dick?” said old Dewy.
+
+Every man looked round upon every other man, as if Dick might have been
+transmuted into one or the other; and then they said they didn’t know.
+
+“Well now, that’s what I call very nasty of Master Dicky, that I do,”
+said Michael Mail.
+
+“He’ve clinked off home-along, depend upon’t,” another suggested,
+though not quite believing that he had.
+
+“Dick!” exclaimed the tranter, and his voice rolled sonorously forth
+among the yews.
+
+He suspended his muscles rigid as stone whilst listening for an answer,
+and finding he listened in vain, turned to the assemblage.
+
+“The treble man too! Now if he’d been a tenor or counter chap, we might
+ha’ contrived the rest o’t without en, you see. But for a quire to lose
+the treble, why, my sonnies, you may so well lose your . . . ” The
+tranter paused, unable to mention an image vast enough for the
+occasion.
+
+“Your head at once,” suggested Mr. Penny.
+
+The tranter moved a pace, as if it were puerile of people to complete
+sentences when there were more pressing things to be done.
+
+“Was ever heard such a thing as a young man leaving his work half done
+and turning tail like this!”
+
+“Never,” replied Bowman, in a tone signifying that he was the last man
+in the world to wish to withhold the formal finish required of him.
+
+“I hope no fatal tragedy has overtook the lad!” said his grandfather.
+
+“O no,” replied tranter Dewy placidly. “Wonder where he’s put that
+there fiddle of his. Why that fiddle cost thirty shillings, and good
+words besides. Somewhere in the damp, without doubt; that instrument
+will be unglued and spoilt in ten minutes—ten! ay, two.”
+
+“What in the name o’ righteousness can have happened?” said old
+William, more uneasily. “Perhaps he’s drownded!”
+
+Leaving their lanterns and instruments in the belfry they retraced
+their steps along the waterside track. “A strapping lad like Dick
+d’know better than let anything happen onawares,” Reuben remarked.
+“There’s sure to be some poor little scram reason for’t staring us in
+the face all the while.” He lowered his voice to a mysterious tone:
+“Neighbours, have ye noticed any sign of a scornful woman in his head,
+or suchlike?”
+
+“Not a glimmer of such a body. He’s as clear as water yet.”
+
+“And Dicky said he should never marry,” cried Jimmy, “but live at home
+always along wi’ mother and we!”
+
+“Ay, ay, my sonny; every lad has said that in his time.”
+
+They had now again reached the precincts of Mr. Shiner’s, but hearing
+nobody in that direction, one or two went across to the schoolhouse. A
+light was still burning in the bedroom, and though the blind was down,
+the window had been slightly opened, as if to admit the distant notes
+of the carollers to the ears of the occupant of the room.
+
+Opposite the window, leaning motionless against a beech tree, was the
+lost man, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed upon
+the illuminated lattice.
+
+“Why, Dick, is that thee? What b’st doing here?”
+
+Dick’s body instantly flew into a more rational attitude, and his head
+was seen to turn east and west in the gloom, as if endeavouring to
+discern some proper answer to that question; and at last he said in
+rather feeble accents—“Nothing, father.”
+
+“Th’st take long enough time about it then, upon my body,” said the
+tranter, as they all turned anew towards the vicarage.
+
+“I thought you hadn’t done having snap in the gallery,” said Dick.
+
+“Why, we’ve been traypsing and rambling about, looking everywhere, and
+thinking you’d done fifty deathly things, and here have you been at
+nothing at all!”
+
+“The stupidness lies in that point of it being nothing at all,”
+murmured Mr. Spinks.
+
+The vicarage front was their next field of operation, and Mr. Maybold,
+the lately-arrived incumbent, duly received his share of the night’s
+harmonies. It was hoped that by reason of his profession he would have
+been led to open the window, and an extra carol in quick time was added
+to draw him forth. But Mr. Maybold made no stir.
+
+“A bad sign!” said old William, shaking his head.
+
+However, at that same instant a musical voice was heard exclaiming from
+inner depths of bedclothes—“Thanks, villagers!”
+
+“What did he say?” asked Bowman, who was rather dull of hearing.
+Bowman’s voice, being therefore loud, had been heard by the vicar
+within.
+
+“I said, ‘Thanks, villagers!’” cried the vicar again.
+
+“Oh, we didn’t hear ’ee the first time!” cried Bowman.
+
+“Now don’t for heaven’s sake spoil the young man’s temper by answering
+like that!” said the tranter.
+
+“You won’t do that, my friends!” the vicar shouted.
+
+“Well to be sure, what ears!” said Mr. Penny in a whisper. “Beats any
+horse or dog in the parish, and depend upon’t, that’s a sign he’s a
+proper clever chap.”
+
+“We shall see that in time,” said the tranter.
+
+Old William, in his gratitude for such thanks from a comparatively new
+inhabitant, was anxious to play all the tunes over again; but renounced
+his desire on being reminded by Reuben that it would be best to leave
+well alone.
+
+“Now putting two and two together,” the tranter continued, as they went
+their way over the hill, and across to the last remaining houses; “that
+is, in the form of that young female vision we zeed just now, and this
+young tenor-voiced parson, my belief is she’ll wind en round her
+finger, and twist the pore young feller about like the figure of 8—that
+she will so, my sonnies.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+CHRISTMAS MORNING
+
+
+The choir at last reached their beds, and slept like the rest of the
+parish. Dick’s slumbers, through the three or four hours remaining for
+rest, were disturbed and slight; an exhaustive variation upon the
+incidents that had passed that night in connection with the
+school-window going on in his brain every moment of the time.
+
+In the morning, do what he would—go upstairs, downstairs, out of doors,
+speak of the wind and weather, or what not—he could not refrain from an
+unceasing renewal, in imagination, of that interesting enactment.
+Tilted on the edge of one foot he stood beside the fireplace, watching
+his mother grilling rashers; but there was nothing in grilling, he
+thought, unless the Vision grilled. The limp rasher hung down between
+the bars of the gridiron like a cat in a child’s arms; but there was
+nothing in similes, unless She uttered them. He looked at the daylight
+shadows of a yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on
+the whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows.
+“Perhaps the new young wom—sch—Miss Fancy Day will sing in church with
+us this morning,” he said.
+
+The tranter looked a long time before he replied, “I fancy she will;
+and yet I fancy she won’t.”
+
+Dick implied that such a remark was rather to be tolerated than
+admired; though deliberateness in speech was known to have, as a rule,
+more to do with the machinery of the tranter’s throat than with the
+matter enunciated.
+
+They made preparations for going to church as usual; Dick with extreme
+alacrity, though he would not definitely consider why he was so
+religious. His wonderful nicety in brushing and cleaning his best light
+boots had features which elevated it to the rank of an art. Every
+particle and speck of last week’s mud was scraped and brushed from toe
+and heel; new blacking from the packet was carefully mixed and made use
+of, regardless of expense. A coat was laid on and polished; then
+another coat for increased blackness; and lastly a third, to give the
+perfect and mirror-like jet which the hoped-for rencounter demanded.
+
+It being Christmas-day, the tranter prepared himself with Sunday
+particularity. Loud sousing and snorting noises were heard to proceed
+from a tub in the back quarters of the dwelling, proclaiming that he
+was there performing his great Sunday wash, lasting half-an-hour, to
+which his washings on working-day mornings were mere flashes in the
+pan. Vanishing into the outhouse with a large brown towel, and the
+above-named bubblings and snortings being carried on for about twenty
+minutes, the tranter would appear round the edge of the door, smelling
+like a summer fog, and looking as if he had just narrowly escaped a
+watery grave with the loss of much of his clothes, having since been
+weeping bitterly till his eyes were red; a crystal drop of water
+hanging ornamentally at the bottom of each ear, one at the tip of his
+nose, and others in the form of spangles about his hair.
+
+After a great deal of crunching upon the sanded stone floor by the feet
+of father, son, and grandson as they moved to and fro in these
+preparations, the bass-viol and fiddles were taken from their nook, and
+the strings examined and screwed a little above concert-pitch, that
+they might keep their tone when the service began, to obviate the
+awkward contingency of having to retune them at the back of the gallery
+during a cough, sneeze, or amen—an inconvenience which had been known
+to arise in damp wintry weather.
+
+The three left the door and paced down Mellstock-lane and across the
+ewe-lease, bearing under their arms the instruments in faded
+green-baize bags, and old brown music-books in their hands; Dick
+continually finding himself in advance of the other two, and the
+tranter moving on with toes turned outwards to an enormous angle.
+
+At the foot of an incline the church became visible through the north
+gate, or ‘church hatch,’ as it was called here. Seven agile figures in
+a clump were observable beyond, which proved to be the choristers
+waiting; sitting on an altar-tomb to pass the time, and letting their
+heels dangle against it. The musicians being now in sight, the youthful
+party scampered off and rattled up the old wooden stairs of the gallery
+like a regiment of cavalry; the other boys of the parish waiting
+outside and observing birds, cats, and other creatures till the vicar
+entered, when they suddenly subsided into sober church-goers, and
+passed down the aisle with echoing heels.
+
+The gallery of Mellstock Church had a status and sentiment of its own.
+A stranger there was regarded with a feeling altogether differing from
+that of the congregation below towards him. Banished from the nave as
+an intruder whom no originality could make interesting, he was received
+above as a curiosity that no unfitness could render dull. The gallery,
+too, looked down upon and knew the habits of the nave to its remotest
+peculiarity, and had an extensive stock of exclusive information about
+it; whilst the nave knew nothing of the gallery folk, as gallery folk,
+beyond their loud-sounding minims and chest notes. Such topics as that
+the clerk was always chewing tobacco except at the moment of crying
+amen; that he had a dust-hole in his pew; that during the sermon
+certain young daughters of the village had left off caring to read
+anything so mild as the marriage service for some years, and now
+regularly studied the one which chronologically follows it; that a pair
+of lovers touched fingers through a knot-hole between their pews in the
+manner ordained by their great exemplars, Pyramus and Thisbe; that Mrs.
+Ledlow, the farmer’s wife, counted her money and reckoned her week’s
+marketing expenses during the first lesson—all news to those below—were
+stale subjects here.
+
+Old William sat in the centre of the front row, his violoncello between
+his knees and two singers on each hand. Behind him, on the left, came
+the treble singers and Dick; and on the right the tranter and the
+tenors. Farther back was old Mail with the altos and supernumeraries.
+
+But before they had taken their places, and whilst they were standing
+in a circle at the back of the gallery practising a psalm or two, Dick
+cast his eyes over his grandfather’s shoulder, and saw the vision of
+the past night enter the porch-door as methodically as if she had never
+been a vision at all. A new atmosphere seemed suddenly to be puffed
+into the ancient edifice by her movement, which made Dick’s body and
+soul tingle with novel sensations. Directed by Shiner, the
+churchwarden, she proceeded to the small aisle on the north side of the
+chancel, a spot now allotted to a throng of Sunday-school girls, and
+distinctly visible from the gallery-front by looking under the curve of
+the furthermost arch on that side.
+
+Before this moment the church had seemed comparatively empty—now it was
+thronged; and as Miss Fancy rose from her knees and looked around her
+for a permanent place in which to deposit herself—finally choosing the
+remotest corner—Dick began to breathe more freely the warm new air she
+had brought with her; to feel rushings of blood, and to have
+impressions that there was a tie between her and himself visible to all
+the congregation.
+
+Ever afterwards the young man could recollect individually each part of
+the service of that bright Christmas morning, and the trifling
+occurrences which took place as its minutes slowly drew along; the
+duties of that day dividing themselves by a complete line from the
+services of other times. The tunes they that morning essayed remained
+with him for years, apart from all others; also the text; also the
+appearance of the layer of dust upon the capitals of the piers; that
+the holly-bough in the chancel archway was hung a little out of the
+centre—all the ideas, in short, that creep into the mind when reason is
+only exercising its lowest activity through the eye.
+
+By chance or by fate, another young man who attended Mellstock Church
+on that Christmas morning had towards the end of the service the same
+instinctive perception of an interesting presence, in the shape of the
+same bright maiden, though his emotion reached a far less developed
+stage. And there was this difference, too, that the person in question
+was surprised at his condition, and sedulously endeavoured to reduce
+himself to his normal state of mind. He was the young vicar, Mr.
+Maybold.
+
+The music on Christmas mornings was frequently below the standard of
+church-performances at other times. The boys were sleepy from the heavy
+exertions of the night; the men were slightly wearied; and now, in
+addition to these constant reasons, there was a dampness in the
+atmosphere that still further aggravated the evil. Their strings, from
+the recent long exposure to the night air, rose whole semitones, and
+snapped with a loud twang at the most silent moment; which necessitated
+more retiring than ever to the back of the gallery, and made the
+gallery throats quite husky with the quantity of coughing and hemming
+required for tuning in. The vicar looked cross.
+
+When the singing was in progress there was suddenly discovered to be a
+strong and shrill reinforcement from some point, ultimately found to be
+the school-girls’ aisle. At every attempt it grew bolder and more
+distinct. At the third time of singing, these intrusive feminine voices
+were as mighty as those of the regular singers; in fact, the flood of
+sound from this quarter assumed such an individuality, that it had a
+time, a key, almost a tune of its own, surging upwards when the gallery
+plunged downwards, and the reverse.
+
+Now this had never happened before within the memory of man. The girls,
+like the rest of the congregation, had always been humble and
+respectful followers of the gallery; singing at sixes and sevens if
+without gallery leaders; never interfering with the ordinances of these
+practised artists—having no will, union, power, or proclivity except it
+was given them from the established choir enthroned above them.
+
+A good deal of desperation became noticeable in the gallery throats and
+strings, which continued throughout the musical portion of the service.
+Directly the fiddles were laid down, Mr. Penny’s spectacles put in
+their sheath, and the text had been given out, an indignant whispering
+began.
+
+“Did ye hear that, souls?” Mr. Penny said, in a groaning breath.
+
+“Brazen-faced hussies!” said Bowman.
+
+“True; why, they were every note as loud as we, fiddles and all, if not
+louder!”
+
+“Fiddles and all!” echoed Bowman bitterly.
+
+“Shall anything saucier be found than united ’ooman?” Mr. Spinks
+murmured.
+
+“What I want to know is,” said the tranter (as if he knew already, but
+that civilization required the form of words), “what business people
+have to tell maidens to sing like that when they don’t sit in a
+gallery, and never have entered one in their lives? That’s the
+question, my sonnies.”
+
+“’Tis the gallery have got to sing, all the world knows,” said Mr.
+Penny. “Why, souls, what’s the use o’ the ancients spending scores of
+pounds to build galleries if people down in the lowest depths of the
+church sing like that at a moment’s notice?”
+
+“Really, I think we useless ones had better march out of church,
+fiddles and all!” said Mr. Spinks, with a laugh which, to a stranger,
+would have sounded mild and real. Only the initiated body of men he
+addressed could understand the horrible bitterness of irony that lurked
+under the quiet words ‘useless ones,’ and the ghastliness of the
+laughter apparently so natural.
+
+“Never mind! Let ’em sing too—’twill make it all the louder—hee, hee!”
+said Leaf.
+
+“Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf! Where have you lived all your life?” said
+grandfather William sternly.
+
+The quailing Leaf tried to look as if he had lived nowhere at all.
+
+“When all’s said and done, my sonnies,” Reuben said, “there’d have been
+no real harm in their singing if they had let nobody hear ’em, and only
+jined in now and then.”
+
+“None at all,” said Mr. Penny. “But though I don’t wish to accuse
+people wrongfully, I’d say before my lord judge that I could hear every
+note o’ that last psalm come from ’em as much as from us—every note as
+if ’twas their own.”
+
+“Know it! ah, I should think I did know it!” Mr. Spinks was heard to
+observe at this moment, without reference to his fellow players—shaking
+his head at some idea he seemed to see floating before him, and smiling
+as if he were attending a funeral at the time. “Ah, do I or don’t I
+know it!”
+
+No one said “Know what?” because all were aware from experience that
+what he knew would declare itself in process of time.
+
+“I could fancy last night that we should have some trouble wi’ that
+young man,” said the tranter, pending the continuance of Spinks’s
+speech, and looking towards the unconscious Mr. Maybold in the pulpit.
+
+“_I_ fancy,” said old William, rather severely, “I fancy there’s too
+much whispering going on to be of any spiritual use to gentle or
+simple.” Then folding his lips and concentrating his glance on the
+vicar, he implied that none but the ignorant would speak again; and
+accordingly there was silence in the gallery, Mr. Spinks’s telling
+speech remaining for ever unspoken.
+
+Dick had said nothing, and the tranter little, on this episode of the
+morning; for Mrs. Dewy at breakfast expressed it as her intention to
+invite the youthful leader of the culprits to the small party it was
+customary with them to have on Christmas night—a piece of knowledge
+which had given a particular brightness to Dick’s reflections since he
+had received it. And in the tranter’s slightly-cynical nature, party
+feeling was weaker than in the other members of the choir, though
+friendliness and faithful partnership still sustained in him a hearty
+earnestness on their account.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+THE TRANTER’S PARTY
+
+
+During the afternoon unusual activity was seen to prevail about the
+precincts of tranter Dewy’s house. The flagstone floor was swept of
+dust, and a sprinkling of the finest yellow sand from the innermost
+stratum of the adjoining sand-pit lightly scattered thereupon. Then
+were produced large knives and forks, which had been shrouded in
+darkness and grease since the last occasion of the kind, and bearing
+upon their sides, “Shear-steel, warranted,” in such emphatic letters of
+assurance, that the warranter’s name was not required as further proof,
+and not given. The key was left in the tap of the cider-barrel, instead
+of being carried in a pocket. And finally the tranter had to stand up
+in the room and let his wife wheel him round like a turnstile, to see
+if anything discreditable was visible in his appearance.
+
+“Stand still till I’ve been for the scissors,” said Mrs. Dewy.
+
+The tranter stood as still as a sentinel at the challenge.
+
+The only repairs necessary were a trimming of one or two whiskers that
+had extended beyond the general contour of the mass; a like trimming of
+a slightly-frayed edge visible on his shirt-collar; and a final tug at
+a grey hair—to all of which operations he submitted in resigned
+silence, except the last, which produced a mild “Come, come, Ann,” by
+way of expostulation.
+
+“Really, Reuben, ’tis quite a disgrace to see such a man,” said Mrs.
+Dewy, with the severity justifiable in a long-tried companion, giving
+him another turn round, and picking several of Smiler’s hairs from the
+shoulder of his coat. Reuben’s thoughts seemed engaged elsewhere, and
+he yawned. “And the collar of your coat is a shame to behold—so
+plastered with dirt, or dust, or grease, or something. Why, wherever
+could you have got it?”
+
+“’Tis my warm nater in summer-time, I suppose. I always did get in such
+a heat when I bustle about.”
+
+“Ay, the Dewys always were such a coarse-skinned family. There’s your
+brother Bob just as bad—as fat as a porpoise—wi’ his low, mean, ‘How’st
+do, Ann?’ whenever he meets me. I’d ‘How’st do’ him indeed! If the sun
+only shines out a minute, there be you all streaming in the face—I
+never see!”
+
+“If I be hot week-days, I must be hot Sundays.”
+
+“If any of the girls should turn after their father ’twill be a bad
+look-out for ’em, poor things! None of my family were sich vulgar
+sweaters, not one of ’em. But, Lord-a-mercy, the Dewys! I don’t know
+how ever I cam’ into such a family!”
+
+_“_Your woman’s weakness when I asked ye to jine us. That’s how it was
+I suppose.” But the tranter appeared to have heard some such words from
+his wife before, and hence his answer had not the energy it might have
+shown if the inquiry had possessed the charm of novelty.
+
+“You never did look so well in a pair o’ trousers as in them,” she
+continued in the same unimpassioned voice, so that the unfriendly
+criticism of the Dewy family seemed to have been more normal than
+spontaneous. “Such a cheap pair as ’twas too. As big as any man could
+wish to have, and lined inside, and double-lined in the lower parts,
+and an extra piece of stiffening at the bottom. And ’tis a nice high
+cut that comes up right under your armpits, and there’s enough turned
+down inside the seams to make half a pair more, besides a piece of
+cloth left that will make an honest waistcoat—all by my contriving in
+buying the stuff at a bargain, and having it made up under my eye. It
+only shows what may be done by taking a little trouble, and not going
+straight to the rascally tailors.”
+
+The discourse was cut short by the sudden appearance of Charley on the
+scene, with a face and hands of hideous blackness, and a nose like a
+guttering candle. Why, on that particularly cleanly afternoon, he
+should have discovered that the chimney-crook and chain from which the
+hams were suspended should have possessed more merits and general
+interest as playthings than any other articles in the house, is a
+question for nursing mothers to decide. However, the humour seemed to
+lie in the result being, as has been seen, that any given player with
+these articles was in the long-run daubed with soot. The last that was
+seen of Charley by daylight after this piece of ingenuity was when in
+the act of vanishing from his father’s presence round the corner of the
+house—looking back over his shoulder with an expression of great sin on
+his face, like Cain as the Outcast in Bible pictures.
+
+The guests had all assembled, and the tranter’s party had reached that
+degree of development which accords with ten o’clock P.M. in rural
+assemblies. At that hour the sound of a fiddle in process of tuning was
+heard from the inner pantry.
+
+“That’s Dick,” said the tranter. “That lad’s crazy for a jig.”
+
+“Dick! Now I cannot—really, I cannot have any dancing at all till
+Christmas-day is out,” said old William emphatically. “When the clock
+ha’ done striking twelve, dance as much as ye like.”
+
+“Well, I must say there’s reason in that, William,” said Mrs. Penny.
+“If you do have a party on Christmas-night, ’tis only fair and
+honourable to the sky-folk to have it a sit-still party. Jigging
+parties be all very well on the Devil’s holidays; but a jigging party
+looks suspicious now. O yes; stop till the clock strikes, young folk—so
+say I.”
+
+It happened that some warm mead accidentally got into Mr. Spinks’s head
+about this time.
+
+“Dancing,” he said, “is a most strengthening, livening, and courting
+movement, ’specially with a little beverage added! And dancing is good.
+But why disturb what is ordained, Richard and Reuben, and the company
+zhinerally? Why, I ask, as far as that do go?”
+
+“Then nothing till after twelve,” said William.
+
+Though Reuben and his wife ruled on social points, religious questions
+were mostly disposed of by the old man, whose firmness on this head
+quite counterbalanced a certain weakness in his handling of domestic
+matters. The hopes of the younger members of the household were
+therefore relegated to a distance of one hour and three-quarters—a
+result that took visible shape in them by a remote and listless look
+about the eyes—the singing of songs being permitted in the interim.
+
+At five minutes to twelve the soft tuning was again heard in the back
+quarters; and when at length the clock had whizzed forth the last
+stroke, Dick appeared ready primed, and the instruments were boldly
+handled; old William very readily taking the bass-viol from its
+accustomed nail, and touching the strings as irreligiously as could be
+desired.
+
+The country-dance called the ‘Triumph, or Follow my Lover,’ was the
+figure with which they opened. The tranter took for his partner Mrs.
+Penny, and Mrs. Dewy was chosen by Mr. Penny, who made so much of his
+limited height by a judicious carriage of the head, straightening of
+the back, and important flashes of his spectacle-glasses, that he
+seemed almost as tall as the tranter. Mr. Shiner, age about
+thirty-five, farmer and church-warden, a character principally composed
+of a crimson stare, vigorous breath, and a watch-chain, with a mouth
+hanging on a dark smile but never smiling, had come quite willingly to
+the party, and showed a wondrous obliviousness of all his antics on the
+previous night. But the comely, slender, prettily-dressed prize Fancy
+Day fell to Dick’s lot, in spite of some private machinations of the
+farmer, for the reason that Mr. Shiner, as a richer man, had shown too
+much assurance in asking the favour, whilst Dick had been duly
+courteous.
+
+We gain a good view of our heroine as she advances to her place in the
+ladies’ line. She belonged to the taller division of middle height.
+Flexibility was her first characteristic, by which she appeared to
+enjoy the most easeful rest when she was in gliding motion. Her dark
+eyes—arched by brows of so keen, slender, and soft a curve, that they
+resembled nothing so much as two slurs in music—showed primarily a
+bright sparkle each. This was softened by a frequent thoughtfulness,
+yet not so frequent as to do away, for more than a few minutes at a
+time, with a certain coquettishness; which in its turn was never so
+decided as to banish honesty. Her lips imitated her brows in their
+clearly-cut outline and softness of bend; and her nose was well
+shaped—which is saying a great deal, when it is remembered that there
+are a hundred pretty mouths and eyes for one pretty nose. Add to this,
+plentiful knots of dark-brown hair, a gauzy dress of white, with blue
+facings; and the slightest idea may be gained of the young maiden who
+showed, amidst the rest of the dancing-ladies, like a flower among
+vegetables. And so the dance proceeded. Mr. Shiner, according to the
+interesting rule laid down, deserted his own partner, and made off down
+the middle with this fair one of Dick’s—the pair appearing from the top
+of the room like two persons tripping down a lane to be married. Dick
+trotted behind with what was intended to be a look of composure, but
+which was, in fact, a rather silly expression of feature—implying, with
+too much earnestness, that such an elopement could not be tolerated.
+Then they turned and came back, when Dick grew more rigid around his
+mouth, and blushed with ingenuous ardour as he joined hands with the
+rival and formed the arch over his lady’s head; which presumably gave
+the figure its name; relinquishing her again at setting to partners,
+when Mr. Shiner’s new chain quivered in every link, and all the loose
+flesh upon the tranter—who here came into action again—shook like
+jelly. Mrs. Penny, being always rather concerned for her personal
+safety when she danced with the tranter, fixed her face to a chronic
+smile of timidity the whole time it lasted—a peculiarity which filled
+her features with wrinkles, and reduced her eyes to little straight
+lines like hyphens, as she jigged up and down opposite him; repeating
+in her own person not only his proper movements, but also the minor
+flourishes which the richness of the tranter’s imagination led him to
+introduce from time to time—an imitation which had about it something
+of slavish obedience, not unmixed with fear.
+
+The ear-rings of the ladies now flung themselves wildly about, turning
+violent summersaults, banging this way and that, and then swinging
+quietly against the ears sustaining them. Mrs. Crumpler—a heavy woman,
+who, for some reason which nobody ever thought worth inquiry, danced in
+a clean apron—moved so smoothly through the figure that her feet were
+never seen; conveying to imaginative minds the idea that she rolled on
+castors.
+
+Minute after minute glided by, and the party reached the period when
+ladies’ back-hair begins to look forgotten and dissipated; when a
+perceptible dampness makes itself apparent upon the faces even of
+delicate girls—a ghastly dew having for some time rained from the
+features of their masculine partners; when skirts begin to be torn out
+of their gathers; when elderly people, who have stood up to please
+their juniors, begin to feel sundry small tremblings in the region of
+the knees, and to wish the interminable dance was at Jericho; when (at
+country parties of the thorough sort) waistcoats begin to be
+unbuttoned, and when the fiddlers’ chairs have been wriggled, by the
+frantic bowing of their occupiers, to a distance of about two feet from
+where they originally stood.
+
+Fancy was dancing with Mr. Shiner. Dick knew that Fancy, by the law of
+good manners, was bound to dance as pleasantly with one partner as with
+another; yet he could not help suggesting to himself that she need not
+have put _quite_ so much spirit into her steps, nor smiled _quite_ so
+frequently whilst in the farmer’s hands.
+
+“I’m afraid you didn’t cast off,” said Dick mildly to Mr. Shiner,
+before the latter man’s watch-chain had done vibrating from a recent
+whirl.
+
+Fancy made a motion of accepting the correction; but her partner took
+no notice, and proceeded with the next movement, with an affectionate
+bend towards her.
+
+“That Shiner’s too fond of her,” the young man said to himself as he
+watched them. They came to the top again, Fancy smiling warmly towards
+her partner, and went to their places.
+
+“Mr. Shiner, you didn’t cast off,” said Dick, for want of something
+else to demolish him with; casting off himself, and being put out at
+the farmer’s irregularity.
+
+“Perhaps I sha’n’t cast off for any man,” said Mr. Shiner.
+
+“I think you ought to, sir.”
+
+Dick’s partner, a young lady of the name of Lizzy—called Lizz for
+short—tried to mollify.
+
+“I can’t say that I myself have much feeling for casting off,” she
+said.
+
+“Nor I,” said Mrs. Penny, following up the argument, “especially if a
+friend and neighbour is set against it. Not but that ’tis a terrible
+tasty thing in good hands and well done; yes, indeed, so say I.”
+
+“All I meant was,” said Dick, rather sorry that he had spoken
+correctingly to a guest, “that ’tis in the dance; and a man has hardly
+any right to hack and mangle what was ordained by the regular
+dance-maker, who, I daresay, got his living by making ’em, and thought
+of nothing else all his life.”
+
+“I don’t like casting off: then very well; I cast off for no
+dance-maker that ever lived.”
+
+Dick now appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, the act being really
+an effort to present to himself, in an abstract form, how far an
+argument with a formidable rival ought to be carried, when that rival
+was his mother’s guest. The dead-lock was put an end to by the stamping
+arrival up the middle of the tranter, who, despising minutiæ on
+principle, started a theme of his own.
+
+“I assure you, neighbours,” he said, “the heat of my frame no tongue
+can tell!” He looked around and endeavoured to give, by a forcible gaze
+of self-sympathy, some faint idea of the truth.
+
+Mrs. Dewy formed one of the next couple.
+
+“Yes,” she said, in an auxiliary tone, “Reuben always was such a hot
+man.”
+
+Mrs. Penny implied the species of sympathy that such a class of
+affliction required, by trying to smile and to look grieved at the same
+time.
+
+“If he only walk round the garden of a Sunday morning, his shirt-collar
+is as limp as no starch at all,” continued Mrs. Dewy, her countenance
+lapsing parenthetically into a housewifely expression of concern at the
+reminiscence.
+
+“Come, come, you women-folk; ’tis hands across—come, come!” said the
+tranter; and the conversation ceased for the present.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY
+
+
+Dick had at length secured Fancy for that most delightful of
+country-dances, opening with six-hands-round.
+
+“Before we begin,” said the tranter, “my proposal is, that ’twould be a
+right and proper plan for every mortal man in the dance to pull off his
+jacket, considering the heat.”
+
+“Such low notions as you have, Reuben! Nothing but strip will go down
+with you when you are a-dancing. Such a hot man as he is!”
+
+“Well, now, look here, my sonnies,” he argued to his wife, whom he
+often addressed in the plural masculine for economy of epithet merely;
+“I don’t see that. You dance and get hot as fire; therefore you lighten
+your clothes. Isn’t that nature and reason for gentle and simple? If I
+strip by myself and not necessary, ’tis rather pot-housey I own; but if
+we stout chaps strip one and all, why, ’tis the native manners of the
+country, which no man can gainsay? Hey—what did you say, my sonnies?”
+
+“Strip we will!” said the three other heavy men who were in the dance;
+and their coats were accordingly taken off and hung in the passage,
+whence the four sufferers from heat soon reappeared, marching in close
+column, with flapping shirt-sleeves, and having, as common to them all,
+a general glance of being now a match for any man or dancer in England
+or Ireland. Dick, fearing to lose ground in Fancy’s good opinion,
+retained his coat like the rest of the thinner men; and Mr. Shiner did
+the same from superior knowledge.
+
+And now a further phase of revelry had disclosed itself. It was the
+time of night when a guest may write his name in the dust upon the
+tables and chairs, and a bluish mist pervades the atmosphere, becoming
+a distinct halo round the candles; when people’s nostrils, wrinkles,
+and crevices in general, seem to be getting gradually plastered up;
+when the very fiddlers as well as the dancers get red in the face, the
+dancers having advanced further still towards incandescence, and
+entered the cadaverous phase; the fiddlers no longer sit down, but kick
+back their chairs and saw madly at the strings, with legs firmly spread
+and eyes closed, regardless of the visible world. Again and again did
+Dick share his Love’s hand with another man, and wheel round; then,
+more delightfully, promenade in a circle with her all to himself, his
+arm holding her waist more firmly each time, and his elbow getting
+further and further behind her back, till the distance reached was
+rather noticeable; and, most blissful, swinging to places shoulder to
+shoulder, her breath curling round his neck like a summer zephyr that
+had strayed from its proper date. Threading the couples one by one they
+reached the bottom, when there arose in Dick’s mind a minor misery lest
+the tune should end before they could work their way to the top again,
+and have anew the same exciting run down through. Dick’s feelings on
+actually reaching the top in spite of his doubts were supplemented by a
+mortal fear that the fiddling might even stop at this supreme moment;
+which prompted him to convey a stealthy whisper to the far-gone
+musicians, to the effect that they were not to leave off till he and
+his partner had reached the bottom of the dance once more, which remark
+was replied to by the nearest of those convulsed and quivering men by a
+private nod to the anxious young man between two semiquavers of the
+tune, and a simultaneous “All right, ay, ay,” without opening the eyes.
+Fancy was now held so closely that Dick and she were practically one
+person. The room became to Dick like a picture in a dream; all that he
+could remember of it afterwards being the look of the fiddlers going to
+sleep, as humming-tops sleep, by increasing their motion and hum,
+together with the figures of grandfather James and old Simon Crumpler
+sitting by the chimney-corner, talking and nodding in dumb-show, and
+beating the air to their emphatic sentences like people near a
+threshing machine.
+
+The dance ended. “Piph-h-h-h!” said tranter Dewy, blowing out his
+breath in the very finest stream of vapour that a man’s lips could
+form. “A regular tightener, that one, sonnies!” He wiped his forehead,
+and went to the cider and ale mugs on the table.
+
+“Well!” said Mrs. Penny, flopping into a chair, “my heart haven’t been
+in such a thumping state of uproar since I used to sit up on old
+Midsummer-eves to see who my husband was going to be.”
+
+“And that’s getting on for a good few years ago now, from what I’ve
+heard you tell,” said the tranter, without lifting his eyes from the
+cup he was filling. Being now engaged in the business of handing round
+refreshments, he was warranted in keeping his coat off still, though
+the other heavy men had resumed theirs.
+
+“And a thing I never expected would come to pass, if you’ll believe me,
+came to pass then,” continued Mrs. Penny. “Ah, the first spirit ever I
+see on a Midsummer-eve was a puzzle to me when he appeared, a hard
+puzzle, so say I!”
+
+“So I should have fancied,” said Elias Spinks.
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Penny, throwing her glance into past times, and
+talking on in a running tone of complacent abstraction, as if a
+listener were not a necessity. “Yes; never was I in such a taking as on
+that Midsummer-eve! I sat up, quite determined to see if John Wildway
+was going to marry me or no. I put the bread-and-cheese and beer quite
+ready, as the witch’s book ordered, and I opened the door, and I waited
+till the clock struck twelve, my nerves all alive and so strained that
+I could feel every one of ’em twitching like bell-wires. Yes, sure! and
+when the clock had struck, lo and behold, I could see through the door
+a _little small_ man in the lane wi’ a shoemaker’s apron on.”
+
+Here Mr. Penny stealthily enlarged himself half an inch.
+
+“Now, John Wildway,” Mrs. Penny continued, “who courted me at that
+time, was a shoemaker, you see, but he was a very fair-sized man, and I
+couldn’t believe that any such a little small man had anything to do
+wi’ me, as anybody might. But on he came, and crossed the threshold—not
+John, but actually the same little small man in the shoemaker’s apron—”
+
+“You needn’t be so mighty particular about little and small!” said her
+husband.
+
+“In he walks, and down he sits, and O my goodness me, didn’t I flee
+upstairs, body and soul hardly hanging together! Well, to cut a long
+story short, by-long and by-late, John Wildway and I had a miff and
+parted; and lo and behold, the coming man came! Penny asked me if I’d
+go snacks with him, and afore I knew what I was about a’most, the thing
+was done.”
+
+“I’ve fancied you never knew better in your life; but I mid be
+mistaken,” said Mr. Penny in a murmur.
+
+After Mrs. Penny had spoken, there being no new occupation for her
+eyes, she still let them stay idling on the past scenes just related,
+which were apparently visible to her in the centre of the room. Mr.
+Penny’s remark received no reply.
+
+During this discourse the tranter and his wife might have been observed
+standing in an unobtrusive corner, in mysterious closeness to each
+other, a just perceptible current of intelligence passing from each to
+each, which had apparently no relation whatever to the conversation of
+their guests, but much to their sustenance. A conclusion of some kind
+having at length been drawn, the palpable confederacy of man and wife
+was once more obliterated, the tranter marching off into the pantry,
+humming a tune that he couldn’t quite recollect, and then breaking into
+the words of a song of which he could remember about one line and a
+quarter. Mrs. Dewy spoke a few words about preparations for a bit of
+supper.
+
+That elder portion of the company which loved eating and drinking put
+on a look to signify that till this moment they had quite forgotten
+that it was customary to expect suppers on these occasions; going even
+further than this politeness of feature, and starting irrelevant
+subjects, the exceeding flatness and forced tone of which rather
+betrayed their object. The younger members said they were quite hungry,
+and that supper would be delightful though it was so late.
+
+Good luck attended Dick’s love-passes during the meal. He sat next
+Fancy, and had the thrilling pleasure of using permanently a glass
+which had been taken by Fancy in mistake; of letting the outer edge of
+the sole of his boot touch the lower verge of her skirt; and to add to
+these delights the cat, which had lain unobserved in her lap for
+several minutes, crept across into his own, touching him with fur that
+had touched her hand a moment before. There were, besides, some little
+pleasures in the shape of helping her to vegetable she didn’t want, and
+when it had nearly alighted on her plate taking it across for his own
+use, on the plea of waste not, want not. He also, from time to time,
+sipped sweet sly glances at her profile; noticing the set of her head,
+the curve of her throat, and other artistic properties of the lively
+goddess, who the while kept up a rather free, not to say too free,
+conversation with Mr. Shiner sitting opposite; which, after some uneasy
+criticism, and much shifting of argument backwards and forwards in
+Dick’s mind, he decided not to consider of alarming significance.
+
+“A new music greets our ears now,” said Miss Fancy, alluding, with the
+sharpness that her position as village sharpener demanded, to the
+contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes of
+the fiddlers.
+
+“Ay; and I don’t know but what ’tis sweeter in tone when you get above
+forty,” said the tranter; “except, in faith, as regards father there.
+Never such a mortal man as he for tunes. They do move his soul; don’t
+’em, father?”
+
+The eldest Dewy smiled across from his distant chair an assent to
+Reuben’s remark.
+
+“Spaking of being moved in soul,” said Mr. Penny, “I shall never forget
+the first time I heard the ‘Dead March.’ ’Twas at poor Corp’l Nineman’s
+funeral at Casterbridge. It fairly made my hair creep and fidget about
+like a vlock of sheep—ah, it did, souls! And when they had done, and
+the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero’s
+grave, a’ icy-cold drop o’ moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and
+another upon my jawbone. Ah, ’tis a very solemn thing!”
+
+“Well, as to father in the corner there,” the tranter said, pointing to
+old William, who was in the act of filling his mouth; “he’d starve to
+death for music’s sake now, as much as when he was a boy-chap of
+fifteen.”
+
+“Truly, now,” said Michael Mail, clearing the corner of his throat in
+the manner of a man who meant to be convincing; “there’s a friendly tie
+of some sort between music and eating.” He lifted the cup to his mouth,
+and drank himself gradually backwards from a perpendicular position to
+a slanting one, during which time his looks performed a circuit from
+the wall opposite him to the ceiling overhead. Then clearing the other
+corner of his throat: “Once I was a-setting in the little kitchen of
+the Dree Mariners at Casterbridge, having a bit of dinner, and a brass
+band struck up in the street. Such a beautiful band as that were! I was
+setting eating fried liver and lights, I well can mind—ah, I was! and
+to save my life, I couldn’t help chawing to the tune. Band played
+six-eight time; six-eight chaws I, willynilly. Band plays common;
+common time went my teeth among the liver and lights as true as a hair.
+Beautiful ’twere! Ah, I shall never forget that there band!”
+
+“That’s as tuneful a thing as ever I heard of,” said grandfather James,
+with the absent gaze which accompanies profound criticism.
+
+“I don’t like Michael’s tuneful stories then,” said Mrs. Dewy. “They
+are quite coarse to a person o’ decent taste.”
+
+Old Michael’s mouth twitched here and there, as if he wanted to smile
+but didn’t know where to begin, which gradually settled to an
+expression that it was not displeasing for a nice woman like the
+tranter’s wife to correct him.
+
+“Well, now,” said Reuben, with decisive earnestness, “that sort o’
+coarse touch that’s so upsetting to Ann’s feelings is to my mind a
+recommendation; for it do always prove a story to be true. And for the
+same reason, I like a story with a bad moral. My sonnies, all true
+stories have a coarse touch or a bad moral, depend upon’t. If the
+story-tellers could ha’ got decency and good morals from true stories,
+who’d ha’ troubled to invent parables?” Saying this the tranter arose
+to fetch a new stock of cider, ale, mead, and home-made wines.
+
+Mrs. Dewy sighed, and appended a remark (ostensibly behind her
+husband’s back, though that the words should reach his ears distinctly
+was understood by both): “Such a man as Dewy is! Nobody do know the
+trouble I have to keep that man barely respectable. And did you ever
+hear too—just now at supper-time—talking about ‘taties’ with Michael in
+such a work-folk way. Well, ’tis what I was never brought up to! With
+our family ’twas never less than ‘taters,’ and very often ‘pertatoes’
+outright; mother was so particular and nice with us girls there was no
+family in the parish that kept them selves up more than we.”
+
+The hour of parting came. Fancy could not remain for the night, because
+she had engaged a woman to wait up for her. She disappeared temporarily
+from the flagging party of dancers, and then came downstairs wrapped up
+and looking altogether a different person from whom she had been
+hitherto, in fact (to Dick’s sadness and disappointment), a woman
+somewhat reserved and of a phlegmatic temperament—nothing left in her
+of the romping girl that she had seemed but a short quarter-hour
+before, who had not minded the weight of Dick’s hand upon her waist,
+nor shirked the purlieus of the mistletoe.
+
+“What a difference!” thought the young man—hoary cynic _pro tem. “_What
+a miserable deceiving difference between the manners of a maid’s life
+at dancing times and at others! Look at this lovely Fancy! Through the
+whole past evening touchable, squeezeable—even kissable! For whole
+half-hours I held her so chose to me that not a sheet of paper could
+have been shipped between us; and I could feel her heart only just
+outside my own, her life beating on so close to mine, that I was aware
+of every breath in it. A flit is made upstairs—a hat and a cloak put
+on—and I no more dare to touch her than—” Thought failed him, and he
+returned to realities.
+
+But this was an endurable misery in comparison with what followed. Mr.
+Shiner and his watch-chain, taking the intrusive advantage that ardent
+bachelors who are going homeward along the same road as a pretty young
+woman always do take of that circumstance, came forward to assure
+Fancy—with a total disregard of Dick’s emotions, and in tones which
+were certainly not frigid—that he (Shiner) was not the man to go to bed
+before seeing his Lady Fair safe within her own door—not he, nobody
+should say he was that;—and that he would not leave her side an inch
+till the thing was done—drown him if he would. The proposal was
+assented to by Miss Day, in Dick’s foreboding judgment, with one
+degree—or at any rate, an appreciable fraction of a degree—of warmth
+beyond that required by a disinterested desire for protection from the
+dangers of the night.
+
+All was over; and Dick surveyed the chair she had last occupied,
+looking now like a setting from which the gem has been torn. There
+stood her glass, and the romantic teaspoonful of elder wine at the
+bottom that she couldn’t drink by trying ever so hard, in obedience to
+the mighty arguments of the tranter (his hand coming down upon her
+shoulder the while, like a Nasmyth hammer); but the drinker was there
+no longer. There were the nine or ten pretty little crumbs she had left
+on her plate; but the eater was no more seen.
+
+There seemed a disagreeable closeness of relationship between himself
+and the members of his family, now that they were left alone again face
+to face. His father seemed quite offensive for appearing to be in just
+as high spirits as when the guests were there; and as for grandfather
+James (who had not yet left), he was quite fiendish in being rather
+glad they were gone.
+
+“Really,” said the tranter, in a tone of placid satisfaction, “I’ve had
+so little time to attend to myself all the evenen, that I mean to enjoy
+a quiet meal now! A slice of this here ham—neither too fat nor too
+lean—so; and then a drop of this vinegar and pickles—there, that’s
+it—and I shall be as fresh as a lark again! And to tell the truth, my
+sonny, my inside has been as dry as a lime-basket all night.”
+
+“I like a party very well once in a while,” said Mrs. Dewy, leaving off
+the adorned tones she had been bound to use throughout the evening, and
+returning to the natural marriage voice; “but, Lord, ’tis such a sight
+of heavy work next day! What with the dirty plates, and knives and
+forks, and dust and smother, and bits kicked off your furniture, and I
+don’t know what all, why a body could a’most wish there were no such
+things as Christmases . . . Ah-h dear!” she yawned, till the clock in
+the corner had ticked several beats. She cast her eyes round upon the
+displaced, dust-laden furniture, and sank down overpowered at the
+sight.
+
+“Well, I be getting all right by degrees, thank the Lord for’t!” said
+the tranter cheerfully through a mangled mass of ham and bread, without
+lifting his eyes from his plate, and chopping away with his knife and
+fork as if he were felling trees. “Ann, you may as well go on to bed at
+once, and not bide there making such sleepy faces; you look as
+long-favoured as a fiddle, upon my life, Ann. There, you must be
+wearied out, ’tis true. I’ll do the doors and draw up the clock; and
+you go on, or you’ll be as white as a sheet to-morrow.”
+
+“Ay; I don’t know whether I shan’t or no.” The matron passed her hand
+across her eyes to brush away the film of sleep till she got upstairs.
+
+Dick wondered how it was that when people were married they could be so
+blind to romance; and was quite certain that if he ever took to wife
+that dear impossible Fancy, he and she would never be so dreadfully
+practical and undemonstrative of the Passion as his father and mother
+were. The most extraordinary thing was, that all the fathers and
+mothers he knew were just as undemonstrative as his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+DICK CALLS AT THE SCHOOL
+
+
+The early days of the year drew on, and Fancy, having spent the holiday
+weeks at home, returned again to Mellstock.
+
+Every spare minute of the week following her return was used by Dick in
+accidentally passing the schoolhouse in his journeys about the
+neighbourhood; but not once did she make herself visible. A
+handkerchief belonging to her had been providentially found by his
+mother in clearing the rooms the day after that of the dance; and by
+much contrivance Dick got it handed over to him, to leave with her at
+any time he should be near the school after her return. But he delayed
+taking the extreme measure of calling with it lest, had she really no
+sentiment of interest in him, it might be regarded as a slightly absurd
+errand, the reason guessed; and the sense of the ludicrous, which was
+rather keen in her, do his dignity considerable injury in her eyes; and
+what she thought of him, even apart from the question of her loving,
+was all the world to him now.
+
+But the hour came when the patience of love at twenty-one could endure
+no longer. One Saturday he approached the school with a mild air of
+indifference, and had the satisfaction of seeing the object of his
+quest at the further end of her garden, trying, by the aid of a spade
+and gloves, to root a bramble that had intruded itself there.
+
+He disguised his feelings from some suspicious-looking cottage-windows
+opposite by endeavouring to appear like a man in a great hurry of
+business, who wished to leave the handkerchief and have done with such
+trifling errands.
+
+This endeavour signally failed; for on approaching the gate he found it
+locked to keep the children, who were playing ‘cross-dadder’ in the
+front, from running into her private grounds.
+
+She did not see him; and he could only think of one thing to be done,
+which was to shout her name.
+
+“Miss Day!”
+
+The words were uttered with a jerk and a look meant to imply to the
+cottages opposite that he was now simply one who liked shouting as a
+pleasant way of passing his time, without any reference to persons in
+gardens. The name died away, and the unconscious Miss Day continued
+digging and pulling as before.
+
+He screwed himself up to enduring the cottage-windows yet more
+stoically, and shouted again. Fancy took no notice whatever.
+
+He shouted the third time, with desperate vehemence, turning suddenly
+about and retiring a little distance, as if it were by no means for his
+own pleasure that he had come.
+
+This time she heard him, came down the garden, and entered the school
+at the back. Footsteps echoed across the interior, the door opened, and
+three-quarters of the blooming young schoolmistress’s face and figure
+stood revealed before him; a slice on her left-hand side being cut off
+by the edge of the door. Having surveyed and recognized him, she came
+to the gate.
+
+At sight of him had the pink of her cheeks increased, lessened, or did
+it continue to cover its normal area of ground? It was a question
+meditated several hundreds of times by her visitor in after-hours—the
+meditation, after wearying involutions, always ending in one way, that
+it was impossible to say.
+
+“Your handkerchief: Miss Day: I called with.” He held it out
+spasmodically and awkwardly. “Mother found it: under a chair.”
+
+“O, thank you very much for bringing it, Mr. Dewy. I couldn’t think
+where I had dropped it.”
+
+Now Dick, not being an experienced lover—indeed, never before having
+been engaged in the practice of love-making at all, except in a small
+schoolboy way—could not take advantage of the situation; and out came
+the blunder, which afterwards cost him so many bitter moments and a
+sleepless night:-
+
+“Good morning, Miss Day.”
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Dewy.”
+
+The gate was closed; she was gone; and Dick was standing outside,
+unchanged in his condition from what he had been before he called. Of
+course the Angel was not to blame—a young woman living alone in a house
+could not ask him indoors unless she had known him better—he should
+have kept her outside before floundering into that fatal farewell. He
+wished that before he called he had realized more fully than he did the
+pleasure of being about to call; and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+PART THE SECOND—SPRING
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+PASSING BY THE SCHOOL
+
+
+It followed that, as the spring advanced, Dick walked abroad much more
+frequently than had hitherto been usual with him, and was continually
+finding that his nearest way to or from home lay by the road which
+skirted the garden of the school. The first-fruits of his perseverance
+were that, on turning the angle on the nineteenth journey by that
+track, he saw Miss Fancy’s figure, clothed in a dark-gray dress,
+looking from a high open window upon the crown of his hat. The friendly
+greeting resulting from this rencounter was considered so valuable an
+elixir that Dick passed still oftener; and by the time he had almost
+trodden a little path under the fence where never a path was before, he
+was rewarded with an actual meeting face to face on the open road
+before her gate. This brought another meeting, and another, Fancy
+faintly showing by her bearing that it was a pleasure to her of some
+kind to see him there; but the sort of pleasure she derived, whether
+exultation at the hope her exceeding fairness inspired, or the true
+feeling which was alone Dick’s concern, he could not anyhow decide,
+although he meditated on her every little movement for hours after it
+was made.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+A MEETING OF THE QUIRE
+
+
+It was the evening of a fine spring day. The descending sun appeared as
+a nebulous blaze of amber light, its outline being lost in cloudy
+masses hanging round it, like wild locks of hair.
+
+The chief members of Mellstock parish choir were standing in a group in
+front of Mr. Penny’s workshop in the lower village. They were all
+brightly illuminated, and each was backed up by a shadow as long as a
+steeple; the lowness of the source of light rendering the brims of
+their hats of no use at all as a protection to the eyes.
+
+Mr. Penny’s was the last house in that part of the parish, and stood in
+a hollow by the roadside so that cart-wheels and horses’ legs were
+about level with the sill of his shop-window. This was low and wide,
+and was open from morning till evening, Mr. Penny himself being
+invariably seen working inside, like a framed portrait of a shoemaker
+by some modern Moroni. He sat facing the road, with a boot on his knees
+and the awl in his hand, only looking up for a moment as he stretched
+out his arms and bent forward at the pull, when his spectacles flashed
+in the passer’s face with a shine of flat whiteness, and then returned
+again to the boot as usual. Rows of lasts, small and large, stout and
+slender, covered the wall which formed the background, in the extreme
+shadow of which a kind of dummy was seen sitting, in the shape of an
+apprentice with a string tied round his hair (probably to keep it out
+of his eyes). He smiled at remarks that floated in from without, but
+was never known to answer them in Mr. Penny’s presence. Outside the
+window the upper-leather of a Wellington-boot was usually hung, pegged
+to a board as if to dry. No sign was over his door; in fact—as with old
+banks and mercantile houses—advertising in any shape was scorned, and
+it would have been felt as beneath his dignity to paint up, for the
+benefit of strangers, the name of an establishment whose trade came
+solely by connection based on personal respect.
+
+His visitors now came and stood on the outside of his window, sometimes
+leaning against the sill, sometimes moving a pace or two backwards and
+forwards in front of it. They talked with deliberate gesticulations to
+Mr. Penny, enthroned in the shadow of the interior.
+
+“I do like a man to stick to men who be in the same line o’ life—o’
+Sundays, anyway—that I do so.”
+
+“’Tis like all the doings of folk who don’t know what a day’s work is,
+that’s what I say.”
+
+“My belief is the man’s not to blame; ’tis _she—_she’s the bitter
+weed!”
+
+“No, not altogether. He’s a poor gawk-hammer. Look at his sermon
+yesterday.”
+
+“His sermon was well enough, a very good guessable sermon, only he
+couldn’t put it into words and speak it. That’s all was the matter wi’
+the sermon. He hadn’t been able to get it past his pen.”
+
+“Well—ay, the sermon might have been good; for, ’tis true, the sermon
+of Old Eccl’iastes himself lay in Eccl’iastes’s ink-bottle afore he got
+it out.”
+
+Mr. Penny, being in the act of drawing the last stitch tight, could
+afford time to look up and throw in a word at this point.
+
+“He’s no spouter—that must be said, ’a b’lieve.”
+
+“’Tis a terrible muddle sometimes with the man, as far as spout do go,”
+said Spinks.
+
+“Well, we’ll say nothing about that,” the tranter answered; “for I
+don’t believe ’twill make a penneth o’ difference to we poor martels
+here or hereafter whether his sermons be good or bad, my sonnies.”
+
+Mr. Penny made another hole with his awl, pushed in the thread, and
+looked up and spoke again at the extension of arms.
+
+“’Tis his goings-on, souls, that’s what it is.” He clenched his
+features for an Herculean addition to the ordinary pull, and continued,
+“The first thing he done when he came here was to be hot and strong
+about church business.”
+
+“True,” said Spinks; “that was the very first thing he done.”
+
+Mr. Penny, having now been offered the ear of the assembly, accepted
+it, ceased stitching, swallowed an unimportant quantity of air as if it
+were a pill, and continued:
+
+“The next thing he do do is to think about altering the church, until
+he found ’twould be a matter o’ cost and what not, and then not to
+think no more about it.”
+
+“True: that was the next thing he done.”
+
+“And the next thing was to tell the young chaps that they were not on
+no account to put their hats in the christening font during service.”
+
+“True.”
+
+“And then ’twas this, and then ’twas that, and now ’tis—”
+
+Words were not forcible enough to conclude the sentence, and Mr. Penny
+gave a huge pull to signify the concluding word.
+
+“Now ’tis to turn us out of the quire neck and crop,” said the tranter
+after an interval of half a minute, not by way of explaining the pause
+and pull, which had been quite understood, but as a means of keeping
+the subject well before the meeting.
+
+Mrs. Penny came to the door at this point in the discussion. Like all
+good wives, however much she was inclined to play the Tory to her
+husband’s Whiggism, and _vice versâ_, in times of peace, she coalesced
+with him heartily enough in time of war.
+
+“It must be owned he’s not all there,” she replied in a general way to
+the fragments of talk she had heard from indoors. “Far below poor Mr.
+Grinham” (the late vicar).
+
+“Ay, there was this to be said for he, that you were quite sure he’d
+never come mumbudgeting to see ye, just as you were in the middle of
+your work, and put you out with his fuss and trouble about ye.”
+
+“Never. But as for this new Mr. Maybold, though he mid be a very
+well-intending party in that respect, he’s unbearable; for as to
+sifting your cinders, scrubbing your floors, or emptying your slops,
+why, you can’t do it. I assure you I’ve not been able to empt them for
+several days, unless I throw ’em up the chimley or out of winder; for
+as sure as the sun you meet him at the door, coming to ask how you are,
+and ’tis such a confusing thing to meet a gentleman at the door when ye
+are in the mess o’ washing.”
+
+“’Tis only for want of knowing better, poor gentleman,” said the
+tranter. “His meaning’s good enough. Ay, your pa’son comes by fate:
+’tis heads or tails, like pitch-halfpenny, and no choosing; so we must
+take en as he is, my sonnies, and thank God he’s no worse, I suppose.”
+
+“I fancy I’ve seen him look across at Miss Day in a warmer way than
+Christianity asked for,” said Mrs. Penny musingly; “but I don’t quite
+like to say it.”
+
+“O no; there’s nothing in that,” said grandfather William.
+
+“If there’s nothing, we shall see nothing,” Mrs. Penny replied, in the
+tone of a woman who might possibly have private opinions still.
+
+“Ah, Mr. Grinham was the man!” said Bowman. “Why, he never troubled us
+wi’ a visit from year’s end to year’s end. You might go anywhere, do
+anything: you’d be sure never to see him.”
+
+“Yes, he was a right sensible pa’son,” said Michael. “He never entered
+our door but once in his life, and that was to tell my poor wife—ay,
+poor soul, dead and gone now, as we all shall!—that as she was such a’
+old aged person, and lived so far from the church, he didn’t at all
+expect her to come any more to the service.”
+
+“And ’a was a very jinerous gentleman about choosing the psalms and
+hymns o’ Sundays. ‘Confound ye,’ says he, ‘blare and scrape what ye
+will, but don’t bother me!’”
+
+“And he was a very honourable man in not wanting any of us to come and
+hear him if we were all on-end for a jaunt or spree, or to bring the
+babies to be christened if they were inclined to squalling. There’s
+good in a man’s not putting a parish to unnecessary trouble.”
+
+“And there’s this here man never letting us have a bit o’ peace; but
+keeping on about being good and upright till ’tis carried to such a
+pitch as I never see the like afore nor since!”
+
+“No sooner had he got here than he found the font wouldn’t hold water,
+as it hadn’t for years off and on; and when I told him that Mr. Grinham
+never minded it, but used to spet upon his vinger and christen ’em just
+as well, ’a said, ‘Good Heavens! Send for a workman immediate. What
+place have I come to!’ Which was no compliment to us, come to that.”
+
+“Still, for my part,” said old William, “though he’s arrayed against
+us, I like the hearty borussnorus ways of the new pa’son.”
+
+“You, ready to die for the quire,” said Bowman reproachfully, “to stick
+up for the quire’s enemy, William!”
+
+“Nobody will feel the loss of our church-work so much as I,” said the
+old man firmly; “that you d’all know. I’ve a-been in the quire man and
+boy ever since I was a chiel of eleven. But for all that ’tisn’t in me
+to call the man a bad man, because I truly and sincerely believe en to
+be a good young feller.”
+
+Some of the youthful sparkle that used to reside there animated
+William’s eye as he uttered the words, and a certain nobility of aspect
+was also imparted to him by the setting sun, which gave him a Titanic
+shadow at least thirty feet in length, stretching away to the east in
+outlines of imposing magnitude, his head finally terminating upon the
+trunk of a grand old oak-tree.
+
+“Mayble’s a hearty feller enough,” the tranter replied, “and will spak
+to you be you dirty or be you clane. The first time I met en was in a
+drong, and though ’a didn’t know me no more than the dead, ’a passed
+the time of day. ‘D’ye do?’ he said, says he, nodding his head. ‘A fine
+day.’ Then the second time I met en was full-buff in town street, when
+my breeches were tore into a long strent by getting through a copse of
+thorns and brimbles for a short cut home-along; and not wanting to
+disgrace the man by spaking in that state, I fixed my eye on the
+weathercock to let en pass me as a stranger. But no: ‘How d’ye do,
+Reuben?’ says he, right hearty, and shook my hand. If I’d been dressed
+in silver spangles from top to toe, the man couldn’t have been
+civiller.”
+
+At this moment Dick was seen coming up the village-street, and they
+turned and watched him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION
+
+
+“I’m afraid Dick’s a lost man,” said the tranter.
+
+“What?—no!” said Mail, implying by his manner that it was a far
+commoner thing for his ears to report what was not said than that his
+judgment should be at fault.
+
+“Ay,” said the tranter, still gazing at Dick’s unconscious advance. “I
+don’t at all like what I see! There’s too many o’ them looks out of the
+winder without noticing anything; too much shining of boots; too much
+peeping round corners; too much looking at the clock; telling about
+clever things _she_ did till you be sick of it; and then upon a hint to
+that effect a horrible silence about her. I’ve walked the path once in
+my life and know the country, neighbours; and Dick’s a lost man!” The
+tranter turned a quarter round and smiled a smile of miserable satire
+at the setting new moon, which happened to catch his eye.
+
+The others became far too serious at this announcement to allow them to
+speak; and they still regarded Dick in the distance.
+
+“’Twas his mother’s fault,” the tranter continued, “in asking the young
+woman to our party last Christmas. When I eyed the blue frock and light
+heels o’ the maid, I had my thoughts directly. ‘God bless thee, Dicky
+my sonny,’ I said to myself; ‘there’s a delusion for thee!’”
+
+“They seemed to be rather distant in manner last Sunday, I thought?”
+Mail tentatively observed, as became one who was not a member of the
+family.
+
+“Ay, that’s a part of the zickness. Distance belongs to it, slyness
+belongs to it, queerest things on earth belongs to it! There, ’tmay as
+well come early as late s’far as I know. The sooner begun, the sooner
+over; for come it will.”
+
+“The question I ask is,” said Mr. Spinks, connecting into one thread
+the two subjects of discourse, as became a man learned in rhetoric, and
+beating with his hand in a way which signified that the manner rather
+than the matter of his speech was to be observed, “how did Mr. Maybold
+know she could play the organ? You know we had it from her own lips, as
+far as lips go, that she has never, first or last, breathed such a
+thing to him; much less that she ever would play.”
+
+In the midst of this puzzle Dick joined the party, and the news which
+had caused such a convulsion among the ancient musicians was unfolded
+to him. “Well,” he said, blushing at the allusion to Miss Day, “I know
+by some words of hers that she has a particular wish not to play,
+because she is a friend of ours; and how the alteration comes, I don’t
+know.”
+
+“Now, this is my plan,” said the tranter, reviving the spirit of the
+discussion by the infusion of new ideas, as was his custom—“this is my
+plan; if you don’t like it, no harm’s done. We all know one another
+very well, don’t we, neighbours?”
+
+That they knew one another very well was received as a statement which,
+though familiar, should not be omitted in introductory speeches.
+
+“Then I say this”—and the tranter in his emphasis slapped down his hand
+on Mr. Spinks’s shoulder with a momentum of several pounds, upon which
+Mr. Spinks tried to look not in the least startled—“I say that we all
+move down-along straight as a line to Pa’son Mayble’s when the clock
+has gone six to-morrow night. There we one and all stand in the
+passage, then one or two of us go in and spak to en, man and man; and
+say, ‘Pa’son Mayble, every tradesman d’like to have his own way in his
+workshop, and Mellstock Church is yours. Instead of turning us out neck
+and crop, let us stay on till Christmas, and we’ll gie way to the young
+woman, Mr. Mayble, and make no more ado about it. And we shall always
+be quite willing to touch our hats when we meet ye, Mr. Mayble, just as
+before.’ That sounds very well? Hey?”
+
+“Proper well, in faith, Reuben Dewy.”
+
+“And we won’t sit down in his house; ’twould be looking too familiar
+when only just reconciled?”
+
+“No need at all to sit down. Just do our duty man and man, turn round,
+and march out—he’ll think all the more of us for it.”
+
+“I hardly think Leaf had better go wi’ us?” said Michael, turning to
+Leaf and taking his measure from top to bottom by the eye. “He’s so
+terrible silly that he might ruin the concern.”
+
+“He don’t want to go much; do ye, Thomas Leaf?” said William.
+
+“Hee-hee! no; I don’t want to. Only a teeny bit!”
+
+“I be mortal afeard, Leaf, that you’ll never be able to tell how many
+cuts d’take to sharpen a spar,” said Mail.
+
+“I never had no head, never! that’s how it happened to happen,
+hee-hee!”
+
+They all assented to this, not with any sense of humiliating Leaf by
+disparaging him after an open confession, but because it was an
+accepted thing that Leaf didn’t in the least mind having no head, that
+deficiency of his being an unimpassioned matter of parish history.
+
+“But I can sing my treble!” continued Thomas Leaf, quite delighted at
+being called a fool in such a friendly way; “I can sing my treble as
+well as any maid, or married woman either, and better! And if Jim had
+lived, I should have had a clever brother! To-morrow is poor Jim’s
+birthday. He’d ha’ been twenty-six if he’d lived till to-morrow.”
+
+“You always seem very sorry for Jim,” said old William musingly.
+
+“Ah! I do. Such a stay to mother as he’d always ha’ been! She’d never
+have had to work in her old age if he had continued strong, poor Jim!”
+
+“What was his age when ’a died?”
+
+“Four hours and twenty minutes, poor Jim. ’A was born as might be at
+night; and ’a didn’t last as might be till the morning. No, ’a didn’t
+last. Mother called en Jim on the day that would ha’ been his
+christening day if he had lived; and she’s always thinking about en.
+You see he died so very young.”
+
+“Well, ’twas rather youthful,” said Michael.
+
+“Now to my mind that woman is very romantical on the matter o’
+children?” said the tranter, his eye sweeping his audience.
+
+“Ah, well she mid be,” said Leaf. “She had twelve regular one after
+another, and they all, except myself, died very young; either before
+they was born or just afterwards.”
+
+“Pore feller, too. I suppose th’st want to come wi’ us?” the tranter
+murmured.
+
+“Well, Leaf, you shall come wi’ us as yours is such a melancholy
+family,” said old William rather sadly.
+
+“I never see such a melancholy family as that afore in my life,” said
+Reuben. “There’s Leaf’s mother, poor woman! Every morning I see her
+eyes mooning out through the panes of glass like a pot-sick
+winder-flower; and as Leaf sings a very high treble, and we don’t know
+what we should do without en for upper G, we’ll let en come as a trate,
+poor feller.”
+
+“Ay, we’ll let en come, ’a b’lieve,” said Mr. Penny, looking up, as the
+pull happened to be at that moment.
+
+“Now,” continued the tranter, dispersing by a new tone of voice these
+digressions about Leaf; “as to going to see the pa’son, one of us might
+call and ask en his meaning, and ’twould be just as well done; but it
+will add a bit of flourish to the cause if the quire waits on him as a
+body. Then the great thing to mind is, not for any of our fellers to be
+nervous; so before starting we’ll one and all come to my house and have
+a rasher of bacon; then every man-jack het a pint of cider into his
+inside; then we’ll warm up an extra drop wi’ some mead and a bit of
+ginger; every one take a thimbleful—just a glimmer of a drop, mind ye,
+no more, to finish off his inner man—and march off to Pa’son Mayble.
+Why, sonnies, a man’s not himself till he is fortified wi’ a bit and a
+drop? We shall be able to look any gentleman in the face then without
+shrink or shame.”
+
+Mail recovered from a deep meditation and downward glance into the
+earth in time to give a cordial approval to this line of action, and
+the meeting adjourned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+THE INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR
+
+
+At six o’clock the next day, the whole body of men in the choir emerged
+from the tranter’s door, and advanced with a firm step down the lane.
+This dignity of march gradually became obliterated as they went on, and
+by the time they reached the hill behind the vicarage a faint
+resemblance to a flock of sheep might have been discerned in the
+venerable party. A word from the tranter, however, set them right
+again; and as they descended the hill, the regular tramp, tramp, tramp
+of the united feet was clearly audible from the vicarage garden. At the
+opening of the gate there was another short interval of irregular
+shuffling, caused by a rather peculiar habit the gate had, when swung
+open quickly, of striking against the bank and slamming back into the
+opener’s face.
+
+“Now keep step again, will ye?” said the tranter. “It looks better, and
+more becomes the high class of arrant which has brought us here.” Thus
+they advanced to the door.
+
+At Reuben’s ring the more modest of the group turned aside, adjusted
+their hats, and looked critically at any shrub that happened to lie in
+the line of vision; endeavouring thus to give a person who chanced to
+look out of the windows the impression that their request, whatever it
+was going to be, was rather a casual thought occurring whilst they were
+inspecting the vicar’s shrubbery and grass-plot than a predetermined
+thing. The tranter, who, coming frequently to the vicarage with
+luggage, coals, firewood, etc., had none of the awe for its precincts
+that filled the breasts of most of the others, fixed his eyes firmly on
+the knocker during this interval of waiting. The knocker having no
+characteristic worthy of notice, he relinquished it for a knot in one
+of the door-panels, and studied the winding lines of the grain.
+
+“O, sir, please, here’s Tranter Dewy, and old William Dewy, and young
+Richard Dewy, O, and all the quire too, sir, except the boys, a-come to
+see you!” said Mr. Maybold’s maid-servant to Mr. Maybold, the pupils of
+her eyes dilating like circles in a pond.
+
+“All the choir?” said the astonished vicar (who may be shortly
+described as a good-looking young man with courageous eyes, timid
+mouth, and neutral nose), abandoning his writing and looking at his
+parlour-maid after speaking, like a man who fancied he had seen her
+face before but couldn’t recollect where.
+
+“And they looks very firm, and Tranter Dewy do turn neither to the
+right hand nor to the left, but stares quite straight and solemn with
+his mind made up!”
+
+“O, all the choir,” repeated the vicar to himself, trying by that
+simple device to trot out his thoughts on what the choir could come
+for.
+
+“Yes; every man-jack of ’em, as I be alive!” (The parlour-maid was
+rather local in manner, having in fact been raised in the same
+village.) “Really, sir, ’tis thoughted by many in town and country
+that—”
+
+“Town and country!—Heavens, I had no idea that I was public property in
+this way!” said the vicar, his face acquiring a hue somewhere between
+that of the rose and the peony. “Well, ‘It is thought in town and
+country that—’”
+
+“It is thought that you be going to get it hot and strong!—excusen my
+incivility, sir.”
+
+The vicar suddenly recalled to his recollection that he had long ago
+settled it to be decidedly a mistake to encourage his servant Jane in
+giving personal opinions. The servant Jane saw by the vicar’s face that
+he recalled this fact to his mind; and removing her forehead from the
+edge of the door, and rubbing away the indent that edge had made,
+vanished into the passage as Mr. Maybold remarked, “Show them in,
+Jane.”
+
+A few minutes later a shuffling and jostling (reduced to as refined a
+form as was compatible with the nature of shuffles and jostles) was
+heard in the passage; then an earnest and prolonged wiping of shoes,
+conveying the notion that volumes of mud had to be removed; but the
+roads being so clean that not a particle of dirt appeared on the
+choir’s boots (those of all the elder members being newly oiled, and
+Dick’s brightly polished), this wiping might have been set down simply
+as a desire to show that respectable men had no wish to take a mean
+advantage of clean roads for curtailing proper ceremonies. Next there
+came a powerful whisper from the same quarter:-
+
+“Now stand stock-still there, my sonnies, one and all! And don’t make
+no noise; and keep your backs close to the wall, that company may pass
+in and out easy if they want to without squeezing through ye: and we
+two are enough to go in.” . . . The voice was the tranter’s.
+
+“I wish I could go in too and see the sight!” said a reedy voice—that
+of Leaf.
+
+“’Tis a pity Leaf is so terrible silly, or else he might,” said
+another.
+
+“I never in my life seed a quire go into a study to have it out about
+the playing and singing,” pleaded Leaf; “and I should like to see it
+just once!”
+
+“Very well; we’ll let en come in,” said the tranter. “You’ll be like
+chips in porridge, {1} Leaf—neither good nor hurt. All right, my sonny,
+come along;” and immediately himself, old William, and Leaf appeared in
+the room.
+
+“We took the liberty to come and see ’ee, sir,” said Reuben, letting
+his hat hang in his left hand, and touching with his right the brim of
+an imaginary one on his head. “We’ve come to see ’ee, sir, man and man,
+and no offence, I hope?”
+
+“None at all,” said Mr. Maybold.
+
+“This old aged man standing by my side is father; William Dewy by name,
+sir.”
+
+“Yes; I see it is,” said the vicar, nodding aside to old William, who
+smiled.
+
+“I thought you mightn’t know en without his bass-viol,” the tranter
+apologized. “You see, he always wears his best clothes and his
+bass-viol a-Sundays, and it do make such a difference in a’ old man’s
+look.”
+
+“And who’s that young man?” the vicar said.
+
+“Tell the pa’son yer name,” said the tranter, turning to Leaf, who
+stood with his elbows nailed back to a bookcase.
+
+“Please, Thomas Leaf, your holiness!” said Leaf, trembling.
+
+“I hope you’ll excuse his looks being so very thin,” continued the
+tranter deprecatingly, turning to the vicar again. “But ’tisn’t his
+fault, poor feller. He’s rather silly by nature, and could never get
+fat; though he’s a’ excellent treble, and so we keep him on.”
+
+“I never had no head, sir,” said Leaf, eagerly grasping at this
+opportunity for being forgiven his existence.
+
+“Ah, poor young man!” said Mr. Maybold.
+
+“Bless you, he don’t mind it a bit, if you don’t, sir,” said the
+tranter assuringly. “Do ye, Leaf?”
+
+“Not I—not a morsel—hee, hee! I was afeard it mightn’t please your
+holiness, sir, that’s all.”
+
+The tranter, finding Leaf get on so very well through his negative
+qualities, was tempted in a fit of generosity to advance him still
+higher, by giving him credit for positive ones. “He’s very clever for a
+silly chap, good-now, sir. You never knowed a young feller keep his
+smock-frocks so clane; very honest too. His ghastly looks is all there
+is against en, poor feller; but we can’t help our looks, you know,
+sir.”
+
+“True: we cannot. You live with your mother, I think, Leaf?”
+
+The tranter looked at Leaf to express that the most friendly assistant
+to his tongue could do no more for him now, and that he must be left to
+his own resources.
+
+“Yes, sir: a widder, sir. Ah, if brother Jim had lived she’d have had a
+clever son to keep her without work!”
+
+“Indeed! poor woman. Give her this half-crown. I’ll call and see your
+mother.”
+
+“Say, ‘Thank you, sir,’” the tranter whispered imperatively towards
+Leaf.
+
+“Thank you, sir!” said Leaf.
+
+“That’s it, then; sit down, Leaf,” said Mr. Maybold.
+
+“Y-yes, sir!”
+
+The tranter cleared his throat after this accidental parenthesis about
+Leaf, rectified his bodily position, and began his speech.
+
+“Mr. Mayble,” he said, “I hope you’ll excuse my common way, but I
+always like to look things in the face.”
+
+Reuben made a point of fixing this sentence in the vicar’s mind by
+gazing hard at him at the conclusion of it, and then out of the window.
+
+Mr. Maybold and old William looked in the same direction, apparently
+under the impression that the things’ faces alluded to were there
+visible.
+
+“What I have been thinking”—the tranter implied by this use of the past
+tense that he was hardly so discourteous as to be positively thinking
+it then—“is that the quire ought to be gie’d a little time, and not
+done away wi’ till Christmas, as a fair thing between man and man. And,
+Mr. Mayble, I hope you’ll excuse my common way?”
+
+“I will, I will. Till Christmas,” the vicar murmured, stretching the
+two words to a great length, as if the distance to Christmas might be
+measured in that way. “Well, I want you all to understand that I have
+no personal fault to find, and that I don’t wish to change the church
+music by forcible means, or in a way which should hurt the feelings of
+any parishioners. Why I have at last spoken definitely on the subject
+is that a player has been brought under—I may say pressed upon—my
+notice several times by one of the churchwardens. And as the organ I
+brought with me is here waiting” (pointing to a cabinet-organ standing
+in the study), “there is no reason for longer delay.”
+
+“We made a mistake I suppose then, sir? But we understood the young
+woman didn’t want to play particularly?” The tranter arranged his
+countenance to signify that he did not want to be inquisitive in the
+least.
+
+“No, nor did she. Nor did I definitely wish her to just yet; for your
+playing is very good. But, as I said, one of the churchwardens has been
+so anxious for a change, that, as matters stand, I couldn’t
+consistently refuse my consent.”
+
+Now for some reason or other, the vicar at this point seemed to have an
+idea that he had prevaricated; and as an honest vicar, it was a thing
+he determined not to do. He corrected himself, blushing as he did so,
+though why he should blush was not known to Reuben.
+
+“Understand me rightly,” he said: “the church-warden proposed it to me,
+but I had thought myself of getting—Miss Day to play.”
+
+“Which churchwarden might that be who proposed her, sir?—excusing my
+common way.” The tranter intimated by his tone that, so far from being
+inquisitive, he did not even wish to ask a single question.
+
+“Mr. Shiner, I believe.”
+
+“Clk, my sonny!—beg your pardon, sir, that’s only a form of words of
+mine, and slipped out accidental—he nourishes enmity against us for
+some reason or another; perhaps because we played rather hard upon en
+Christmas night. Anyhow ’tis certain sure that Mr. Shiner’s real love
+for music of a particular kind isn’t his reason. He’ve no more ear than
+that chair. But let that be.”
+
+“I don’t think you should conclude that, because Mr. Shiner wants a
+different music, he has any ill-feeling for you. I myself, I must own,
+prefer organ-music to any other. I consider it most proper, and feel
+justified in endeavouring to introduce it; but then, although other
+music is better, I don’t say yours is not good.”
+
+“Well then, Mr. Mayble, since death’s to be, we’ll die like men any day
+you name (excusing my common way).”
+
+Mr. Maybold bowed his head.
+
+“All we thought was, that for us old ancient singers to be choked off
+quiet at no time in particular, as now, in the Sundays after Easter,
+would seem rather mean in the eyes of other parishes, sir. But if we
+fell glorious with a bit of a flourish at Christmas, we should have a
+respectable end, and not dwindle away at some nameless paltry
+second-Sunday-after or Sunday-next-before something, that’s got no name
+of his own.”
+
+“Yes, yes, that’s reasonable; I own it’s reasonable.”
+
+“You see, Mr. Mayble, we’ve got—do I keep you inconvenient long, sir?”
+
+“No, no.”
+
+“We’ve got our feelings—father there especially.”
+
+The tranter, in his earnestness, had advanced his person to within six
+inches of the vicar’s.
+
+“Certainly, certainly!” said Mr. Maybold, retreating a little for
+convenience of seeing. “You are all enthusiastic on the subject, and I
+am all the more gratified to find you so. A Laodicean lukewarmness is
+worse than wrongheadedness itself.”
+
+“Exactly, sir. In fact now, Mr. Mayble,” Reuben continued, more
+impressively, and advancing a little closer still to the vicar, “father
+there is a perfect figure o’ wonder, in the way of being fond of
+music!”
+
+The vicar drew back a little further, the tranter suddenly also
+standing back a foot or two, to throw open the view of his father, and
+pointing to him at the same time.
+
+Old William moved uneasily in the large chair, and with a minute smile
+on the mere edge of his lips, for good-manners, said he was indeed very
+fond of tunes.
+
+“Now, you see exactly how it is,” Reuben continued, appealing to Mr.
+Maybold’s sense of justice by looking sideways into his eyes. The vicar
+seemed to see how it was so well that the gratified tranter walked up
+to him again with even vehement eagerness, so that his
+waistcoat-buttons almost rubbed against the vicar’s as he continued:
+“As to father, if you or I, or any man or woman of the present
+generation, at the time music is a-playing, was to shake your fist in
+father’s face, as may be this way, and say, ‘Don’t you be delighted
+with that music!’”—the tranter went back to where Leaf was sitting, and
+held his fist so close to Leaf’s face that the latter pressed his head
+back against the wall: “All right, Leaf, my sonny, I won’t hurt you;
+’tis just to show my meaning to Mr. Mayble.—As I was saying, if you or
+I, or any man, was to shake your fist in father’s face this way, and
+say, ‘William, your life or your music!’ he’d say, ‘My life!’ Now
+that’s father’s nature all over; and you see, sir, it must hurt the
+feelings of a man of that kind for him and his bass-viol to be done
+away wi’ neck and crop.”
+
+The tranter went back to the vicar’s front and again looked earnestly
+at his face.
+
+“True, true, Dewy,” Mr. Maybold answered, trying to withdraw his head
+and shoulders without moving his feet; but finding this impracticable,
+edging back another inch. These frequent retreats had at last jammed
+Mr. Maybold between his easy-chair and the edge of the table.
+
+And at the moment of the announcement of the choir, Mr. Maybold had
+just re-dipped the pen he was using; at their entry, instead of wiping
+it, he had laid it on the table with the nib overhanging. At the last
+retreat his coat-tails came in contact with the pen, and down it
+rolled, first against the back of the chair, thence turning a
+summersault into the seat, thence falling to the floor with a rattle.
+
+The vicar stooped for his pen, and the tranter, wishing to show that,
+however great their ecclesiastical differences, his mind was not so
+small as to let this affect his social feelings, stooped also.
+
+“And have you anything else you want to explain to me, Dewy?” said Mr.
+Maybold from under the table.
+
+“Nothing, sir. And, Mr. Mayble, you be not offended? I hope you see our
+desire is reason?” said the tranter from under the chair.
+
+“Quite, quite; and I shouldn’t think of refusing to listen to such a
+reasonable request,” the vicar replied. Seeing that Reuben had secured
+the pen, he resumed his vertical position, and added, “You know, Dewy,
+it is often said how difficult a matter it is to act up to our
+convictions and please all parties. It may be said with equal truth,
+that it is difficult for a man of any appreciativeness to have
+convictions at all. Now in my case, I see right in you, and right in
+Shiner. I see that violins are good, and that an organ is good; and
+when we introduce the organ, it will not be that fiddles were bad, but
+that an organ was better. That you’ll clearly understand, Dewy?”
+
+“I will; and thank you very much for such feelings, sir. Piph-h-h-h!
+How the blood do get into my head, to be sure, whenever I quat down
+like that!” said Reuben, who having also risen to his feet stuck the
+pen vertically in the inkstand and almost through the bottom, that it
+might not roll down again under any circumstances whatever.
+
+Now the ancient body of minstrels in the passage felt their curiosity
+surging higher and higher as the minutes passed. Dick, not having much
+affection for this errand, soon grew tired, and went away in the
+direction of the school. Yet their sense of propriety would probably
+have restrained them from any attempt to discover what was going on in
+the study had not the vicar’s pen fallen to the floor. The conviction
+that the movement of chairs, etc., necessitated by the search, could
+only have been caused by the catastrophe of a bloody fight beginning,
+overpowered all other considerations; and they advanced to the door,
+which had only just fallen to. Thus, when Mr. Maybold raised his eyes
+after the stooping he beheld glaring through the door Mr. Penny in
+full-length portraiture, Mail’s face and shoulders above Mr. Penny’s
+head, Spinks’s forehead and eyes over Mail’s crown, and a fractional
+part of Bowman’s countenance under Spinks’s arm—crescent-shaped
+portions of other heads and faces being visible behind these—the whole
+dozen and odd eyes bristling with eager inquiry.
+
+Mr. Penny, as is the case with excitable boot-makers and men, seeing
+the vicar look at him and hearing no word spoken, thought it incumbent
+upon himself to say something of any kind. Nothing suggested itself
+till he had looked for about half a minute at the vicar.
+
+“You’ll excuse my naming of it, sir,” he said, regarding with much
+commiseration the mere surface of the vicar’s face; “but perhaps you
+don’t know that your chin have bust out a-bleeding where you cut
+yourself a-shaving this morning, sir.”
+
+“Now, that was the stooping, depend upon’t,” the tranter suggested,
+also looking with much interest at the vicar’s chin. “Blood always will
+bust out again if you hang down the member that’s been bleeding.”
+
+Old William raised his eyes and watched the vicar’s bleeding chin
+likewise; and Leaf advanced two or three paces from the bookcase,
+absorbed in the contemplation of the same phenomenon, with parted lips
+and delighted eyes.
+
+“Dear me, dear me!” said Mr. Maybold hastily, looking very red, and
+brushing his chin with his hand, then taking out his handkerchief and
+wiping the place.
+
+“That’s it, sir; all right again now, ’a b’lieve—a mere nothing,” said
+Mr. Penny. “A little bit of fur off your hat will stop it in a minute
+if it should bust out again.”
+
+“I’ll let ’ee have a bit off mine,” said Reuben, to show his good
+feeling; “my hat isn’t so new as yours, sir, and ’twon’t hurt mine a
+bit.”
+
+“No, no; thank you, thank you,” Mr. Maybold again nervously replied.
+
+“’Twas rather a deep cut seemingly?” said Reuben, feeling these to be
+the kindest and best remarks he could make.
+
+“O, no; not particularly.”
+
+“Well, sir, your hand will shake sometimes a-shaving, and just when it
+comes into your head that you may cut yourself, there’s the blood.”
+
+“I have been revolving in my mind that question of the time at which we
+make the change,” said Mr. Maybold, “and I know you’ll meet me
+half-way. I think Christmas-day as much too late for me as the present
+time is too early for you. I suggest Michaelmas or thereabout as a
+convenient time for both parties; for I think your objection to a
+Sunday which has no name is not one of any real weight.”
+
+“Very good, sir. I suppose mortal men mustn’t expect their own way
+entirely; and I express in all our names that we’ll make shift and be
+satisfied with what you say.” The tranter touched the brim of his
+imaginary hat again, and all the choir did the same. “About Michaelmas,
+then, as far as you are concerned, sir, and then we make room for the
+next generation.”
+
+“About Michaelmas,” said the vicar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+RETURNING HOME WARD
+
+
+“‘A took it very well, then?” said Mail, as they all walked up the
+hill.
+
+“He behaved like a man, ’a did so,” said the tranter. “And I’m glad
+we’ve let en know our minds. And though, beyond that, we ha’n’t got
+much by going, ’twas worth while. He won’t forget it. Yes, he took it
+very well. Supposing this tree here was Pa’son Mayble, and I standing
+here, and thik gr’t stone is father sitting in the easy-chair. ‘Dewy,’
+says he, ‘I don’t wish to change the church music in a forcible way.’”
+
+“That was very nice o’ the man, even though words be wind.”
+
+“Proper nice—out and out nice. The fact is,” said Reuben
+confidentially, “’tis how you take a man. Everybody must be managed.
+Queens must be managed: kings must be managed; for men want managing
+almost as much as women, and that’s saying a good deal.”
+
+“’Tis truly!” murmured the husbands.
+
+“Pa’son Mayble and I were as good friends all through it as if we’d
+been sworn brothers. Ay, the man’s well enough; ’tis what’s put in his
+head that spoils him, and that’s why we’ve got to go.”
+
+“There’s really no believing half you hear about people nowadays.”
+
+“Bless ye, my sonnies! ’tisn’t the pa’son’s move at all. That gentleman
+over there” (the tranter nodded in the direction of Shiner’s farm) “is
+at the root of the mischty.”
+
+“What! Shiner?”
+
+“Ay; and I see what the pa’son don’t see. Why, Shiner is for putting
+forward that young woman that only last night I was saying was our
+Dick’s sweet-heart, but I suppose can’t be, and making much of her in
+the sight of the congregation, and thinking he’ll win her by showing
+her off. Well, perhaps ’a woll.”
+
+“Then the music is second to the woman, the other churchwarden is
+second to Shiner, the pa’son is second to the churchwardens, and God
+A’mighty is nowhere at all.”
+
+“That’s true; and you see,” continued Reuben, “at the very beginning it
+put me in a stud as to how to quarrel wi’ en. In short, to save my
+soul, I couldn’t quarrel wi’ such a civil man without belying my
+conscience. Says he to father there, in a voice as quiet as a lamb’s,
+‘William, you are a’ old aged man, as all shall be, so sit down in my
+easy-chair, and rest yourself.’ And down father zot. I could fain ha’
+laughed at thee, father; for thou’st take it so unconcerned at first,
+and then looked so frightened when the chair-bottom sunk in.”
+
+“You see,” said old William, hastening to explain, “I was scared to
+find the bottom gie way—what should I know o’ spring bottoms?—and
+thought I had broke it down: and of course as to breaking down a man’s
+chair, I didn’t wish any such thing.”
+
+“And, neighbours, when a feller, ever so much up for a miff, d’see his
+own father sitting in his enemy’s easy-chair, and a poor chap like Leaf
+made the best of, as if he almost had brains—why, it knocks all the
+wind out of his sail at once: it did out of mine.”
+
+“If that young figure of fun—Fance Day, I mean,” said Bowman, “hadn’t
+been so mighty forward wi’ showing herself off to Shiner and Dick and
+the rest, ’tis my belief we should never ha’ left the gallery.”
+
+“’Tis my belief that though Shiner fired the bullets, the parson made
+’em,” said Mr. Penny. “My wife sticks to it that he’s in love wi’ her.”
+
+“That’s a thing we shall never know. I can’t onriddle her, nohow.”
+
+“Thou’st ought to be able to onriddle such a little chiel as she,” the
+tranter observed.
+
+“The littler the maid, the bigger the riddle, to my mind. And coming of
+such a stock, too, she may well be a twister.”
+
+“Yes; Geoffrey Day is a clever man if ever there was one. Never says
+anything: not he.”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“You might live wi’ that man, my sonnies, a hundred years, and never
+know there was anything in him.”
+
+“Ay; one o’ these up-country London ink-bottle chaps would call
+Geoffrey a fool.”
+
+“Ye never find out what’s in that man: never,” said Spinks. “Close? ah,
+he is close! He can hold his tongue well. That man’s dumbness is
+wonderful to listen to.”
+
+“There’s so much sense in it. Every moment of it is brimmen over wi’
+sound understanding.”
+
+“’A can hold his tongue very clever—very clever truly,” echoed Leaf.
+“’A do look at me as if ’a could see my thoughts running round like the
+works of a clock.”
+
+“Well, all will agree that the man can halt well in his talk, be it a
+long time or be it a short time. And though we can’t expect his
+daughter to inherit his closeness, she may have a few dribblets from
+his sense.”
+
+“And his pocket, perhaps.”
+
+“Yes; the nine hundred pound that everybody says he’s worth; but I call
+it four hundred and fifty; for I never believe more than half I hear.”
+
+“Well, he’ve made a pound or two, and I suppose the maid will have it,
+since there’s nobody else. But ’tis rather sharp upon her, if she’s
+been born to fortune, to bring her up as if not born for it, and
+letting her work so hard.”
+
+“’Tis all upon his principle. A long-headed feller!”
+
+“Ah,” murmured Spinks, “’twould be sharper upon her if she were born
+for fortune, and not to it! I suffer from that affliction.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+YALBURY WOOD AND THE KEEPER’S HOUSE
+
+
+A mood of blitheness rarely experienced even by young men was Dick’s on
+the following Monday morning. It was the week after the Easter
+holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light
+spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they
+streamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone
+on the grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than
+as an accustomed proprietor. His errand was to fetch Fancy, and some
+additional household goods, from her father’s house in the neighbouring
+parish to her dwelling at Mellstock. The distant view was darkly shaded
+with clouds; but the nearer parts of the landscape were whitely
+illumined by the visible rays of the sun streaming down across the
+heavy gray shade behind.
+
+The tranter had not yet told his son of the state of Shiner’s heart
+that had been suggested to him by Shiner’s movements. He preferred to
+let such delicate affairs right themselves; experience having taught
+him that the uncertain phenomenon of love, as it existed in other
+people, was not a groundwork upon which a single action of his own life
+could be founded.
+
+Geoffrey Day lived in the depths of Yalbury Wood, which formed portion
+of one of the outlying estates of the Earl of Wessex, to whom Day was
+head game-keeper, timber-steward, and general overlooker for this
+district. The wood was intersected by the highway from Casterbridge to
+London at a place not far from the house, and some trees had of late
+years been felled between its windows and the ascent of Yalbury Hill,
+to give the solitary cottager a glimpse of the passers-by.
+
+It was a satisfaction to walk into the keeper’s house, even as a
+stranger, on a fine spring morning like the present. A curl of
+wood-smoke came from the chimney, and drooped over the roof like a blue
+feather in a lady’s hat; and the sun shone obliquely upon the patch of
+grass in front, which reflected its brightness through the open doorway
+and up the staircase opposite, lighting up each riser with a shiny
+green radiance, and leaving the top of each step in shade.
+
+The window-sill of the front room was between four and five feet from
+the floor, dropping inwardly to a broad low bench, over which, as well
+as over the whole surface of the wall beneath, there always hung a deep
+shade, which was considered objectionable on every ground save one,
+namely, that the perpetual sprinkling of seeds and water by the caged
+canary above was not noticed as an eyesore by visitors. The window was
+set with thickly-leaded diamond glazing, formed, especially in the
+lower panes, of knotty glass of various shades of green. Nothing was
+better known to Fancy than the extravagant manner in which these
+circular knots or eyes distorted everything seen through them from the
+outside—lifting hats from heads, shoulders from bodies; scattering the
+spokes of cart-wheels, and bending the straight fir-trunks into
+semicircles. The ceiling was carried by a beam traversing its midst,
+from the side of which projected a large nail, used solely and
+constantly as a peg for Geoffrey’s hat; the nail was arched by a
+rainbow-shaped stain, imprinted by the brim of the said hat when it was
+hung there dripping wet.
+
+The most striking point about the room was the furniture. This was a
+repetition upon inanimate objects of the old principle introduced by
+Noah, consisting for the most part of two articles of every sort. The
+duplicate system of furnishing owed its existence to the forethought of
+Fancy’s mother, exercised from the date of Fancy’s birthday onwards.
+The arrangement spoke for itself: nobody who knew the tone of the
+household could look at the goods without being aware that the second
+set was a provision for Fancy, when she should marry and have a house
+of her own. The most noticeable instance was a pair of green-faced
+eight-day clocks, ticking alternately, which were severally two and
+half minutes and three minutes striking the hour of twelve, one
+proclaiming, in Italian flourishes, Thomas Wood as the name of its
+maker, and the other—arched at the top, and altogether of more cynical
+appearance—that of Ezekiel Saunders. They were two departed clockmakers
+of Casterbridge, whose desperate rivalry throughout their lives was
+nowhere more emphatically perpetuated than here at Geoffrey’s. These
+chief specimens of the marriage provision were supported on the right
+by a couple of kitchen dressers, each fitted complete with their cups,
+dishes, and plates, in their turn followed by two dumb-waiters, two
+family Bibles, two warming-pans, and two intermixed sets of chairs.
+
+But the position last reached—the chimney-corner—was, after all, the
+most attractive side of the parallelogram. It was large enough to
+admit, in addition to Geoffrey himself, Geoffrey’s wife, her chair, and
+her work-table, entirely within the line of the mantel, without danger
+or even inconvenience from the heat of the fire; and was spacious
+enough overhead to allow of the insertion of wood poles for the hanging
+of bacon, which were cloaked with long shreds of soot, floating on the
+draught like the tattered banners on the walls of ancient aisles.
+
+These points were common to most chimney corners of the neighbourhood;
+but one feature there was which made Geoffrey’s fireside not only an
+object of interest to casual aristocratic visitors—to whom every
+cottage fireside was more or less a curiosity—but the admiration of
+friends who were accustomed to fireplaces of the ordinary hamlet model.
+This peculiarity was a little window in the chimney-back, almost over
+the fire, around which the smoke crept caressingly when it left the
+perpendicular course. The window-board was curiously stamped with black
+circles, burnt thereon by the heated bottoms of drinking-cups, which
+had rested there after previously standing on the hot ashes of the
+hearth for the purpose of warming their contents, the result giving to
+the ledge the look of an envelope which has passed through innumerable
+post-offices.
+
+Fancy was gliding about the room preparing dinner, her head inclining
+now to the right, now to the left, and singing the tips and ends of
+tunes that sprang up in her mind like mushrooms. The footsteps of Mrs.
+Day could be heard in the room overhead. Fancy went finally to the
+door.
+
+“Father! Dinner.”
+
+A tall spare figure was seen advancing by the window with periodical
+steps, and the keeper entered from the garden. He appeared to be a man
+who was always looking down, as if trying to recollect something he
+said yesterday. The surface of his face was fissured rather than
+wrinkled, and over and under his eyes were folds which seemed as a kind
+of exterior eyelids. His nose had been thrown backwards by a blow in a
+poaching fray, so that when the sun was low and shining in his face,
+people could see far into his head. There was in him a quiet grimness,
+which would in his moments of displeasure have become surliness, had it
+not been tempered by honesty of soul, and which was often
+wrongheadedness because not allied with subtlety.
+
+Although not an extraordinarily taciturn man among friends slightly
+richer than himself, he never wasted words upon outsiders, and to his
+trapper Enoch his ideas were seldom conveyed by any other means than
+nods and shakes of the head. Their long acquaintance with each other’s
+ways, and the nature of their labours, rendered words between them
+almost superfluous as vehicles of thought, whilst the coincidence of
+their horizons, and the astonishing equality of their social views, by
+startling the keeper from time to time as very damaging to the theory
+of master and man, strictly forbade any indulgence in words as
+courtesies.
+
+Behind the keeper came Enoch (who had been assisting in the garden) at
+the well-considered chronological distance of three minutes—an interval
+of non-appearance on the trapper’s part not arrived at without some
+reflection. Four minutes had been found to express indifference to
+indoor arrangements, and simultaneousness had implied too great an
+anxiety about meals.
+
+“A little earlier than usual, Fancy,” the keeper said, as he sat down
+and looked at the clocks. “That Ezekiel Saunders o’ thine is tearing on
+afore Thomas Wood again.”
+
+“I kept in the middle between them,” said Fancy, also looking at the
+two clocks.
+
+“Better stick to Thomas,” said her father. “There’s a healthy beat in
+Thomas that would lead a man to swear by en offhand. He is as true as
+the town time. How is it your stap-mother isn’t here?”
+
+As Fancy was about to reply, the rattle of wheels was heard, and
+“Weh-hey, Smart!” in Mr. Richard Dewy’s voice rolled into the cottage
+from round the corner of the house.
+
+“Hullo! there’s Dewy’s cart come for thee, Fancy—Dick driving—afore
+time, too. Well, ask the lad to have pot-luck with us.”
+
+Dick on entering made a point of implying by his general bearing that
+he took an interest in Fancy simply as in one of the same race and
+country as himself; and they all sat down. Dick could have wished her
+manner had not been so entirely free from all apparent consciousness of
+those accidental meetings of theirs: but he let the thought pass. Enoch
+sat diagonally at a table afar off, under the corner cupboard, and
+drank his cider from a long perpendicular pint cup, having tall
+fir-trees done in brown on its sides. He threw occasional remarks into
+the general tide of conversation, and with this advantage to himself,
+that he participated in the pleasures of a talk (slight as it was) at
+meal-times, without saddling himself with the responsibility of
+sustaining it.
+
+“Why don’t your stap-mother come down, Fancy?” said Geoffrey. “You’ll
+excuse her, Mister Dick, she’s a little queer sometimes.”
+
+“O yes,—quite,” said Richard, as if he were in the habit of excusing
+people every day.
+
+“She d’belong to that class of womankind that become second wives: a
+rum class rather.”
+
+“Indeed,” said Dick, with sympathy for an indefinite something.
+
+“Yes; and ’tis trying to a female, especially if you’ve been a first
+wife, as she hev.”
+
+“Very trying it must be.”
+
+“Yes: you see her first husband was a young man, who let her go too
+far; in fact, she used to kick up Bob’s-a-dying at the least thing in
+the world. And when I’d married her and found it out, I thought, thinks
+I, ‘’Tis too late now to begin to cure ’e;’ and so I let her bide. But
+she’s queer,—very queer, at times!”
+
+“I’m sorry to hear that.”
+
+“Yes: there; wives be such a provoking class o’ society, because though
+they be never right, they be never more than half wrong.”
+
+Fancy seemed uneasy under the infliction of this household moralizing,
+which might tend to damage the airy-fairy nature that Dick, as maiden
+shrewdness told her, had accredited her with. Her dead silence
+impressed Geoffrey with the notion that something in his words did not
+agree with her educated ideas, and he changed the conversation.
+
+“Did Fred Shiner send the cask o’ drink, Fancy?”
+
+“I think he did: O yes, he did.”
+
+“Nice solid feller, Fred Shiner!” said Geoffrey to Dick as he helped
+himself to gravy, bringing the spoon round to his plate by way of the
+potato-dish, to obviate a stain on the cloth in the event of a spill.
+
+Now Geoffrey’s eyes had been fixed upon his plate for the previous four
+or five minutes, and in removing them he had only carried them to the
+spoon, which, from its fulness and the distance of its transit,
+necessitated a steady watching through the whole of the route. Just as
+intently as the keeper’s eyes had been fixed on the spoon, Fancy’s had
+been fixed on her father’s, without premeditation or the slightest
+phase of furtiveness; but there they were fastened. This was the reason
+why:
+
+Dick was sitting next to her on the right side, and on the side of the
+table opposite to her father. Fancy had laid her right hand lightly
+down upon the table-cloth for an instant, and to her alarm Dick, after
+dropping his fork and brushing his forehead as a reason, flung down his
+own left hand, overlapping a third of Fancy’s with it, and keeping it
+there. So the innocent Fancy, instead of pulling her hand from the
+trap, settled her eyes on her father’s, to guard against his discovery
+of this perilous game of Dick’s. Dick finished his mouthful; Fancy
+finished her crumb, and nothing was done beyond watching Geoffrey’s
+eyes. Then the hands slid apart; Fancy’s going over six inches of
+cloth, Dick’s over one. Geoffrey’s eye had risen.
+
+“I said Fred Shiner is a nice solid feller,” he repeated, more
+emphatically.
+
+“He is; yes, he is,” stammered Dick; “but to me he is little more than
+a stranger.”
+
+“O, sure. Now I know en as well as any man can be known. And you know
+en very well too, don’t ye, Fancy?”
+
+Geoffrey put on a tone expressing that these words signified at present
+about one hundred times the amount of meaning they conveyed literally.
+
+Dick looked anxious.
+
+“Will you pass me some bread?” said Fancy in a flurry, the red of her
+face becoming slightly disordered, and looking as solicitous as a human
+being could look about a piece of bread.
+
+“Ay, that I will,” replied the unconscious Geoffrey. “Ay,” he
+continued, returning to the displaced idea, “we are likely to remain
+friendly wi’ Mr. Shiner if the wheels d’run smooth.”
+
+“An excellent thing—a very capital thing, as I should say,” the youth
+answered with exceeding relevance, considering that his thoughts,
+instead of following Geoffrey’s remark, were nestling at a distance of
+about two feet on his left the whole time.
+
+“A young woman’s face will turn the north wind, Master Richard: my
+heart if ’twon’t.” Dick looked more anxious and was attentive in
+earnest at these words. “Yes; turn the north wind,” added Geoffrey
+after an impressive pause. “And though she’s one of my own flesh and
+blood . . . ”
+
+“Will you fetch down a bit of raw-mil’ cheese from pantry-shelf?” Fancy
+interrupted, as if she were famishing.
+
+“Ay, that I will, chiel; chiel, says I, and Mr. Shiner only asking last
+Saturday night . . . cheese you said, Fancy?”
+
+Dick controlled his emotion at these mysterious allusions to Mr.
+Shiner,—the better enabled to do so by perceiving that Fancy’s heart
+went not with her father’s—and spoke like a stranger to the affairs of
+the neighbourhood. “Yes, there’s a great deal to be said upon the power
+of maiden faces in settling your courses,” he ventured, as the keeper
+retreated for the cheese.
+
+“The conversation is taking a very strange turn: nothing that _I_ have
+ever done warrants such things being said!” murmured Fancy with
+emphasis, just loud enough to reach Dick’s ears.
+
+“You think to yourself, ’twas to be,” cried Enoch from his distant
+corner, by way of filling up the vacancy caused by Geoffrey’s momentary
+absence. “And so you marry her, Master Dewy, and there’s an end o’t.”
+
+“Pray don’t say such things, Enoch,” came from Fancy severely, upon
+which Enoch relapsed into servitude.
+
+“If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single,
+we do,” replied Dick.
+
+Geoffrey had by this time sat down again, and he now made his lips thin
+by severely straining them across his gums, and looked out of the
+window along the vista to the distant highway up Yalbury Hill. “That’s
+not the case with some folk,” he said at length, as if he read the
+words on a board at the further end of the vista.
+
+Fancy looked interested, and Dick said, “No?”
+
+“There’s that wife o’ mine. It was her doom to be nobody’s wife at all
+in the wide universe. But she made up her mind that she would, and did
+it twice over. Doom? Doom is nothing beside a elderly woman—quite a
+chiel in her hands!”
+
+A movement was now heard along the upstairs passage, and footsteps
+descending. The door at the foot of the stairs opened, and the second
+Mrs. Day appeared in view, looking fixedly at the table as she advanced
+towards it, with apparent obliviousness of the presence of any other
+human being than herself. In short, if the table had been the
+personages, and the persons the table, her glance would have been the
+most natural imaginable.
+
+She showed herself to possess an ordinary woman’s face, iron-grey hair,
+hardly any hips, and a great deal of cleanliness in a broad white
+apron-string, as it appeared upon the waist of her dark stuff dress.
+
+“People will run away with a story now, I suppose,” she began saying,
+“that Jane Day’s tablecloths are as poor and ragged as any union
+beggar’s!”
+
+Dick now perceived that the tablecloth was a little the worse for wear,
+and reflecting for a moment, concluded that ‘people’ in step-mother
+language probably meant himself. On lifting his eyes he found that Mrs.
+Day had vanished again upstairs, and presently returned with an armful
+of new damask-linen tablecloths, folded square and hard as boards by
+long compression. These she flounced down into a chair; then took one,
+shook it out from its folds, and spread it on the table by instalments,
+transferring the plates and dishes one by one from the old to the new
+cloth.
+
+“And I suppose they’ll say, too, that she ha’n’t a decent knife and
+fork in her house!”
+
+“I shouldn’t say any such ill-natured thing, I am sure—” began Dick.
+But Mrs. Day had vanished into the next room. Fancy appeared
+distressed.
+
+“Very strange woman, isn’t she?” said Geoffrey, quietly going on with
+his dinner. “But ’tis too late to attempt curing. My heart! ’tis so
+growed into her that ’twould kill her to take it out. Ay, she’s very
+queer: you’d be amazed to see what valuable goods we’ve got stowed away
+upstairs.”
+
+Back again came Mrs. Day with a box of bright steel horn-handled
+knives, silver-plated forks, carver, and all complete. These were wiped
+of the preservative oil which coated them, and then a knife and fork
+were laid down to each individual with a bang, the carving knife and
+fork thrust into the meat dish, and the old ones they had hitherto used
+tossed away.
+
+Geoffrey placidly cut a slice with the new knife and fork, and asked
+Dick if he wanted any more.
+
+The table had been spread for the mixed midday meal of dinner and tea,
+which was common among frugal countryfolk. “The parishioners about
+here,” continued Mrs. Day, not looking at any living being, but
+snatching up the brown delf tea-things, “are the laziest, gossipest,
+poachest, jailest set of any ever I came among. And they’ll talk about
+my teapot and tea-things next, I suppose!” She vanished with the
+teapot, cups, and saucers, and reappeared with a tea-service in white
+china, and a packet wrapped in brown paper. This was removed, together
+with folds of tissue-paper underneath; and a brilliant silver teapot
+appeared.
+
+“I’ll help to put the things right,” said Fancy soothingly, and rising
+from her seat. “I ought to have laid out better things, I suppose. But”
+(here she enlarged her looks so as to include Dick) “I have been away
+from home a good deal, and I make shocking blunders in my
+housekeeping.” Smiles and suavity were then dispensed all around by
+this bright little bird.
+
+After a little more preparation and modification, Mrs. Day took her
+seat at the head of the table, and during the latter or tea division of
+the meal, presided with much composure. It may cause some surprise to
+learn that, now her vagary was over, she showed herself to be an
+excellent person with much common sense, and even a religious
+seriousness of tone on matters pertaining to her afflictions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+DICK MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL
+
+
+The effect of Geoffrey’s incidental allusions to Mr. Shiner was to
+restrain a considerable flow of spontaneous chat that would otherwise
+have burst from young Dewy along the drive homeward. And a certain
+remark he had hazarded to her, in rather too blunt and eager a manner,
+kept the young lady herself even more silent than Dick. On both sides
+there was an unwillingness to talk on any but the most trivial
+subjects, and their sentences rarely took a larger form than could be
+expressed in two or three words.
+
+Owing to Fancy being later in the day than she had promised, the
+charwoman had given up expecting her; whereupon Dick could do no less
+than stay and see her comfortably tided over the disagreeable time of
+entering and establishing herself in an empty house after an absence of
+a week. The additional furniture and utensils that had been brought (a
+canary and cage among the rest) were taken out of the vehicle, and the
+horse was unharnessed and put in the plot opposite, where there was
+some tender grass. Dick lighted the fire already laid; and activity
+began to loosen their tongues a little.
+
+“There!” said Fancy, “we forgot to bring the fire-irons!”
+
+She had originally found in her sitting-room, to bear out the
+expression ‘nearly furnished’ which the school-manager had used in his
+letter to her, a table, three chairs, a fender, and a piece of carpet.
+This ‘nearly’ had been supplemented hitherto by a kind friend, who had
+lent her fire-irons and crockery until she should fetch some from home.
+
+Dick attended to the young lady’s fire, using his whip-handle for a
+poker till it was spoilt, and then flourishing a hurdle stick for the
+remainder of the time.
+
+“The kettle boils; now you shall have a cup of tea,” said Fancy, diving
+into the hamper she had brought.
+
+“Thank you,” said Dick, whose drive had made him ready for some,
+especially in her company.
+
+“Well, here’s only one cup-and-saucer, as I breathe! Whatever could
+mother be thinking about? Do you mind making shift, Mr. Dewy?”
+
+“Not at all, Miss Day,” said that civil person.
+
+“—And only having a cup by itself? or a saucer by itself?”
+
+“Don’t mind in the least.”
+
+“Which do you mean by that?”
+
+“I mean the cup, if you like the saucer.”
+
+“And the saucer, if I like the cup?”
+
+“Exactly, Miss Day.”
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Dewy, for I like the cup decidedly. Stop a minute;
+there are no spoons now!” She dived into the hamper again, and at the
+end of two or three minutes looked up and said, “I suppose you don’t
+mind if I can’t find a spoon?”
+
+“Not at all,” said the agreeable Richard.
+
+“The fact is, the spoons have slipped down somewhere; right under the
+other things. O yes, here’s one, and only one. You would rather have
+one than not, I suppose, Mr. Dewy?”
+
+“Rather not. I never did care much about spoons.”
+
+“Then I’ll have it. I do care about them. You must stir up your tea
+with a knife. Would you mind lifting the kettle off, that it may not
+boil dry?”
+
+Dick leapt to the fireplace, and earnestly removed the kettle.
+
+“There! you did it so wildly that you have made your hand black. We
+always use kettle-holders; didn’t you learn housewifery as far as that,
+Mr. Dewy? Well, never mind the soot on your hand. Come here. I am going
+to rinse mine, too.”
+
+They went to a basin she had placed in the back room. “This is the only
+basin I have,” she said. “Turn up your sleeves, and by that time my
+hands will be washed, and you can come.”
+
+Her hands were in the water now. “O, how vexing!” she exclaimed.
+“There’s not a drop of water left for you, unless you draw it, and the
+well is I don’t know how many furlongs deep; all that was in the
+pitcher I used for the kettle and this basin. Do you mind dipping the
+tips of your fingers in the same?”
+
+“Not at all. And to save time I won’t wait till you have done, if you
+have no objection?”
+
+Thereupon he plunged in his hands, and they paddled together. It being
+the first time in his life that he had touched female fingers under
+water, Dick duly registered the sensation as rather a nice one.
+
+“Really, I hardly know which are my own hands and which are yours, they
+have got so mixed up together,” she said, withdrawing her own very
+suddenly.
+
+“It doesn’t matter at all,” said Dick, “at least as far as I am
+concerned.”
+
+“There! no towel! Whoever thinks of a towel till the hands are wet?”
+
+“Nobody.”
+
+“‘Nobody.’ How very dull it is when people are so friendly! Come here,
+Mr. Dewy. Now do you think you could lift the lid of that box with your
+elbow, and then, with something or other, take out a towel you will
+find under the clean clothes? Be _sure_ don’t touch any of them with
+your wet hands, for the things at the top are all Starched and Ironed.”
+
+Dick managed, by the aid of a knife and fork, to extract a towel from
+under a muslin dress without wetting the latter; and for a moment he
+ventured to assume a tone of criticism.
+
+“I fear for that dress,” he said, as they wiped their hands together.
+
+“What?” said Miss Day, looking into the box at the dress alluded to.
+“O, I know what you mean—that the vicar will never let me wear muslin?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, I know it is condemned by all orders in the church as flaunting,
+and unfit for common wear for girls who’ve their living to get; but
+we’ll see.”
+
+“In the interest of the church, I hope you don’t speak seriously.”
+
+“Yes, I do; but we’ll see.” There was a comely determination on her
+lip, very pleasant to a beholder who was neither bishop, priest, nor
+deacon. “I think I can manage any vicar’s views about me if he’s under
+forty.”
+
+Dick rather wished she had never thought of managing vicars.
+
+“I certainly shall be glad to get some of your delicious tea,” he said
+in rather a free way, yet modestly, as became one in a position between
+that of visitor and inmate, and looking wistfully at his lonely saucer.
+
+“So shall I. Now is there anything else we want, Mr Dewy?”
+
+“I really think there’s nothing else, Miss Day.”
+
+She prepared to sit down, looking musingly out of the window at Smart’s
+enjoyment of the rich grass. “Nobody seems to care about me,” she
+murmured, with large lost eyes fixed upon the sky beyond Smart.
+
+“Perhaps Mr. Shiner does,” said Dick, in the tone of a slightly injured
+man.
+
+“Yes, I forgot—he does, I know.” Dick precipitately regretted that he
+had suggested Shiner, since it had produced such a miserable result as
+this.
+
+“I’ll warrant you’ll care for somebody very much indeed another day,
+won’t you, Mr. Dewy?” she continued, looking very feelingly into the
+mathematical centre of his eyes.
+
+“Ah, I’ll warrant I shall,” said Dick, feelingly too, and looking back
+into her dark pupils, whereupon they were turned aside.
+
+“I meant,” she went on, preventing him from speaking just as he was
+going to narrate a forcible story about his feelings; “I meant that
+nobody comes to see if I have returned—not even the vicar.”
+
+“If you want to see him, I’ll call at the vicarage directly we have had
+some tea.”
+
+“No, no! Don’t let him come down here, whatever you do, whilst I am in
+such a state of disarrangement. Parsons look so miserable and awkward
+when one’s house is in a muddle; walking about, and making impossible
+suggestions in quaint academic phrases till your flesh creeps and you
+wish them dead. Do you take sugar?”
+
+Mr. Maybold was at this instant seen coming up the path.
+
+“There! That’s he coming! How I wish you were not here!—that is, how
+awkward—dear, dear!” she exclaimed, with a quick ascent of blood to her
+face, and irritated with Dick rather than the vicar, as it seemed.
+
+“Pray don’t be alarmed on my account, Miss Day—good-afternoon!” said
+Dick in a huff, putting on his hat, and leaving the room hastily by the
+back-door.
+
+The horse was caught and put in, and on mounting the shafts to start he
+saw through the window the vicar, standing upon some books piled in a
+chair, and driving a nail into the wall; Fancy, with a demure glance,
+holding the canary-cage up to him, as if she had never in her life
+thought of anything but vicars and canaries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+DICK MEETS HIS FATHER
+
+
+For several minutes Dick drove along homeward, with the inner eye of
+reflection so anxiously set on his passages at arms with Fancy, that
+the road and scenery were as a thin mist over the real pictures of his
+mind. Was she a coquette? The balance between the evidence that she did
+love him and that she did not was so nicely struck, that his opinion
+had no stability. She had let him put his hand upon hers; she had
+allowed her gaze to drop plumb into the depths of his—his into
+hers—three or four times; her manner had been very free with regard to
+the basin and towel; she had appeared vexed at the mention of Shiner.
+On the other hand, she had driven him about the house like a quiet dog
+or cat, said Shiner cared for her, and seemed anxious that Mr. Maybold
+should do the same.
+
+Thinking thus as he neared the handpost at Mellstock Cross, sitting on
+the front board of the spring cart—his legs on the outside, and his
+whole frame jigging up and down like a candle-flame to the time of
+Smart’s trotting—who should he see coming down the hill but his father
+in the light wagon, quivering up and down on a smaller scale of shakes,
+those merely caused by the stones in the road. They were soon crossing
+each other’s front.
+
+“Weh-hey!” said the tranter to Smiler.
+
+“Weh-hey!” said Dick to Smart, in an echo of the same voice.
+
+“Th’st hauled her back, I suppose?” Reuben inquired peaceably.
+
+“Yes,” said Dick, with such a clinching period at the end that it
+seemed he was never going to add another word. Smiler, thinking this
+the close of the conversation, prepared to move on.
+
+“Weh-hey!” said the tranter. “I tell thee what it is, Dick. That there
+maid is taking up thy thoughts more than’s good for thee, my sonny.
+Thou’rt never happy now unless th’rt making thyself miserable about her
+in one way or another.”
+
+“I don’t know about that, father,” said Dick rather stupidly.
+
+“But I do—Wey, Smiler!—’Od rot the women, ’tis nothing else wi’ ’em
+nowadays but getting young men and leading ’em astray.”
+
+“Pooh, father! you just repeat what all the common world says; that’s
+all you do.”
+
+“The world’s a very sensible feller on things in jineral, Dick; very
+sensible indeed.”
+
+Dick looked into the distance at a vast expanse of mortgaged estate. “I
+wish I was as rich as a squire when he’s as poor as a crow,” he
+murmured; “I’d soon ask Fancy something.”
+
+“I wish so too, wi’ all my heart, sonny; that I do. Well, mind what
+beest about, that’s all.”
+
+Smart moved on a step or two. “Supposing now, father,—We-hey, Smart!—I
+did think a little about her, and I had a chance, which I ha’n’t; don’t
+you think she’s a very good sort of—of—one?”
+
+“Ay, good; she’s good enough. When you’ve made up your mind to marry,
+take the first respectable body that comes to hand—she’s as good as any
+other; they be all alike in the groundwork; ’tis only in the flourishes
+there’s a difference. She’s good enough; but I can’t see what the
+nation a young feller like you—wi’ a comfortable house and home, and
+father and mother to take care o’ thee, and who sent ’ee to a school so
+good that ’twas hardly fair to the other children—should want to go
+hollering after a young woman for, when she’s quietly making a husband
+in her pocket, and not troubled by chick nor chiel, to make a
+poverty-stric’ wife and family of her, and neither hat, cap, wig, nor
+waistcoat to set ’em up with: be drowned if I can see it, and that’s
+the long and the short o’t, my sonny.”
+
+Dick looked at Smart’s ears, then up the hill; but no reason was
+suggested by any object that met his gaze.
+
+“For about the same reason that you did, father, I suppose.”
+
+“Dang it, my sonny, thou’st got me there!” And the tranter gave vent to
+a grim admiration, with the mien of a man who was too magnanimous not
+to appreciate artistically a slight rap on the knuckles, even if they
+were his own.
+
+“Whether or no,” said Dick, “I asked her a thing going along the road.”
+
+“Come to that, is it? Turk! won’t thy mother be in a taking! Well,
+she’s ready, I don’t doubt?”
+
+“I didn’t ask her anything about having me; and if you’ll let me speak,
+I’ll tell ’ee what I want to know. I just said, Did she care about me?”
+
+“Piph-ph-ph!”
+
+“And then she said nothing for a quarter of a mile, and then she said
+she didn’t know. Now, what I want to know is, what was the meaning of
+that speech?” The latter words were spoken resolutely, as if he didn’t
+care for the ridicule of all the fathers in creation.
+
+“The meaning of that speech is,” the tranter replied deliberately,
+“that the meaning is meant to be rather hid at present. Well, Dick, as
+an honest father to thee, I don’t pretend to deny what you d’know well
+enough; that is, that her father being rather better in the pocket than
+we, I should welcome her ready enough if it must be somebody.”
+
+“But what d’ye think she really did mean?” said the unsatisfied Dick.
+
+“I’m afeard I am not o’ much account in guessing, especially as I was
+not there when she said it, and seeing that your mother was the only
+’ooman I ever cam’ into such close quarters as that with.”
+
+“And what did mother say to you when you asked her?” said Dick
+musingly.
+
+“I don’t see that that will help ’ee.”
+
+“The principle is the same.”
+
+“Well—ay: what did she say? Let’s see. I was oiling my working-day
+boots without taking ’em off, and wi’ my head hanging down, when she
+just brushed on by the garden hatch like a flittering leaf. ‘Ann,’ I
+said, says I, and then,—but, Dick I’m afeard ’twill be no help to thee;
+for we were such a rum couple, your mother and I, leastways one half
+was, that is myself—and your mother’s charms was more in the manner
+than the material.”
+
+“Never mind! ‘Ann,’ said you.”
+
+“‘Ann,’ said I, as I was saying . . . ‘Ann,’ I said to her when I was
+oiling my working-day boots wi’ my head hanging down, ‘Woot hae me?’ .
+. . What came next I can’t quite call up at this distance o’ time.
+Perhaps your mother would know,—she’s got a better memory for her
+little triumphs than I. However, the long and the short o’ the story is
+that we were married somehow, as I found afterwards. ’Twas on White
+Tuesday,—Mellstock Club walked the same day, every man two and two, and
+a fine day ’twas,—hot as fire,—how the sun did strike down upon my back
+going to church! I well can mind what a bath o’ sweating I was in, body
+and soul! But Fance will ha’ thee, Dick—she won’t walk with another
+chap—no such good luck.”
+
+“I don’t know about that,” said Dick, whipping at Smart’s flank in a
+fanciful way, which, as Smart knew, meant nothing in connection with
+going on. “There’s Pa’son Maybold, too—that’s all against me.”
+
+“What about he? She’s never been stuffing into thy innocent heart that
+he’s in hove with her? Lord, the vanity o’ maidens!”
+
+“No, no. But he called, and she looked at him in such a way, and at me
+in such a way—quite different the ways were,—and as I was coming off,
+there was he hanging up her birdcage.”
+
+“Well, why shouldn’t the man hang up her bird-cage? Turk seize it all,
+what’s that got to do wi’ it? Dick, that thou beest a white-lyvered
+chap I don’t say, but if thou beestn’t as mad as a cappel-faced bull,
+let me smile no more.”
+
+“O, ay.”
+
+“And what’s think now, Dick?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“Here’s another pretty kettle o’ fish for thee. Who d’ye think’s the
+bitter weed in our being turned out? Did our party tell ’ee?”
+
+“No. Why, Pa’son Maybold, I suppose.”
+
+“Shiner,—because he’s in love with thy young woman, and d’want to see
+her young figure sitting up at that queer instrument, and her young
+fingers rum-strumming upon the keys.”
+
+A sharp ado of sweet and bitter was going on in Dick during this
+communication from his father. “Shiner’s a fool!—no, that’s not it; I
+don’t believe any such thing, father. Why, Shiner would never take a
+bold step like that, unless she’d been a little made up to, and had
+taken it kindly. Pooh!”
+
+“Who’s to say she didn’t?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“The more fool you.”
+
+“Why, father of me?”
+
+“Has she ever done more to thee?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then she has done as much to he—rot ’em! Now, Dick, this is how a maid
+is. She’ll swear she’s dying for thee, and she is dying for thee, and
+she will die for thee; but she’ll fling a look over t’other shoulder at
+another young feller, though never leaving off dying for thee just the
+same.”
+
+“She’s not dying for me, and so she didn’t fling a look at him.”
+
+“But she may be dying for him, for she looked at thee.”
+
+“I don’t know what to make of it at all,” said Dick gloomily.
+
+“All I can make of it is,” the tranter said, raising his whip,
+arranging his different joints and muscles, and motioning to the horse
+to move on, “that if you can’t read a maid’s mind by her motions,
+nature d’seem to say thou’st ought to be a bachelor. Clk, clk! Smiler!”
+And the tranter moved on.
+
+Dick held Smart’s rein firmly, and the whole concern of horse, cart,
+and man remained rooted in the lane. How long this condition would have
+lasted is unknown, had not Dick’s thoughts, after adding up numerous
+items of misery, gradually wandered round to the fact that as something
+must be done, it could not be done by staying there all night.
+
+Reaching home he went up to his bedroom, shut the door as if he were
+going to be seen no more in this life, and taking a sheet of paper and
+uncorking the ink-bottle, he began a letter. The dignity of the
+writer’s mind was so powerfully apparent in every line of this effusion
+that it obscured the logical sequence of facts and intentions to an
+appreciable degree; and it was not at all clear to a reader whether he
+there and then left off loving Miss Fancy Day; whether he had never
+loved her seriously, and never meant to; whether he had been dying up
+to the present moment, and now intended to get well again; or whether
+he had hitherto been in good health, and intended to die for her
+forthwith.
+
+He put this letter in an envelope, sealed it up, directed it in a stern
+handwriting of straight dashes—easy flourishes being rigorously
+excluded. He walked with it in his pocket down the lane in strides not
+an inch less than three feet long. Reaching her gate he put on a
+resolute expression—then put it off again, turned back homeward, tore
+up his letter, and sat down.
+
+That letter was altogether in a wrong tone—that he must own. A
+heartless man-of-the-world tone was what the juncture required. That he
+rather wanted her, and rather did not want her—the latter for choice;
+but that as a member of society he didn’t mind making a query in jaunty
+terms, which could only be answered in the same way: did she mean
+anything by her bearing towards him, or did she not?
+
+This letter was considered so satisfactory in every way that, being put
+into the hands of a little boy, and the order given that he was to run
+with it to the school, he was told in addition not to look behind him
+if Dick called after him to bring it back, but to run along with it
+just the same. Having taken this precaution against vacillation, Dick
+watched his messenger down the road, and turned into the house
+whistling an air in such ghastly jerks and starts, that whistling
+seemed to be the act the very furthest removed from that which was
+instinctive in such a youth.
+
+The letter was left as ordered: the next morning came and passed—and no
+answer. The next. The next. Friday night came. Dick resolved that if no
+answer or sign were given by her the next day, on Sunday he would meet
+her face to face, and have it all out by word of mouth.
+
+“Dick,” said his father, coming in from the garden at that moment—in
+each hand a hive of bees tied in a cloth to prevent their egress—“I
+think you’d better take these two swarms of bees to Mrs. Maybold’s
+to-morrow, instead o’ me, and I’ll go wi’ Smiler and the wagon.”
+
+It was a relief; for Mrs. Maybold, the vicar’s mother, who had just
+taken into her head a fancy for keeping bees (pleasantly disguised
+under the pretence of its being an economical wish to produce her own
+honey), lived near the watering-place of Budmouth-Regis, ten miles off,
+and the business of transporting the hives thither would occupy the
+whole day, and to some extent annihilate the vacant time between this
+evening and the coming Sunday. The best spring-cart was washed
+throughout, the axles oiled, and the bees placed therein for the
+journey.
+
+
+
+
+PART THE THIRD—SUMMER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH
+
+
+An easy bend of neck and graceful set of head; full and wavy bundles of
+dark-brown hair; light fall of little feet; pretty devices on the skirt
+of the dress; clear deep eyes; in short, a bunch of sweets: it was
+Fancy! Dick’s heart went round to her with a rush.
+
+The scene was the corner of Mary Street in Budmouth-Regis, near the
+King’s statue, at which point the white angle of the last house in the
+row cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse of
+salt water projected from the outer ocean—to-day lit in bright tones of
+green and opal. Dick and Smart had just emerged from the street, and
+there on the right, against the brilliant sheet of liquid colour, stood
+Fancy Day; and she turned and recognized him.
+
+Dick suspended his thoughts of the letter and wonder at how she came
+there by driving close to the chains of the Esplanade—incontinently
+displacing two chairmen, who had just come to life for the summer in
+new clean shirts and revivified clothes, and being almost displaced in
+turn by a rigid boy rattling along with a baker’s cart, and looking
+neither to the right nor the left. He asked if she were going to
+Mellstock that night.
+
+“Yes, I’m waiting for the carrier,” she replied, seeming, too, to
+suspend thoughts of the letter.
+
+“Now I can drive you home nicely, and you save half an hour. Will ye
+come with me?”
+
+As Fancy’s power to will anything seemed to have departed in some
+mysterious manner at that moment, Dick settled the matter by getting
+out and assisting her into the vehicle without another word.
+
+The temporary flush upon her cheek changed to a lesser hue, which was
+permanent, and at length their eyes met; there was present between them
+a certain feeling of embarrassment, which arises at such moments when
+all the instinctive acts dictated by the position have been performed.
+Dick, being engaged with the reins, thought less of this awkwardness
+than did Fancy, who had nothing to do but to feel his presence, and to
+be more and more conscious of the fact, that by accepting a seat beside
+him in this way she succumbed to the tone of his note. Smart jogged
+along, and Dick jogged, and the helpless Fancy necessarily jogged, too;
+and she felt that she was in a measure captured and made a prisoner.
+
+“I am so much obliged to you for your company, Miss Day,” he observed,
+as they drove past the two semicircular bays of the Old Royal Hotel,
+where His Majesty King George the Third had many a time attended the
+balls of the burgesses.
+
+To Miss Day, crediting him with the same consciousness of mastery—a
+consciousness of which he was perfectly innocent—this remark sounded
+like a magnanimous intention to soothe her, the captive.
+
+“I didn’t come for the pleasure of obliging you with my company,” she
+said.
+
+The answer had an unexpected manner of incivility in it that must have
+been rather surprising to young Dewy. At the same time it may be
+observed, that when a young woman returns a rude answer to a young
+man’s civil remark, her heart is in a state which argues rather
+hopefully for his case than otherwise.
+
+There was silence between them till they had left the sea-front and
+passed about twenty of the trees that ornamented the road leading up
+out of the town towards Casterbridge and Mellstock.
+
+“Though I didn’t come for that purpose either, I would have done it,”
+said Dick at the twenty-first tree.
+
+“Now, Mr. Dewy, no flirtation, because it’s wrong, and I don’t wish
+it.”
+
+Dick seated himself afresh just as he had been sitting before, arranged
+his looks very emphatically, and cleared his throat.
+
+“Really, anybody would think you had met me on business and were just
+going to commence,” said the lady intractably.
+
+“Yes, they would.”
+
+“Why, you never have, to be sure!”
+
+This was a shaky beginning. He chopped round, and said cheerily, as a
+man who had resolved never to spoil his jollity by loving one of
+womankind—
+
+“Well, how are you getting on, Miss Day, at the present time? Gaily, I
+don’t doubt for a moment.”
+
+“I am not gay, Dick; you know that.”
+
+“Gaily doesn’t mean decked in gay dresses.”
+
+“I didn’t suppose gaily was gaily dressed. Mighty me, what a scholar
+you’ve grown!”
+
+“Lots of things have happened to you this spring, I see.”
+
+“What have you seen?”
+
+“O, nothing; I’ve heard, I mean!”
+
+“What have you heard?”
+
+“The name of a pretty man, with brass studs and a copper ring and a tin
+watch-chain, a little mixed up with your own. That’s all.”
+
+“That’s a very unkind picture of Mr. Shiner, for that’s who you mean!
+The studs are gold, as you know, and it’s a real silver chain; the ring
+I can’t conscientiously defend, and he only wore it once.”
+
+“He might have worn it a hundred times without showing it half so
+much.”
+
+“Well, he’s nothing to me,” she serenely observed.
+
+“Not any more than I am?”
+
+“Now, Mr. Dewy,” said Fancy severely, “certainly he isn’t any more to
+me than you are!”
+
+“Not so much?”
+
+She looked aside to consider the precise compass of that question.
+“That I can’t exactly answer,” she replied with soft archness.
+
+As they were going rather slowly, another spring-cart, containing a
+farmer, farmer’s wife, and farmer’s man, jogged past them; and the
+farmer’s wife and farmer’s man eyed the couple very curiously. The
+farmer never looked up from the horse’s tail.
+
+“Why can’t you exactly answer?” said Dick, quickening Smart a little,
+and jogging on just behind the farmer and farmer’s wife and man.
+
+As no answer came, and as their eyes had nothing else to do, they both
+contemplated the picture presented in front, and noticed how the
+farmer’s wife sat flattened between the two men, who bulged over each
+end of the seat to give her room, till they almost sat upon their
+respective wheels; and they looked too at the farmer’s wife’s silk
+mantle, inflating itself between her shoulders like a balloon and
+sinking flat again, at each jog of the horse. The farmer’s wife,
+feeling their eyes sticking into her back, looked over her shoulder.
+Dick dropped ten yards further behind.
+
+“Fancy, why can’t you answer?” he repeated.
+
+“Because how much you are to me depends upon how much I am to you,”
+said she in low tones.
+
+“Everything,” said Dick, putting his hand towards hers, and casting
+emphatic eyes upon the upper curve of her cheek.
+
+“Now, Richard Dewy, no touching me! I didn’t say in what way your
+thinking of me affected the question—perhaps inversely, don’t you see?
+No touching, sir! Look; goodness me, don’t, Dick!”
+
+The cause of her sudden start was the unpleasant appearance over Dick’s
+right shoulder of an empty timber-wagon and four journeymen-carpenters
+reclining in lazy postures inside it, their eyes directed upwards at
+various oblique angles into the surrounding world, the chief object of
+their existence being apparently to criticize to the very backbone and
+marrow every animate object that came within the compass of their
+vision. This difficulty of Dick’s was overcome by trotting on till the
+wagon and carpenters were beginning to look rather misty by reason of a
+film of dust that accompanied their wagon-wheels, and rose around their
+heads like a fog.
+
+“Say you love me, Fancy.”
+
+“No, Dick, certainly not; ’tisn’t time to do that yet.”
+
+“Why, Fancy?”
+
+“‘Miss Day’ is better at present—don’t mind my saying so; and I ought
+not to have called you Dick.”
+
+“Nonsense! when you know that I would do anything on earth for your
+love. Why, you make any one think that loving is a thing that can be
+done and undone, and put on and put off at a mere whim.”
+
+“No, no, I don’t,” she said gently; “but there are things which tell me
+I ought not to give way to much thinking about you, even if—”
+
+“But you want to, don’t you? Yes, say you do; it is best to be
+truthful. Whatever they may say about a woman’s right to conceal where
+her love lies, and pretend it doesn’t exist, and things like that, it
+is not best; I do know it, Fancy. And an honest woman in that, as well
+as in all her daily concerns, shines most brightly, and is thought most
+of in the long-run.”
+
+“Well then, perhaps, Dick, I do love you a little,” she whispered
+tenderly; “but I wish you wouldn’t say any more now.”
+
+“I won’t say any more now, then, if you don’t like it, dear. But you do
+love me a little, don’t you?”
+
+“Now you ought not to want me to keep saying things twice; I can’t say
+any more now, and you must be content with what you have.”
+
+“I may at any rate call you Fancy? There’s no harm in that.”
+
+“Yes, you may.”
+
+“And you’ll not call me Mr. Dewy any more?”
+
+“Very well.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+FURTHER ALONG THE ROAD
+
+
+Dick’s spirits having risen in the course of these admissions of his
+sweetheart, he now touched Smart with the whip; and on Smart’s neck,
+not far behind his ears. Smart, who had been lost in thought for some
+time, never dreaming that Dick could reach so far with a whip which, on
+this particular journey, had never been extended further than his
+flank, tossed his head, and scampered along with exceeding briskness,
+which was very pleasant to the young couple behind him till, turning a
+bend in the road, they came instantly upon the farmer, farmer’s man,
+and farmer’s wife with the flapping mantle, all jogging on just the
+same as ever.
+
+“Bother those people! Here we are upon them again.”
+
+“Well, of course. They have as much right to the road as we.”
+
+“Yes, but it is provoking to be overlooked so. I like a road all to
+myself. Look what a lumbering affair theirs is!” The wheels of the
+farmer’s cart, just at that moment, jogged into a depression running
+across the road, giving the cart a twist, whereupon all three nodded to
+the left, and on coming out of it all three nodded to the right, and
+went on jerking their backs in and out as usual. “We’ll pass them when
+the road gets wider.”
+
+When an opportunity seemed to offer itself for carrying this intention
+into effect, they heard light flying wheels behind, and on their
+quartering there whizzed along past them a brand-new gig, so brightly
+polished that the spokes of the wheels sent forth a continual quivering
+light at one point in their circle, and all the panels glared like
+mirrors in Dick and Fancy’s eyes. The driver, and owner as it appeared,
+was really a handsome man; his companion was Shiner. Both turned round
+as they passed Dick and Fancy, and stared with bold admiration in her
+face till they were obliged to attend to the operation of passing the
+farmer. Dick glanced for an instant at Fancy while she was undergoing
+their scrutiny; then returned to his driving with rather a sad
+countenance.
+
+“Why are you so silent?” she said, after a while, with real concern.
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Yes, it is, Dick. I couldn’t help those people passing.”
+
+“I know that.”
+
+“You look offended with me. What have I done?”
+
+“I can’t tell without offending you.”
+
+“Better out.”
+
+“Well,” said Dick, who seemed longing to tell, even at the risk of
+offending her, “I was thinking how different you in love are from me in
+love. Whilst those men were staring, you dismissed me from your
+thoughts altogether, and—”
+
+“You can’t offend me further now; tell all!”
+
+“And showed upon your face a pleased sense of being attractive to ’em.”
+
+“Don’t be silly, Dick! You know very well I didn’t.”
+
+Dick shook his head sceptically, and smiled.
+
+“Dick, I always believe flattery _if possible—_and it was possible
+then. Now there’s an open confession of weakness. But I showed no
+consciousness of it.”
+
+Dick, perceiving by her look that she would adhere to her statement,
+charitably forbore saying anything that could make her prevaricate. The
+sight of Shiner, too, had recalled another branch of the subject to his
+mind; that which had been his greatest trouble till her company and
+words had obscured its probability.
+
+“By the way, Fancy, do you know why our quire is to be dismissed?”
+
+“No: except that it is Mr. Maybold’s wish for me to play the organ.”
+
+“Do you know how it came to be his wish?”
+
+“That I don’t.”
+
+“Mr. Shiner, being churchwarden, has persuaded the vicar; who, however,
+was willing enough before. Shiner, I know, is crazy to see you playing
+every Sunday; I suppose he’ll turn over your music, for the organ will
+be close to his pew. But—I know you have never encouraged him?”
+
+“Never once!” said Fancy emphatically, and with eyes full of earnest
+truth. “I don’t like him indeed, and I never heard of his doing this
+before! I have always felt that I should like to play in a church, but
+I never wished to turn you and your choir out; and I never even said
+that I could play till I was asked. You don’t think for a moment that I
+did, surely, do you?”
+
+“I know you didn’t, dear.”
+
+“Or that I care the least morsel of a bit for him?”
+
+“I know you don’t.”
+
+The distance between Budmouth and Mellstock was ten or eleven miles,
+and there being a good inn, ‘The Ship,’ four miles out of Budmouth,
+with a mast and cross-trees in front, Dick’s custom in driving thither
+was to divide the journey into three stages by resting at this inn
+going and coming, and not troubling the Budmouth stables at all,
+whenever his visit to the town was a mere call and deposit, as to-day.
+
+Fancy was ushered into a little tea-room, and Dick went to the stables
+to see to the feeding of Smart. In face of the significant twitches of
+feature that were visible in the ostler and labouring men idling
+around, Dick endeavoured to look unconscious of the fact that there was
+any sentiment between him and Fancy beyond a tranter’s desire to carry
+a passenger home. He presently entered the inn and opened the door of
+Fancy’s room.
+
+“Dick, do you know, it has struck me that it is rather awkward, my
+being here alone with you like this. I don’t think you had better come
+in with me.”
+
+“That’s rather unpleasant, dear.”
+
+“Yes, it is, and I wanted you to have some tea as well as myself too,
+because you must be tired.”
+
+“Well, let me have some with you, then. I was denied once before, if
+you recollect, Fancy.”
+
+“Yes, yes, never mind! And it seems unfriendly of me now, but I don’t
+know what to do.”
+
+“It shall be as you say, then.” Dick began to retreat with a
+dissatisfied wrinkling of face, and a farewell glance at the cosy
+tea-tray.
+
+“But you don’t see how it is, Dick, when you speak like that,” she
+said, with more earnestness than she had ever shown before. “You do
+know, that even if I care very much for you, I must remember that I
+have a difficult position to maintain. The vicar would not like me, as
+his schoolmistress, to indulge in a _tête-à-tête_ anywhere with
+anybody.”
+
+“But I am not _any_ body!” exclaimed Dick.
+
+“No, no, I mean with a young man;” and she added softly, “unless I were
+really engaged to be married to him.”
+
+“Is that all? Then, dearest, dearest, why we’ll be engaged at once, to
+be sure we will, and down I sit! There it is, as easy as a glove!”
+
+“Ah! but suppose I won’t! And, goodness me, what have I done!” she
+faltered, getting very red. “Positively, it seems as if I meant you to
+say that!”
+
+“Let’s do it! I mean get engaged,” said Dick. “Now, Fancy, will you be
+my wife?”
+
+“Do you know, Dick, it was rather unkind of you to say what you did
+coming along the road,” she remarked, as if she had not heard the
+latter part of his speech; though an acute observer might have noticed
+about her breast, as the word ‘wife’ fell from Dick’s lips, a soft
+silent escape of breaths, with very short rests between each.
+
+“What did I say?”
+
+“About my trying to look attractive to those men in the gig.”
+
+“You couldn’t help looking so, whether you tried or no. And, Fancy, you
+do care for me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Very much?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And you’ll be my own wife?”
+
+Her heart quickened, adding to and withdrawing from her cheek varying
+tones of red to match each varying thought. Dick looked expectantly at
+the ripe tint of her delicate mouth, waiting for what was coming forth.
+
+“Yes—if father will let me.”
+
+Dick drew himself close to her, compressing his lips and pouting them
+out, as if he were about to whistle the softest melody known.
+
+“O no!” said Fancy solemnly.
+
+The modest Dick drew back a little.
+
+“Dick, Dick, kiss me and let me go instantly!—here’s somebody coming!”
+she whisperingly exclaimed.
+
+Half an hour afterwards Dick emerged from the inn, and if Fancy’s lips
+had been real cherries probably Dick’s would have appeared deeply
+stained. The landlord was standing in the yard.
+
+“Heu-heu! hay-hay, Master Dewy! Ho-ho!” he laughed, letting the laugh
+slip out gently and by degrees that it might make little noise in its
+exit, and smiting Dick under the fifth rib at the same time. “This will
+never do, upon my life, Master Dewy! calling for tay for a feymel
+passenger, and then going in and sitting down and having some too, and
+biding such a fine long time!”
+
+“But surely you know?” said Dick, with great apparent surprise. “Yes,
+yes! Ha-ha!” smiting the landlord under the ribs in return.
+
+“Why, what? Yes, yes; ha-ha!”
+
+“You know, of course!”
+
+“Yes, of course! But—that is—I don’t.”
+
+“Why about—between that young lady and me?” nodding to the window of
+the room that Fancy occupied.
+
+“No; not I!” said the innkeeper, bringing his eyes into circles.
+
+“And you don’t!”
+
+“Not a word, I’ll take my oath!”
+
+“But you laughed when I laughed.”
+
+“Ay, that was me sympathy; so did you when I laughed!”
+
+“Really, you don’t know? Goodness—not knowing that!”
+
+“I’ll take my oath I don’t!”
+
+“O yes,” said Dick, with frigid rhetoric of pitying astonishment,
+“we’re engaged to be married, you see, and I naturally look after her.”
+
+“Of course, of course! I didn’t know that, and I hope ye’ll excuse any
+little freedom of mine, Mr. Dewy. But it is a very odd thing; I was
+talking to your father very intimate about family matters only last
+Friday in the world, and who should come in but Keeper Day, and we all
+then fell a-talking o’ family matters; but neither one o’ them said a
+mortal word about it; knowen me too so many years, and I at your
+father’s own wedding. ’Tisn’t what I should have expected from an old
+neighbour!”
+
+“Well, to say the truth, we hadn’t told father of the engagement at
+that time; in fact, ’twasn’t settled.”
+
+“Ah! the business was done Sunday. Yes, yes, Sunday’s the courting day.
+Heu-heu!”
+
+“No, ’twasn’t done Sunday in particular.”
+
+“After school-hours this week? Well, a very good time, a very proper
+good time.”
+
+“O no, ’twasn’t done then.”
+
+“Coming along the road to-day then, I suppose?”
+
+“Not at all; I wouldn’t think of getting engaged in a dog-cart.”
+
+“Dammy—might as well have said at once, the _when_ be blowed! Anyhow,
+’tis a fine day, and I hope next time you’ll come as one.”
+
+Fancy was duly brought out and assisted into the vehicle, and the newly
+affianced youth and maiden passed up the steep hill to the Ridgeway,
+and vanished in the direction of Mellstock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+A CONFESSION
+
+
+It was a morning of the latter summer-time; a morning of lingering
+dews, when the grass is never dry in the shade. Fuchsias and dahlias
+were laden till eleven o’clock with small drops and dashes of water,
+changing the colour of their sparkle at every movement of the air; and
+elsewhere hanging on twigs like small silver fruit. The threads of
+garden spiders appeared thick and polished. In the dry and sunny
+places, dozens of long-legged crane-flies whizzed off the grass at
+every step the passer took.
+
+Fancy Day and her friend Susan Dewy the tranter’s daughter, were in
+such a spot as this, pulling down a bough laden with early apples.
+Three months had elapsed since Dick and Fancy had journeyed together
+from Budmouth, and the course of their love had run on vigorously
+during the whole time. There had been just enough difficulty attending
+its development, and just enough finesse required in keeping it
+private, to lend the passion an ever-increasing freshness on Fancy’s
+part, whilst, whether from these accessories or not, Dick’s heart had
+been at all times as fond as could be desired. But there was a cloud on
+Fancy’s horizon now.
+
+“She is so well off—better than any of us,” Susan Dewy was saying. “Her
+father farms five hundred acres, and she might marry a doctor or curate
+or anything of that kind if she contrived a little.”
+
+“I don’t think Dick ought to have gone to that gipsy-party at all when
+he knew I couldn’t go,” replied Fancy uneasily.
+
+“He didn’t know that you would not be there till it was too late to
+refuse the invitation,” said Susan.
+
+“And what was she like? Tell me.”
+
+“Well, she was rather pretty, I must own.”
+
+“Tell straight on about her, can’t you! Come, do, Susan. How many times
+did you say he danced with her?”
+
+“Once.”
+
+“Twice, I think you said?”
+
+“Indeed I’m sure I didn’t.”
+
+“Well, and he wanted to again, I expect.”
+
+“No; I don’t think he did. She wanted to dance with him again bad
+enough, I know. Everybody does with Dick, because he’s so handsome and
+such a clever courter.”
+
+“O, I wish!—How did you say she wore her hair?”
+
+“In long curls,—and her hair is light, and it curls without being put
+in paper: that’s how it is she’s so attractive.”
+
+“She’s trying to get him away! yes, yes, she is! And through keeping
+this miserable school I mustn’t wear my hair in curls! But I will; I
+don’t care if I leave the school and go home, I will wear my curls!
+Look, Susan, do! is her hair as soft and long as this?” Fancy pulled
+from its coil under her hat a twine of her own hair, and stretched it
+down her shoulder to show its length, looking at Susan to catch her
+opinion from her eyes.
+
+“It is about the same length as that, I think,” said Miss Dewy.
+
+Fancy paused hopelessly. “I wish mine was lighter, like hers!” she
+continued mournfully. “But hers isn’t so soft, is it? Tell me, now.”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+Fancy abstractedly extended her vision to survey a yellow butterfly and
+a red-and-black butterfly that were flitting along in company, and then
+became aware that Dick was advancing up the garden.
+
+“Susan, here’s Dick coming; I suppose that’s because we’ve been talking
+about him.”
+
+“Well, then, I shall go indoors now—you won’t want me;” and Susan
+turned practically and walked off.
+
+Enter the single-minded Dick, whose only fault at the gipsying, or
+picnic, had been that of loving Fancy too exclusively, and depriving
+himself of the innocent pleasure the gathering might have afforded him,
+by sighing regretfully at her absence,—who had danced with the rival in
+sheer despair of ever being able to get through that stale, flat, and
+unprofitable afternoon in any other way; but this she would not
+believe.
+
+Fancy had settled her plan of emotion. To reproach Dick? O no, no. “I
+am in great trouble,” said she, taking what was intended to be a
+hopelessly melancholy survey of a few small apples lying under the
+tree; yet a critical ear might have noticed in her voice a tentative
+tone as to the effect of the words upon Dick when she uttered them.
+
+“What are you in trouble about? Tell me of it,” said Dick earnestly.
+“Darling, I will share it with ’ee and help ’ee.”
+
+“No, no: you can’t! Nobody can!”
+
+“Why not? You don’t deserve it, whatever it is. Tell me, dear.”
+
+“O, it isn’t what you think! It is dreadful: my own sin!”
+
+“Sin, Fancy! as if you could sin! I know it can’t be.”
+
+“’Tis, ’tis!” said the young lady, in a pretty little frenzy of sorrow.
+“I have done wrong, and I don’t like to tell it! Nobody will forgive
+me, nobody! and you above all will not! . . . I have allowed myself
+to—to—fl—”
+
+“What,—not flirt!” he said, controlling his emotion as it were by a
+sudden pressure inward from his surface. “And you said only the day
+before yesterday that you hadn’t flirted in your life!”
+
+“Yes, I did; and that was a wicked story! I have let another love me,
+and—”
+
+“Good G—! Well, I’ll forgive you,—yes, if you couldn’t help it,—yes, I
+will!” said the now dismal Dick. “Did you encourage him?”
+
+“O,—I don’t know,—yes—no. O, I think so!”
+
+“Who was it?” A pause. “Tell me!”
+
+“Mr. Shiner.”
+
+After a silence that was only disturbed by the fall of an apple, a
+long-checked sigh from Dick, and a sob from Fancy, he said with real
+austerity—
+
+“Tell it all;—every word!”
+
+“He looked at me, and I looked at him, and he said, ‘Will you let me
+show you how to catch bullfinches down here by the stream?’ And
+I—wanted to know very much—I did so long to have a bullfinch! I
+couldn’t help that and I said, ‘Yes!’ and then he said, ‘Come here.’
+And I went with him down to the lovely river, and then he said to me,
+‘Look and see how I do it, and then you’ll know: I put this birdlime
+round this twig, and then I go here,’ he said, ‘and hide away under a
+bush; and presently clever Mister Bird comes and perches upon the twig,
+and flaps his wings, and you’ve got him before you can say
+Jack’—something; O, O, O, I forget what!”
+
+“Jack Sprat,” mournfully suggested Dick through the cloud of his
+misery.
+
+“No, not Jack Sprat,” she sobbed.
+
+“Then ’twas Jack Robinson!” he said, with the emphasis of a man who had
+resolved to discover every iota of the truth, or die.
+
+“Yes, that was it! And then I put my hand upon the rail of the bridge
+to get across, and—That’s all.”
+
+“Well, that isn’t much, either,” said Dick critically, and more
+cheerfully. “Not that I see what business Shiner has to take upon
+himself to teach you anything. But it seems—it do seem there must have
+been more than that to set you up in such a dreadful taking?”
+
+He looked into Fancy’s eyes. Misery of miseries!—guilt was written
+there still.
+
+“Now, Fancy, you’ve not told me all!” said Dick, rather sternly for a
+quiet young man.
+
+“O, don’t speak so cruelly! I am afraid to tell now! If you hadn’t been
+harsh, I was going on to tell all; now I can’t!”
+
+“Come, dear Fancy, tell: come. I’ll forgive; I must,—by heaven and
+earth, I must, whether I will or no; I love you so!”
+
+“Well, when I put my hand on the bridge, he touched it—”
+
+“A scamp!” said Dick, grinding an imaginary human frame to powder.
+
+“And then he looked at me, and at last he said, ‘Are you in love with
+Dick Dewy?’ And I said, ‘Perhaps I am!’ and then he said, ‘I wish you
+weren’t then, for I want to marry you, with all my soul.’”
+
+“There’s a villain now! Want to marry you!” And Dick quivered with the
+bitterness of satirical laughter. Then suddenly remembering that he
+might be reckoning without his host: “Unless, to be sure, you are
+willing to have him,—perhaps you are,” he said, with the wretched
+indifference of a castaway.
+
+“No, indeed I am not!” she said, her sobs just beginning to take a
+favourable turn towards cure.
+
+“Well, then,” said Dick, coming a little to his senses, “you’ve been
+stretching it very much in giving such a dreadful beginning to such a
+mere nothing. And I know what you’ve done it for,—just because of that
+gipsy-party!” He turned away from her and took five paces decisively,
+as if he were tired of an ungrateful country, including herself. “You
+did it to make me jealous, and I won’t stand it!” He flung the words to
+her over his shoulder and then stalked on, apparently very anxious to
+walk to the remotest of the Colonies that very minute.
+
+“O, O, O, Dick—Dick!” she cried, trotting after him like a pet lamb,
+and really seriously alarmed at last, “you’ll kill me! My impulses are
+bad—miserably wicked,—and I can’t help it; forgive me, Dick! And I love
+you always; and those times when you look silly and don’t seem quite
+good enough for me,—just the same, I do, Dick! And there is something
+more serious, though not concerning that walk with him.”
+
+“Well, what is it?” said Dick, altering his mind about walking to the
+Colonies; in fact, passing to the other extreme, and standing so rooted
+to the road that he was apparently not even going home.
+
+“Why this,” she said, drying the beginning of a new flood of tears she
+had been going to shed, “this is the serious part. Father has told Mr.
+Shiner that he would like him for a son-in-law, if he could get
+me;—that he has his right hearty consent to come courting me!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+AN ARRANGEMENT
+
+
+“That _is_ serious,” said Dick, more intellectually than he had spoken
+for a long time.
+
+The truth was that Geoffrey knew nothing about his daughter’s continued
+walks and meetings with Dick. When a hint that there were symptoms of
+an attachment between them had first reached Geoffrey’s ears, he stated
+so emphatically that he must think the matter over before any such
+thing could be allowed that, rather unwisely on Dick’s part, whatever
+it might have been on the lady’s, the lovers were careful to be seen
+together no more in public; and Geoffrey, forgetting the report, did
+not think over the matter at all. So Mr. Shiner resumed his old
+position in Geoffrey’s brain by mere flux of time. Even Shiner began to
+believe that Dick existed for Fancy no more,—though that remarkably
+easy-going man had taken no active steps on his own account as yet.
+
+“And father has not only told Mr. Shiner that,” continued Fancy, “but
+he has written me a letter, to say he should wish me to encourage Mr.
+Shiner, if ’twas convenient!”
+
+“I must start off and see your father at once!” said Dick, taking two
+or three vehement steps to the south, recollecting that Mr. Day lived
+to the north, and coming back again.
+
+“I think we had better see him together. Not tell him what you come
+for, or anything of the kind, until he likes you, and so win his brain
+through his heart, which is always the way to manage people. I mean in
+this way: I am going home on Saturday week to help them in the
+honey-taking. You might come there to me, have something to eat and
+drink, and let him guess what your coming signifies, without saying it
+in so many words.”
+
+“We’ll do it, dearest. But I shall ask him for you, flat and plain; not
+wait for his guessing.” And the lover then stepped close to her, and
+attempted to give her one little kiss on the cheek, his lips alighting,
+however, on an outlying tract of her back hair by reason of an impulse
+that had caused her to turn her head with a jerk. “Yes, and I’ll put on
+my second-best suit and a clean shirt and collar, and black my boots as
+if ’twas a Sunday. ’Twill have a good appearance, you see, and that’s a
+great deal to start with.”
+
+“You won’t wear that old waistcoat, will you, Dick?”
+
+“Bless you, no! Why I—”
+
+“I didn’t mean to be personal, dear Dick,” she said, fearing she had
+hurt his feelings. “’Tis a very nice waistcoat, but what I meant was,
+that though it is an excellent waistcoat for a settled-down man, it is
+not quite one for” (she waited, and a blush expanded over her face, and
+then she went on again)—“for going courting in.”
+
+“No, I’ll wear my best winter one, with the leather lining, that mother
+made. It is a beautiful, handsome waistcoat inside, yes, as ever
+anybody saw. In fact, only the other day, I unbuttoned it to show a
+chap that very lining, and he said it was the strongest, handsomest
+lining you could wish to see on the king’s waistcoat himself.”
+
+“_I_ don’t quite know what to wear,” she said, as if her habitual
+indifference alone to dress had kept back so important a subject till
+now.
+
+“Why, that blue frock you wore last week.”
+
+“Doesn’t set well round the neck. I couldn’t wear that.”
+
+“But I shan’t care.”
+
+“No, you won’t mind.”
+
+“Well, then it’s all right. Because you only care how you look to me,
+do you, dear? I only dress for you, that’s certain.”
+
+“Yes, but you see I couldn’t appear in it again very well.”
+
+“Any strange gentleman you mid meet in your journey might notice the
+set of it, I suppose. Fancy, men in love don’t think so much about how
+they look to other women.” It is difficult to say whether a tone of
+playful banter or of gentle reproach prevailed in the speech.
+
+“Well then, Dick,” she said, with good-humoured frankness, “I’ll own
+it. I shouldn’t like a stranger to see me dressed badly, even though I
+am in love. ’Tis our nature, I suppose.”
+
+“You perfect woman!”
+
+“Yes; if you lay the stress on ‘woman,’” she murmured, looking at a
+group of hollyhocks in flower, round which a crowd of butterflies had
+gathered like female idlers round a bonnet-shop.
+
+“But about the dress. Why not wear the one you wore at our party?”
+
+“That sets well, but a girl of the name of Bet Tallor, who lives near
+our house, has had one made almost like it (only in pattern, though of
+miserably cheap stuff), and I couldn’t wear it on that account. Dear
+me, I am afraid I can’t go now.”
+
+“O yes, you must; I know you will!” said Dick, with dismay. “Why not
+wear what you’ve got on?”
+
+“What! this old one! After all, I think that by wearing my gray one
+Saturday, I can make the blue one do for Sunday. Yes, I will. A hat or
+a bonnet, which shall it be? Which do I look best in?”
+
+“Well, I think the bonnet is nicest, more quiet and matronly.”
+
+“What’s the objection to the hat? Does it make me look old?”
+
+“O no; the hat is well enough; but it makes you look rather too—you
+won’t mind me saying it, dear?”
+
+“Not at all, for I shall wear the bonnet.”
+
+“—Rather too coquettish and flirty for an engaged young woman.”
+
+She reflected a minute. “Yes; yes. Still, after all, the hat would do
+best; hats _are_ best, you see. Yes, I must wear the hat, dear Dicky,
+because I ought to wear a hat, you know.”
+
+
+
+
+PART THE FOURTH—AUTUMN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+GOING NUTTING
+
+
+Dick, dressed in his ‘second-best’ suit, burst into Fancy’s
+sitting-room with a glow of pleasure on his face.
+
+It was two o’clock on Friday, the day before her contemplated visit to
+her father, and for some reason connected with cleaning the school the
+children had been given this Friday afternoon for pastime, in addition
+to the usual Saturday.
+
+“Fancy! it happens just right that it is a leisure half day with you.
+Smart is lame in his near-foot-afore, and so, as I can’t do anything,
+I’ve made a holiday afternoon of it, and am come for you to go nutting
+with me!”
+
+She was sitting by the parlour window, with a blue frock lying across
+her lap and scissors in her hand.
+
+“Go nutting! Yes. But I’m afraid I can’t go for an hour or so.”
+
+“Why not? ’Tis the only spare afternoon we may both have together for
+weeks.”
+
+“This dress of mine, that I am going to wear on Sunday at Yalbury;—I
+find it fits so badly that I must alter it a little, after all. I told
+the dressmaker to make it by a pattern I gave her at the time; instead
+of that, she did it her own way, and made me look a perfect fright.”
+
+“How long will you be?” he inquired, looking rather disappointed.
+
+“Not long. Do wait and talk to me; come, do, dear.”
+
+Dick sat down. The talking progressed very favourably, amid the
+snipping and sewing, till about half-past two, at which time his
+conversation began to be varied by a slight tapping upon his toe with a
+walking-stick he had cut from the hedge as he came along. Fancy talked
+and answered him, but sometimes the answers were so negligently given,
+that it was evident her thoughts lay for the greater part in her lap
+with the blue dress.
+
+The clock struck three. Dick arose from his seat, walked round the room
+with his hands behind him, examined all the furniture, then sounded a
+few notes on the harmonium, then looked inside all the books he could
+find, then smoothed Fancy’s head with his hand. Still the snipping and
+sewing went on.
+
+The clock struck four. Dick fidgeted about, yawned privately; counted
+the knots in the table, yawned publicly; counted the flies on the
+ceiling, yawned horribly; went into the kitchen and scullery, and so
+thoroughly studied the principle upon which the pump was constructed
+that he could have delivered a lecture on the subject. Stepping back to
+Fancy, and finding still that she had not done, he went into her garden
+and looked at her cabbages and potatoes, and reminded himself that they
+seemed to him to wear a decidedly feminine aspect; then pulled up
+several weeds, and came in again. The clock struck five, and still the
+snipping and sewing went on.
+
+Dick attempted to kill a fly, peeled all the rind off his
+walking-stick, then threw the stick into the scullery because it was
+spoilt, produced hideous discords from the harmonium, and accidentally
+overturned a vase of flowers, the water from which ran in a rill across
+the table and dribbled to the floor, where it formed a lake, the shape
+of which, after the lapse of a few minutes, he began to modify
+considerably with his foot, till it was like a map of England and
+Wales.
+
+“Well, Dick, you needn’t have made quite such a mess.”
+
+“Well, I needn’t, I suppose.” He walked up to the blue dress, and
+looked at it with a rigid gaze. Then an idea seemed to cross his brain.
+
+“Fancy.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I thought you said you were going to wear your gray gown all day
+to-morrow on your trip to Yalbury, and in the evening too, when I shall
+be with you, and ask your father for you?”
+
+“So I am.”
+
+“And the blue one only on Sunday?”
+
+“And the blue one Sunday.”
+
+“Well, dear, I sha’n’t be at Yalbury Sunday to see it.”
+
+“No, but I shall walk to Longpuddle church in the afternoon with
+father, and such lots of people will be looking at me there, you know;
+and it did set so badly round the neck.”
+
+“I never noticed it, and ’tis like nobody else would.”
+
+“They might.”
+
+“Then why not wear the gray one on Sunday as well? ’Tis as pretty as
+the blue one.”
+
+“I might make the gray one do, certainly. But it isn’t so good; it
+didn’t cost half so much as this one, and besides, it would be the same
+I wore Saturday.”
+
+“Then wear the striped one, dear.”
+
+“I might.”
+
+“Or the dark one.”
+
+“Yes, I might; but I want to wear a fresh one they haven’t seen.”
+
+“I see, I see,” said Dick, in a voice in which the tones of love were
+decidedly inconvenienced by a considerable emphasis, his thoughts
+meanwhile running as follows: “I, the man she loves best in the world,
+as she says, am to understand that my poor half-holiday is to be lost,
+because she wants to wear on Sunday a gown there is not the slightest
+necessity for wearing, simply, in fact, to appear more striking than
+usual in the eyes of Longpuddle young men; and I not there, either.”
+
+“Then there are three dresses good enough for my eyes, but neither is
+good enough for the youths of Longpuddle,” he said.
+
+“No, not that exactly, Dick. Still, you see, I do want—to look pretty
+to them—there, that’s honest! But I sha’n’t be much longer.”
+
+“How much?”
+
+“A quarter of an hour.”
+
+“Very well; I’ll come in in a quarter of an hour.”
+
+“Why go away?”
+
+“I mid as well.”
+
+He went out, walked down the road, and sat upon a gate. Here he
+meditated and meditated, and the more he meditated the more decidedly
+did he begin to fume, and the more positive was he that his time had
+been scandalously trifled with by Miss Fancy Day—that, so far from
+being the simple girl who had never had a sweetheart before, as she had
+solemnly assured him time after time, she was, if not a flirt, a woman
+who had had no end of admirers; a girl most certainly too anxious about
+her frocks; a girl, whose feelings, though warm, were not deep; a girl
+who cared a great deal too much how she appeared in the eyes of other
+men. “What she loves best in the world,” he thought, with an incipient
+spice of his father’s grimness, “is her hair and complexion. What she
+loves next best, her gowns and hats; what she loves next best, myself,
+perhaps!”
+
+Suffering great anguish at this disloyalty in himself and harshness to
+his darling, yet disposed to persevere in it, a horribly cruel thought
+crossed his mind. He would not call for her, as he had promised, at the
+end of a quarter of an hour! Yes, it would be a punishment she well
+deserved. Although the best part of the afternoon had been wasted he
+would go nutting as he had intended, and go by himself.
+
+He leaped over the gate, and pushed up the lane for nearly two miles,
+till a winding path called Snail-Creep sloped up a hill and entered a
+hazel copse by a hole like a rabbit’s burrow. In he plunged, vanished
+among the bushes, and in a short time there was no sign of his
+existence upon earth, save an occasional rustling of boughs and
+snapping of twigs in divers points of Grey’s Wood.
+
+Never man nutted as Dick nutted that afternoon. He worked like a galley
+slave. Half-hour after half-hour passed away, and still he gathered
+without ceasing. At last, when the sun had set, and bunches of nuts
+could not be distinguished from the leaves which nourished them, he
+shouldered his bag, containing quite two pecks of the finest produce of
+the wood, about as much use to him as two pecks of stones from the
+road, strolled down the woodland track, crossed the highway and entered
+the homeward lane, whistling as he went.
+
+Probably, Miss Fancy Day never before or after stood so low in Mr.
+Dewy’s opinion as on that afternoon. In fact, it is just possible that
+a few more blue dresses on the Longpuddle young men’s account would
+have clarified Dick’s brain entirely, and made him once more a free
+man.
+
+But Venus had planned other developments, at any rate for the present.
+Cuckoo-Lane, the way he pursued, passed over a ridge which rose keenly
+against the sky about fifty yards in his van. Here, upon the bright
+after-glow about the horizon, was now visible an irregular shape, which
+at first he conceived to be a bough standing a little beyond the line
+of its neighbours. Then it seemed to move, and, as he advanced still
+further, there was no doubt that it was a living being sitting in the
+bank, head bowed on hand. The grassy margin entirely prevented his
+footsteps from being heard, and it was not till he was close that the
+figure recognized him. Up it sprang, and he was face to face with
+Fancy.
+
+“Dick, Dick! O, is it you, Dick!”
+
+“Yes, Fancy,” said Dick, in a rather repentant tone, and lowering his
+nuts.
+
+She ran up to him, flung her parasol on the grass, put her little head
+against his breast, and then there began a narrative, disjointed by
+such a hysterical weeping as was never surpassed for intensity in the
+whole history of love.
+
+“O Dick,” she sobbed out, “where have you been away from me? O, I have
+suffered agony, and thought you would never come any more! ’Tis cruel,
+Dick; no ’tisn’t, it is justice! I’ve been walking miles and miles up
+and down Grey’s Wood, trying to find you, till I was wearied and worn
+out, and I could walk no further, and had come back this far! O Dick,
+directly you were gone, I thought I had offended you and I put down the
+dress; ’tisn’t finished now, and I never will finish, it, and I’ll wear
+an old one Sunday! Yes, Dick, I will, because I don’t care what I wear
+when you are not by my side—ha, you think I do, but I don’t!—and I ran
+after you, and I saw you go up Snail-Creep and not look back once, and
+then you plunged in, and I after you; but I was too far behind. O, I
+did wish the horrid bushes had been cut down, so that I could see your
+dear shape again! And then I called out to you, and nobody answered,
+and I was afraid to call very loud, lest anybody else should hear me.
+Then I kept wandering and wandering about, and it was dreadful misery,
+Dick. And then I shut my eyes and fell to picturing you looking at some
+other woman, very pretty and nice, but with no affection or truth in
+her at all, and then imagined you saying to yourself, ‘Ah, she’s as
+good as Fancy, for Fancy told me a story, and was a flirt, and cared
+for herself more than me, so now I’ll have this one for my sweetheart.’
+O, you won’t, will you, Dick, for I do love you so!”
+
+It is scarcely necessary to add that Dick renounced his freedom there
+and then, and kissed her ten times over, and promised that no pretty
+woman of the kind alluded to should ever engross his thoughts; in
+short, that though he had been vexed with her, all such vexation was
+past, and that henceforth and for ever it was simply Fancy or death for
+him. And then they set about proceeding homewards, very slowly on
+account of Fancy’s weariness, she leaning upon his shoulder, and in
+addition receiving support from his arm round her waist; though she had
+sufficiently recovered from her desperate condition to sing to him,
+‘Why are you wandering here, I pray?’ during the latter part of their
+walk. Nor is it necessary to describe in detail how the bag of nuts was
+quite forgotten until three days later, when it was found among the
+brambles and restored empty to Mrs. Dewy, her initials being marked
+thereon in red cotton; and how she puzzled herself till her head ached
+upon the question of how on earth her meal-bag could have got into
+Cuckoo-Lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS
+
+
+Saturday evening saw Dick Dewy journeying on foot to Yalbury Wood,
+according to the arrangement with Fancy.
+
+The landscape being concave, at the going down of the sun everything
+suddenly assumed a uniform robe of shade. The evening advanced from
+sunset to dusk long before Dick’s arrival, and his progress during the
+latter portion of his walk through the trees was indicated by the
+flutter of terrified birds that had been roosting over the path. And in
+crossing the glades, masses of hot dry air, that had been formed on the
+hills during the day, greeted his cheeks alternately with clouds of
+damp night air from the valleys. He reached the keeper-steward’s house,
+where the grass-plot and the garden in front appeared light and pale
+against the unbroken darkness of the grove from which he had emerged,
+and paused at the garden gate.
+
+He had scarcely been there a minute when he beheld a sort of procession
+advancing from the door in his front. It consisted first of Enoch the
+trapper, carrying a spade on his shoulder and a lantern dangling in his
+hand; then came Mrs. Day, the light of the lantern revealing that she
+bore in her arms curious objects about a foot long, in the form of
+Latin crosses (made of lath and brown paper dipped in brimstone—called
+matches by bee-masters); next came Miss Day, with a shawl thrown over
+her head; and behind all, in the gloom, Mr. Frederic Shiner.
+
+Dick, in his consternation at finding Shiner present, was at a loss how
+to proceed, and retired under a tree to collect his thoughts.
+
+“Here I be, Enoch,” said a voice; and the procession advancing farther,
+the lantern’s rays illuminated the figure of Geoffrey, awaiting their
+arrival beside a row of bee-hives, in front of the path. Taking the
+spade from Enoch, he proceeded to dig two holes in the earth beside the
+hives, the others standing round in a circle, except Mrs. Day, who
+deposited her matches in the fork of an apple-tree and returned to the
+house. The party remaining were now lit up in front by the lantern in
+their midst, their shadows radiating each way upon the garden-plot like
+the spokes of a wheel. An apparent embarrassment of Fancy at the
+presence of Shiner caused a silence in the assembly, during which the
+preliminaries of execution were arranged, the matches fixed, the stake
+kindled, the two hives placed over the two holes, and the earth stopped
+round the edges. Geoffrey then stood erect, and rather more, to
+straighten his backbone after the digging.
+
+“They were a peculiar family,” said Mr. Shiner, regarding the hives
+reflectively.
+
+Geoffrey nodded.
+
+“Those holes will be the grave of thousands!” said Fancy. “I think ’tis
+rather a cruel thing to do.”
+
+Her father shook his head. “No,” he said, tapping the hives to shake
+the dead bees from their cells, “if you suffocate ’em this way, they
+only die once: if you fumigate ’em in the new way, they come to life
+again, and die o’ starvation; so the pangs o’ death be twice upon ’em.”
+
+“I incline to Fancy’s notion,” said Mr. Shiner, laughing lightly.
+
+“The proper way to take honey, so that the bees be neither starved nor
+murdered, is a puzzling matter,” said the keeper steadily.
+
+“I should like never to take it from them,” said Fancy.
+
+“But ’tis the money,” said Enoch musingly. “For without money man is a
+shadder!”
+
+The lantern-light had disturbed many bees that had escaped from hives
+destroyed some days earlier, and, demoralized by affliction, were now
+getting a living as marauders about the doors of other hives. Several
+flew round the head and neck of Geoffrey; then darted upon him with an
+irritated bizz.
+
+Enoch threw down the lantern, and ran off and pushed his head into a
+currant bush; Fancy scudded up the path; and Mr. Shiner floundered away
+helter-skelter among the cabbages. Geoffrey stood his ground, unmoved
+and firm as a rock. Fancy was the first to return, followed by Enoch
+picking up the lantern. Mr. Shiner still remained invisible.
+
+“Have the craters stung ye?” said Enoch to Geoffrey.
+
+“No, not much—on’y a little here and there,” he said with leisurely
+solemnity, shaking one bee out of his shirt sleeve, pulling another
+from among his hair, and two or three more from his neck. The rest
+looked on during this proceeding with a complacent sense of being out
+of it,—much as a European nation in a state of internal commotion is
+watched by its neighbours.
+
+“Are those all of them, father?” said Fancy, when Geoffrey had pulled
+away five.
+
+“Almost all,—though I feel one or two more sticking into my shoulder
+and side. Ah! there’s another just begun again upon my backbone. You
+lively young mortals, how did you get inside there? However, they can’t
+sting me many times more, poor things, for they must be getting weak.
+They mid as well stay in me till bedtime now, I suppose.”
+
+As he himself was the only person affected by this arrangement, it
+seemed satisfactory enough; and after a noise of feet kicking against
+cabbages in a blundering progress among them, the voice of Mr. Shiner
+was heard from the darkness in that direction.
+
+“Is all quite safe again?”
+
+No answer being returned to this query, he apparently assumed that he
+might venture forth, and gradually drew near the lantern again. The
+hives were now removed from their position over the holes, one being
+handed to Enoch to carry indoors, and one being taken by Geoffrey
+himself.
+
+“Bring hither the lantern, Fancy: the spade can bide.”
+
+Geoffrey and Enoch then went towards the house, leaving Shiner and
+Fancy standing side by side on the garden-plot.
+
+“Allow me,” said Shiner, stooping for the lantern and seizing it at the
+same time with Fancy.
+
+“I can carry it,” said Fancy, religiously repressing all inclination to
+trifle. She had thoroughly considered that subject after the tearful
+explanation of the bird-catching adventure to Dick, and had decided
+that it would be dishonest in her, as an engaged young woman, to trifle
+with men’s eyes and hands any more. Finding that Shiner still retained
+his hold of the lantern, she relinquished it, and he, having found her
+retaining it, also let go. The lantern fell, and was extinguished.
+Fancy moved on.
+
+“Where is the path?” said Mr. Shiner.
+
+“Here,” said Fancy. “Your eyes will get used to the dark in a minute or
+two.”
+
+“Till that time will ye lend me your hand?” Fancy gave him the extreme
+tips of her fingers, and they stepped from the plot into the path.
+
+“You don’t accept attentions very freely.”
+
+“It depends upon who offers them.”
+
+“A fellow like me, for instance.” A dead silence.
+
+“Well, what do you say, Missie?”
+
+“It then depends upon how they are offered.”
+
+“Not wildly, and yet not careless-like; not purposely, and yet not by
+chance; not too quick nor yet too slow.”
+
+“How then?” said Fancy.
+
+“Coolly and practically,” he said. “How would that kind of love be
+taken?”
+
+“Not anxiously, and yet not indifferently; neither blushing nor pale;
+nor religiously nor yet quite wickedly.”
+
+“Well, how?”
+
+“Not at all.”
+
+Geoffrey Day’s storehouse at the back of his dwelling was hung with
+bunches of dried horehound, mint, and sage; brown-paper bags of thyme
+and lavender; and long ropes of clean onions. On shelves were spread
+large red and yellow apples, and choice selections of early potatoes
+for seed next year;—vulgar crowds of commoner kind lying beneath in
+heaps. A few empty beehives were clustered around a nail in one corner,
+under which stood two or three barrels of new cider of the first crop,
+each bubbling and squirting forth from the yet open bunghole.
+
+Fancy was now kneeling beside the two inverted hives, one of which
+rested against her lap, for convenience in operating upon the contents.
+She thrust her sleeves above her elbows, and inserted her small pink
+hand edgewise between each white lobe of honeycomb, performing the act
+so adroitly and gently as not to unseal a single cell. Then cracking
+the piece off at the crown of the hive by a slight backward and forward
+movement, she lifted each portion as it was loosened into a large blue
+platter, placed on a bench at her side.
+
+“Bother these little mortals!” said Geoffrey, who was holding the light
+to her, and giving his back an uneasy twist. “I really think I may as
+well go indoors and take ’em out, poor things! for they won’t let me
+alone. There’s two a stinging wi’ all their might now. I’m sure I
+wonder their strength can last so long.”
+
+“All right, friend; I’ll hold the candle whilst you are gone,” said Mr.
+Shiner, leisurely taking the light, and allowing Geoffrey to depart,
+which he did with his usual long paces.
+
+He could hardly have gone round to the house-door when other footsteps
+were heard approaching the outbuilding; the tip of a finger appeared in
+the hole through which the wood latch was lifted, and Dick Dewy came
+in, having been all this time walking up and down the wood, vainly
+waiting for Shiner’s departure.
+
+Fancy looked up and welcomed him rather confusedly. Shiner grasped the
+candlestick more firmly, and, lest doing this in silence should not
+imply to Dick with sufficient force that he was quite at home and cool,
+he sang invincibly—
+
+“‘King Arthur he had three sons.’”
+
+
+“Father here?” said Dick.
+
+“Indoors, I think,” said Fancy, looking pleasantly at him.
+
+Dick surveyed the scene, and did not seem inclined to hurry off just at
+that moment. Shiner went on singing—
+
+“‘The miller was drown’d in his pond,
+    The weaver was hung in his yarn,
+And the d--- ran away with the little tail-or,
+    With the broadcloth under his arm.’”
+
+
+“That’s a terrible crippled rhyme, if that’s your rhyme!” said Dick,
+with a grain of superciliousness in his tone.
+
+“It’s no use your complaining to me about the rhyme!” said Mr. Shiner.
+“You must go to the man that made it.”
+
+Fancy by this time had acquired confidence.
+
+“Taste a bit, Mr. Dewy,” she said, holding up to him a small circular
+piece of honeycomb that had been the last in the row of layers,
+remaining still on her knees and flinging back her head to look in his
+face; “and then I’ll taste a bit too.”
+
+“And I, if you please,” said Mr. Shiner. Nevertheless the farmer looked
+superior, as if he could even now hardly join the trifling from very
+importance of station; and after receiving the honeycomb from Fancy, he
+turned it over in his hand till the cells began to be crushed, and the
+liquid honey ran down from his fingers in a thin string.
+
+Suddenly a faint cry from Fancy caused them to gaze at her.
+
+“What’s the matter, dear?” said Dick.
+
+“It is nothing, but O-o! a bee has stung the inside of my lip! He was
+in one of the cells I was eating!”
+
+“We must keep down the swelling, or it may be serious!” said Shiner,
+stepping up and kneeling beside her. “Let me see it.”
+
+“No, no!”
+
+“Just let _me_ see it,” said Dick, kneeling on the other side: and
+after some hesitation she pressed down her lip with one finger to show
+the place. “O, I hope ’twill soon be better! I don’t mind a sting in
+ordinary places, but it is so bad upon your lip,” she added with tears
+in her eyes, and writhing a little from the pain.
+
+Shiner held the light above his head and pushed his face close to
+Fancy’s, as if the lip had been shown exclusively to himself, upon
+which Dick pushed closer, as if Shiner were not there at all.
+
+“It is swelling,” said Dick to her right aspect.
+
+“It isn’t swelling,” said Shiner to her left aspect.
+
+“Is it dangerous on the lip?” cried Fancy. “I know it is dangerous on
+the tongue.”
+
+“O no, not dangerous!” answered Dick.
+
+“Rather dangerous,” had answered Shiner simultaneously.
+
+“I must try to bear it!” said Fancy, turning again to the hives.
+
+“Hartshorn-and-oil is a good thing to put to it, Miss Day,” said Shiner
+with great concern.
+
+“Sweet-oil-and-hartshorn I’ve found to be a good thing to cure stings,
+Miss Day,” said Dick with greater concern.
+
+“We have some mixed indoors; would you kindly run and get it for me?”
+she said.
+
+Now, whether by inadvertence, or whether by mischievous intention, the
+individuality of the _you_ was so carelessly denoted that both Dick and
+Shiner sprang to their feet like twin acrobats, and marched abreast to
+the door; both seized the latch and lifted it, and continued marching
+on, shoulder to shoulder, in the same manner to the dwelling-house. Not
+only so, but entering the room, they marched as before straight up to
+Mrs. Day’s chair, letting the door in the oak partition slam so
+forcibly, that the rows of pewter on the dresser rang like a bell.
+
+“Mrs. Day, Fancy has stung her lip, and wants you to give me the
+hartshorn, please,” said Mr. Shiner, very close to Mrs. Day’s face.
+
+“O, Mrs. Day, Fancy has asked me to bring out the hartshorn, please,
+because she has stung her lip!” said Dick, a little closer to Mrs.
+Day’s face.
+
+“Well, men alive! that’s no reason why you should eat me, I suppose!”
+said Mrs. Day, drawing back.
+
+She searched in the corner-cupboard, produced the bottle, and began to
+dust the cork, the rim, and every other part very carefully, Dick’s
+hand and Shiner’s hand waiting side by side.
+
+“Which is head man?” said Mrs. Day. “Now, don’t come mumbudgeting so
+close again. Which is head man?”
+
+Neither spoke; and the bottle was inclined towards Shiner. Shiner, as a
+high-class man, would not look in the least triumphant, and turned to
+go off with it as Geoffrey came downstairs after the search in his
+linen for concealed bees.
+
+“O—that you, Master Dewy?”
+
+Dick assured the keeper that it was; and the young man then determined
+upon a bold stroke for the attainment of his end, forgetting that the
+worst of bold strokes is the disastrous consequences they involve if
+they fail.
+
+“I’ve come on purpose to speak to you very particular, Mr. Day,” he
+said, with a crushing emphasis intended for the ears of Mr. Shiner, who
+was vanishing round the door-post at that moment.
+
+“Well, I’ve been forced to go upstairs and unrind myself, and shake
+some bees out o’ me” said Geoffrey, walking slowly towards the open
+door, and standing on the threshold. “The young rascals got into my
+shirt and wouldn’t be quiet nohow.”
+
+Dick followed him to the door.
+
+“I’ve come to speak a word to you,” he repeated, looking out at the
+pale mist creeping up from the gloom of the valley. “You may perhaps
+guess what it is about.”
+
+The keeper lowered his hands into the depths of his pockets, twirled
+his eyes, balanced himself on his toes, looked as perpendicularly
+downward as if his glance were a plumb-line, then horizontally,
+collecting together the cracks that lay about his face till they were
+all in the neighbourhood of his eyes.
+
+“Maybe I don’t know,” he replied.
+
+Dick said nothing; and the stillness was disturbed only by some small
+bird that was being killed by an owl in the adjoining wood, whose cry
+passed into the silence without mingling with it.
+
+“I’ve left my hat up in chammer,” said Geoffrey; “wait while I step up
+and get en.”
+
+“I’ll be in the garden,” said Dick.
+
+He went round by a side wicket into the garden, and Geoffrey went
+upstairs. It was the custom in Mellstock and its vicinity to discuss
+matters of pleasure and ordinary business inside the house, and to
+reserve the garden for very important affairs: a custom which, as is
+supposed, originated in the desirability of getting away at such times
+from the other members of the family when there was only one room for
+living in, though it was now quite as frequently practised by those who
+suffered from no such limitation to the size of their domiciles.
+
+The head-keeper’s form appeared in the dusky garden, and Dick walked
+towards him. The elder paused and leant over the rail of a piggery that
+stood on the left of the path, upon which Dick did the same; and they
+both contemplated a whitish shadowy shape that was moving about and
+grunting among the straw of the interior.
+
+“I’ve come to ask for Fancy,” said Dick.
+
+“I’d as lief you hadn’t.”
+
+“Why should that be, Mr. Day?”
+
+“Because it makes me say that you’ve come to ask what ye be’n’t likely
+to have. Have ye come for anything else?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Then I’ll just tell ’ee you’ve come on a very foolish errand. D’ye
+know what her mother was?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“A teacher in a landed family’s nursery, who was foolish enough to
+marry the keeper of the same establishment; for I was only a keeper
+then, though now I’ve a dozen other irons in the fire as steward here
+for my lord, what with the timber sales and the yearly fellings, and
+the gravel and sand sales and one thing and ’tother. However, d’ye
+think Fancy picked up her good manners, the smooth turn of her tongue,
+her musical notes, and her knowledge of books, in a homely hole like
+this?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“D’ye know where?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, when I went a-wandering after her mother’s death, she lived with
+her aunt, who kept a boarding-school, till her aunt married Lawyer
+Green—a man as sharp as a needle—and the school was broke up. Did ye
+know that then she went to the training-school, and that her name stood
+first among the Queen’s scholars of her year?”
+
+“I’ve heard so.”
+
+“And that when she sat for her certificate as Government teacher, she
+had the highest of the first class?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, and do ye know what I live in such a miserly way for when I’ve
+got enough to do without it, and why I make her work as a
+schoolmistress instead of living here?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“That if any gentleman, who sees her to be his equal in polish, should
+want to marry her, and she want to marry him, he sha’n’t be superior to
+her in pocket. Now do ye think after this that you be good enough for
+her?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then good-night t’ee, Master Dewy.”
+
+“Good-night, Mr. Day.”
+
+Modest Dick’s reply had faltered upon his tongue, and he turned away
+wondering at his presumption in asking for a woman whom he had seen
+from the beginning to be so superior to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+FANCY IN THE RAIN
+
+
+The next scene is a tempestuous afternoon in the following month, and
+Fancy Day is discovered walking from her father’s home towards
+Mellstock.
+
+A single vast gray cloud covered the country, from which the small rain
+and mist had just begun to blow down in wavy sheets, alternately thick
+and thin. The trees of the fields and plantations writhed like
+miserable men as the air wound its way swiftly among them: the lowest
+portions of their trunks, that had hardly ever been known to move, were
+visibly rocked by the fiercer gusts, distressing the mind by its
+painful unwontedness, as when a strong man is seen to shed tears.
+Low-hanging boughs went up and down; high and erect boughs went to and
+fro; the blasts being so irregular, and divided into so many
+cross-currents, that neighbouring branches of the same tree swept the
+skies in independent motions, crossed each other, or became entangled.
+Across the open spaces flew flocks of green and yellowish leaves,
+which, after travelling a long distance from their parent trees,
+reached the ground, and lay there with their under-sides upward.
+
+As the rain and wind increased, and Fancy’s bonnet-ribbons leapt more
+and more snappishly against her chin, she paused on entering Mellstock
+Lane to consider her latitude, and the distance to a place of shelter.
+The nearest house was Elizabeth Endorfield’s, in Higher Mellstock,
+whose cottage and garden stood not far from the junction of that hamlet
+with the road she followed. Fancy hastened onward, and in five minutes
+entered a gate, which shed upon her toes a flood of water-drops as she
+opened it.
+
+“Come in, chiel!” a voice exclaimed, before Fancy had knocked: a
+promptness that would have surprised her had she not known that Mrs.
+Endorfield was an exceedingly and exceptionally sharp woman in the use
+of her eyes and ears.
+
+Fancy went in and sat down. Elizabeth was paring potatoes for her
+husband’s supper.
+
+Scrape, scrape, scrape; then a toss, and splash went a potato into a
+bucket of water.
+
+Now, as Fancy listlessly noted these proceedings of the dame, she began
+to reconsider an old subject that lay uppermost in her heart. Since the
+interview between her father and Dick, the days had been melancholy
+days for her. Geoffrey’s firm opposition to the notion of Dick as a
+son-in-law was more than she had expected. She had frequently seen her
+lover since that time, it is true, and had loved him more for the
+opposition than she would have otherwise dreamt of doing—which was a
+happiness of a certain kind. Yet, though love is thus an end in itself,
+it must be believed to be the means to another end if it is to assume
+the rosy hues of an unalloyed pleasure. And such a belief Fancy and
+Dick were emphatically denied just now.
+
+Elizabeth Endorfield had a repute among women which was in its nature
+something between distinction and notoriety. It was founded on the
+following items of character. She was shrewd and penetrating; her house
+stood in a lonely place; she never went to church; she wore a red
+cloak; she always retained her bonnet indoors and she had a pointed
+chin. Thus far her attributes were distinctly Satanic; and those who
+looked no further called her, in plain terms, a witch. But she was not
+gaunt, nor ugly in the upper part of her face, nor particularly strange
+in manner; so that, when her more intimate acquaintances spoke of her
+the term was softened, and she became simply a Deep Body, who was as
+long-headed as she was high. It may be stated that Elizabeth belonged
+to a class of suspects who were gradually losing their mysterious
+characteristics under the administration of the young vicar; though,
+during the long reign of Mr. Grinham, the parish of Mellstock had
+proved extremely favourable to the growth of witches.
+
+While Fancy was revolving all this in her mind, and putting it to
+herself whether it was worth while to tell her troubles to Elizabeth,
+and ask her advice in getting out of them, the witch spoke.
+
+“You be down—proper down,” she said suddenly, dropping another potato
+into the bucket.
+
+Fancy took no notice.
+
+“About your young man.”
+
+Fancy reddened. Elizabeth seemed to be watching her thoughts. Really,
+one would almost think she must have the powers people ascribed to her.
+
+“Father not in the humour for’t, hey?” Another potato was finished and
+flung in. “Ah, I know about it. Little birds tell me things that people
+don’t dream of my knowing.”
+
+Fancy was desperate about Dick, and here was a chance—O, such a wicked
+chance—of getting help; and what was goodness beside love!
+
+“I wish you’d tell me how to put him in the humour for it?” she said.
+
+“That I could soon do,” said the witch quietly.
+
+“Really? O, do; anyhow—I don’t care—so that it is done! How could I do
+it, Mrs. Endorfield?”
+
+“Nothing so mighty wonderful in it.”
+
+“Well, but how?”
+
+“By witchery, of course!” said Elizabeth.
+
+“No!” said Fancy.
+
+“’Tis, I assure ye. Didn’t you ever hear I was a witch?”
+
+“Well,” hesitated Fancy, “I have heard you called so.”
+
+“And you believed it?”
+
+“I can’t say that I did exactly believe it, for ’tis very horrible and
+wicked; but, O, how I do wish it was possible for you to be one!”
+
+“So I am. And I’ll tell you how to bewitch your father to let you marry
+Dick Dewy.”
+
+“Will it hurt him, poor thing?”
+
+“Hurt who?”
+
+“Father.”
+
+“No; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be
+broke by your acting stupidly.”
+
+Fancy looked rather perplexed, and Elizabeth went on:
+
+“This fear of Lizz—whatever ’tis—
+    By great and small;
+She makes pretence to common sense,
+    And that’s all.
+
+
+“You must do it like this.” The witch laid down her knife and potato,
+and then poured into Fancy’s ear a long and detailed list of
+directions, glancing up from the corner of her eye into Fancy’s face
+with an expression of sinister humour. Fancy’s face brightened,
+clouded, rose and sank, as the narrative proceeded. “There,” said
+Elizabeth at length, stooping for the knife and another potato, “do
+that, and you’ll have him by-long and by-late, my dear.”
+
+“And do it I will!” said Fancy.
+
+She then turned her attention to the external world once more. The rain
+continued as usual, but the wind had abated considerably during the
+discourse. Judging that it was now possible to keep an umbrella erect,
+she pulled her hood again over her bonnet, bade the witch good-bye, and
+went her way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+THE SPELL
+
+
+Mrs. Endorfield’s advice was duly followed.
+
+“I be proper sorry that your daughter isn’t so well as she might be,”
+said a Mellstock man to Geoffrey one morning.
+
+“But is there anything in it?” said Geoffrey uneasily, as he shifted
+his hat to the right. “I can’t understand the report. She didn’t
+complain to me a bit when I saw her.”
+
+“No appetite at all, they say.”
+
+Geoffrey crossed to Mellstock and called at the school that afternoon.
+Fancy welcomed him as usual, and asked him to stay and take tea with
+her.
+
+“I be’n’t much for tea, this time o’ day,” he said, but stayed.
+
+During the meal he watched her narrowly. And to his great consternation
+discovered the following unprecedented change in the healthy girl—that
+she cut herself only a diaphanous slice of bread-and-butter, and,
+laying it on her plate, passed the meal-time in breaking it into
+pieces, but eating no more than about one-tenth of the slice. Geoffrey
+hoped she would say something about Dick, and finish up by weeping, as
+she had done after the decision against him a few days subsequent to
+the interview in the garden. But nothing was said, and in due time
+Geoffrey departed again for Yalbury Wood.
+
+“’Tis to be hoped poor Miss Fancy will be able to keep on her school,”
+said Geoffrey’s man Enoch to Geoffrey the following week, as they were
+shovelling up ant-hills in the wood.
+
+Geoffrey stuck in the shovel, swept seven or eight ants from his
+sleeve, and killed another that was prowling round his ear, then looked
+perpendicularly into the earth as usual, waiting for Enoch to say more.
+“Well, why shouldn’t she?” said the keeper at last.
+
+“The baker told me yesterday,” continued Enoch, shaking out another
+emmet that had run merrily up his thigh, “that the bread he’ve left at
+that there school-house this last month would starve any mouse in the
+three creations; that ’twould so! And afterwards I had a pint o’ small
+down at Morrs’s, and there I heard more.”
+
+“What might that ha’ been?”
+
+“That she used to have a pound o’ the best rolled butter a week,
+regular as clockwork, from Dairyman Viney’s for herself, as well as
+just so much salted for the helping girl, and the ’ooman she calls in;
+but now the same quantity d’last her three weeks, and then ’tis
+thoughted she throws it away sour.”
+
+“Finish doing the emmets, and carry the bag home-along.” The keeper
+resumed his gun, tucked it under his arm, and went on without whistling
+to the dogs, who however followed, with a bearing meant to imply that
+they did not expect any such attentions when their master was
+reflecting.
+
+On Saturday morning a note came from Fancy. He was not to trouble about
+sending her the couple of rabbits, as was intended, because she feared
+she should not want them. Later in the day Geoffrey went to
+Casterbridge and called upon the butcher who served Fancy with fresh
+meat, which was put down to her father’s account.
+
+“I’ve called to pay up our little bill, Neighbour Haylock, and you can
+gie me the chiel’s account at the same time.”
+
+Mr. Haylock turned round three quarters of a circle in the midst of a
+heap of joints, altered the expression of his face from meat to money,
+went into a little office consisting only of a door and a window,
+looked very vigorously into a book which possessed length but no
+breadth; and then, seizing a piece of paper and scribbling thereupon,
+handed the bill.
+
+Probably it was the first time in the history of commercial
+transactions that the quality of shortness in a butcher’s bill was a
+cause of tribulation to the debtor. “Why, this isn’t all she’ve had in
+a whole month!” said Geoffrey.
+
+“Every mossel,” said the butcher—“(now, Dan, take that leg and shoulder
+to Mrs. White’s, and this eleven pound here to Mr. Martin’s)—you’ve
+been treating her to smaller joints lately, to my thinking, Mr. Day?”
+
+“Only two or three little scram rabbits this last week, as I am alive—I
+wish I had!”
+
+“Well, my wife said to me—(Dan! not too much, not too much on that tray
+at a time; better go twice)—my wife said to me as she posted up the
+books: she says, ‘Miss Day must have been affronted this summer during
+that hot muggy weather that spolit so much for us; for depend upon’t,’
+she says, ‘she’ve been trying John Grimmett unknown to us: see her
+account else.’ ’Tis little, of course, at the best of times, being only
+for one, but now ’tis next kin to nothing.”
+
+“I’ll inquire,” said Geoffrey despondingly.
+
+He returned by way of Mellstock, and called upon Fancy, in fulfilment
+of a promise. It being Saturday, the children were enjoying a holiday,
+and on entering the residence Fancy was nowhere to be seen. Nan, the
+charwoman, was sweeping the kitchen.
+
+“Where’s my da’ter?” said the keeper.
+
+“Well, you see she was tired with the week’s teaching, and this morning
+she said, ‘Nan, I sha’n’t get up till the evening.’ You see, Mr. Day,
+if people don’t eat, they can’t work; and as she’ve gie’d up eating,
+she must gie up working.”
+
+“Have ye carried up any dinner to her?”
+
+“No; she don’t want any. There, we all know that such things don’t come
+without good reason—not that I wish to say anything about a broken
+heart, or anything of the kind.”
+
+Geoffrey’s own heart felt inconveniently large just then. He went to
+the staircase and ascended to his daughter’s door.
+
+“Fancy!”
+
+“Come in, father.”
+
+To see a person in bed from any cause whatever, on a fine afternoon, is
+depressing enough; and here was his only child Fancy, not only in bed,
+but looking very pale. Geoffrey was visibly disturbed.
+
+“Fancy, I didn’t expect to see thee here, chiel,” he said. “What’s the
+matter?”
+
+“I’m not well, father.”
+
+“How’s that?”
+
+“Because I think of things.”
+
+“What things can you have to think o’ so mortal much?”
+
+“You know, father.”
+
+“You think I’ve been cruel to thee in saying that that penniless Dick
+o’ thine sha’n’t marry thee, I suppose?”
+
+No answer.
+
+“Well, you know, Fancy, I do it for the best, and he isn’t good enough
+for thee. You know that well enough.” Here he again looked at her as
+she lay. “Well, Fancy, I can’t let my only chiel die; and if you can’t
+live without en, you must ha’ en, I suppose.”
+
+“O, I don’t want him like that; all against your will, and everything
+so disobedient!” sighed the invalid.
+
+“No, no, ’tisn’t against my will. My wish is, now I d’see how ’tis
+hurten thee to live without en, that he shall marry thee as soon as
+we’ve considered a little. That’s my wish flat and plain, Fancy. There,
+never cry, my little maid! You ought to ha’ cried afore; no need o’
+crying now ’tis all over. Well, howsoever, try to step over and see me
+and mother-law to-morrow, and ha’ a bit of dinner wi’ us.”
+
+“And—Dick too?”
+
+“Ay, Dick too, ’far’s I know.”
+
+“And _when_ do you think you’ll have considered, father, and he may
+marry me?” she coaxed.
+
+“Well, there, say next Midsummer; that’s not a day too long to wait.”
+
+On leaving the school Geoffrey went to the tranter’s. Old William
+opened the door.
+
+“Is your grandson Dick in ’ithin, William?”
+
+“No, not just now, Mr. Day. Though he’ve been at home a good deal
+lately.”
+
+“O, how’s that?”
+
+“What wi’ one thing, and what wi’ t’other, he’s all in a mope, as might
+be said. Don’t seem the feller he used to. Ay, ’a will sit studding and
+thinking as if ’a were going to turn chapel-member, and then do nothing
+but traypse and wamble about. Used to be such a chatty boy, too, Dick
+did; and now ’a don’t speak at all. But won’t ye step inside? Reuben
+will be home soon, ’a b’lieve.”
+
+“No, thank you, I can’t stay now. Will ye just ask Dick if he’ll do me
+the kindness to step over to Yalbury to-morrow with my da’ter Fancy, if
+she’s well enough? I don’t like her to come by herself, now she’s not
+so terrible topping in health.”
+
+“So I’ve heard. Ay, sure, I’ll tell him without fail.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+AFTER GAINING HER POINT
+
+
+The visit to Geoffrey passed off as delightfully as a visit might have
+been expected to pass off when it was the first day of smooth
+experience in a hitherto obstructed love-course. And then came a series
+of several happy days, of the same undisturbed serenity. Dick could
+court her when he chose; stay away when he chose,—which was never; walk
+with her by winding streams and waterfalls and autumn scenery till dews
+and twilight sent them home. And thus they drew near the day of the
+Harvest Thanksgiving, which was also the time chosen for opening the
+organ in Mellstock Church.
+
+It chanced that Dick on that very day was called away from Mellstock. A
+young acquaintance had died of consumption at Charmley, a neighbouring
+village, on the previous Monday, and Dick, in fulfilment of a
+long-standing promise, was to assist in carrying him to the grave. When
+on Tuesday, Dick went towards the school to acquaint Fancy with the
+fact, it is difficult to say whether his own disappointment at being
+denied the sight of her triumphant _début_ as organist, was greater
+than his vexation that his pet should on this great occasion be
+deprived of the pleasure of his presence. However, the intelligence was
+communicated. She bore it as she best could, not without many
+expressions of regret, and convictions that her performance would be
+nothing to her now.
+
+Just before eleven o’clock on Sunday he set out upon his sad errand.
+The funeral was to be immediately after the morning service, and as
+there were four good miles to walk, driving being inconvenient, it
+became necessary to start comparatively early. Half an hour later would
+certainly have answered his purpose quite as well, yet at the last
+moment nothing would content his ardent mind but that he must go a mile
+out of his way in the direction of the school, in the hope of getting a
+glimpse of his Love as she started for church.
+
+Striking, therefore, into the lane towards the school, instead of
+across the ewelease direct to Charmley, he arrived opposite her door as
+his goddess emerged.
+
+If ever a woman looked a divinity, Fancy Day appeared one that morning
+as she floated down those school steps, in the form of a nebulous
+collection of colours inclining to blue. With an audacity unparalleled
+in the whole history of village-school-mistresses at this date—partly
+owing, no doubt, to papa’s respectable accumulation of cash, which
+rendered her profession not altogether one of necessity—she had
+actually donned a hat and feather, and lowered her hitherto plainly
+looped-up hair, which now fell about her shoulders in a profusion of
+curls. Poor Dick was astonished: he had never seen her look so
+distractingly beautiful before, save on Christmas-eve, when her hair
+was in the same luxuriant condition of freedom. But his first burst of
+delighted surprise was followed by less comfortable feelings, as soon
+as his brain recovered its power to think.
+
+Fancy had blushed;—was it with confusion? She had also involuntarily
+pressed back her curls. She had not expected him.
+
+“Fancy, you didn’t know me for a moment in my funeral clothes, did
+you?”
+
+“Good-morning, Dick—no, really, I didn’t know you for an instant in
+such a sad suit.”
+
+He looked again at the gay tresses and hat. “You’ve never dressed so
+charming before, dearest.”
+
+“I like to hear you praise me in that way, Dick,” she said, smiling
+archly. “It is meat and drink to a woman. Do I look nice really?”
+
+“Fie! you know it. Did you remember,—I mean didn’t you remember about
+my going away to-day?”
+
+“Well, yes, I did, Dick; but, you know, I wanted to look well;—forgive
+me.”
+
+“Yes, darling; yes, of course,—there’s nothing to forgive. No, I was
+only thinking that when we talked on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday
+and Friday about my absence to-day, and I was so sorry for it, you
+said, Fancy, so were you sorry, and almost cried, and said it would be
+no pleasure to you to be the attraction of the church to-day, since I
+could not be there.”
+
+“My dear one, neither will it be so much pleasure to me . . . But I do
+take a little delight in my life, I suppose,” she pouted.
+
+“Apart from mine?”
+
+She looked at him with perplexed eyes. “I know you are vexed with me,
+Dick, and it is because the first Sunday I have curls and a hat and
+feather since I have been here happens to be the very day you are away
+and won’t be with me. Yes, say it is, for that is it! And you think
+that all this week I ought to have remembered you wouldn’t be here
+to-day, and not have cared to be better dressed than usual. Yes, you
+do, Dick, and it is rather unkind!”
+
+“No, no,” said Dick earnestly and simply, “I didn’t think so badly of
+you as that. I only thought that—if _you_ had been going away, I
+shouldn’t have tried new attractions for the eyes of other people. But
+then of course you and I are different, naturally.”
+
+“Well, perhaps we are.”
+
+“Whatever will the vicar say, Fancy?”
+
+“I don’t fear what he says in the least!” she answered proudly. “But he
+won’t say anything of the sort you think. No, no.”
+
+“He can hardly have conscience to, indeed.”
+
+“Now come, you say, Dick, that you quite forgive me, for I must go,”
+she said with sudden gaiety, and skipped backwards into the porch.
+“Come here, sir;—say you forgive me, and then you shall kiss me;—you
+never have yet when I have worn curls, you know. Yes, just where you
+want to so much,—yes, you may!”
+
+Dick followed her into the inner corner, where he was probably not slow
+in availing himself of the privilege offered.
+
+“Now that’s a treat for you, isn’t it?” she continued. “Good-bye, or I
+shall be late. Come and see me to-morrow: you’ll be tired to-night.”
+
+Thus they parted, and Fancy proceeded to the church. The organ stood on
+one side of the chancel, close to and under the immediate eye of the
+vicar when he was in the pulpit, and also in full view of the
+congregation. Here she sat down, for the first time in such a
+conspicuous position, her seat having previously been in a remote spot
+in the aisle.
+
+“Good heavens—disgraceful! Curls and a hat and feather!” said the
+daughters of the small gentry, who had either only curly hair without a
+hat and feather, or a hat and feather without curly hair. “A bonnet for
+church always,” said sober matrons.
+
+That Mr. Maybold was conscious of her presence close beside him during
+the sermon; that he was not at all angry at her development of costume;
+that he admired her, she perceived. But she did not see that he loved
+her during that sermon-time as he had never loved a woman before; that
+her proximity was a strange delight to him; and that he gloried in her
+musical success that morning in a spirit quite beyond a mere cleric’s
+glory at the inauguration of a new order of things.
+
+The old choir, with humbled hearts, no longer took their seats in the
+gallery as heretofore (which was now given up to the school-children
+who were not singers, and a pupil-teacher), but were scattered about
+with their wives in different parts of the church. Having nothing to do
+with conducting the service for almost the first time in their lives,
+they all felt awkward, out of place, abashed, and inconvenienced by
+their hands. The tranter had proposed that they should stay away to-day
+and go nutting, but grandfather William would not hear of such a thing
+for a moment. “No,” he replied reproachfully, and quoted a verse:
+“Though this has come upon us, let not our hearts be turned back, or
+our steps go out of the way.”
+
+So they stood and watched the curls of hair trailing down the back of
+the successful rival, and the waving of her feather, as she swayed her
+head. After a few timid notes and uncertain touches her playing became
+markedly correct, and towards the end full and free. But, whether from
+prejudice or unbiassed judgment, the venerable body of musicians could
+not help thinking that the simpler notes they had been wont to bring
+forth were more in keeping with the simplicity of their old church than
+the crowded chords and interludes it was her pleasure to produce.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+INTO TEMPTATION
+
+
+The day was done, and Fancy was again in the school-house. About five
+o’clock it began to rain, and in rather a dull frame of mind she
+wandered into the schoolroom, for want of something better to do. She
+was thinking—of her lover Dick Dewy? Not precisely. Of how weary she
+was of living alone: how unbearable it would be to return to Yalbury
+under the rule of her strange-tempered step-mother; that it was far
+better to be married to anybody than do that; that eight or nine long
+months had yet to be lived through ere the wedding could take place.
+
+At the side of the room were high windows of Ham-hill stone, upon
+either sill of which she could sit by first mounting a desk and using
+it as a footstool. As the evening advanced here she perched herself, as
+was her custom on such wet and gloomy occasions, put on a light shawl
+and bonnet, opened the window, and looked out at the rain.
+
+The window overlooked a field called the Grove, and it was the position
+from which she used to survey the crown of Dick’s passing hat in the
+early days of their acquaintance and meetings. Not a living soul was
+now visible anywhere; the rain kept all people indoors who were not
+forced abroad by necessity, and necessity was less importunate on
+Sundays than during the week.
+
+Sitting here and thinking again—of her lover, or of the sensation she
+had created at church that day?—well, it is unknown—thinking and
+thinking she saw a dark masculine figure arising into distinctness at
+the further end of the Grove—a man without an umbrella. Nearer and
+nearer he came, and she perceived that he was in deep mourning, and
+then that it was Dick. Yes, in the fondness and foolishness of his
+young heart, after walking four miles, in a drizzling rain without
+overcoat or umbrella, and in face of a remark from his love that he was
+not to come because he would be tired, he had made it his business to
+wander this mile out of his way again, from sheer wish of spending ten
+minutes in her presence.
+
+“O Dick, how wet you are!” she said, as he drew up under the window.
+“Why, your coat shines as if it had been varnished, and your hat—my
+goodness, there’s a streaming hat!”
+
+“O, I don’t mind, darling!” said Dick cheerfully. “Wet never hurts me,
+though I am rather sorry for my best clothes. However, it couldn’t be
+helped; we lent all the umbrellas to the women. I don’t know when I
+shall get mine back!”
+
+“And look, there’s a nasty patch of something just on your shoulder.”
+
+“Ah, that’s japanning; it rubbed off the clamps of poor Jack’s coffin
+when we lowered him from our shoulders upon the bier! I don’t care
+about that, for ’twas the last deed I could do for him; and ’tis hard
+if you can’t afford a coat for an old friend.”
+
+Fancy put her hand to her mouth for half a minute. Underneath the palm
+of that little hand there existed for that half-minute a little yawn.
+
+“Dick, I don’t like you to stand there in the wet. And you mustn’t sit
+down. Go home and change your things. Don’t stay another minute.”
+
+“One kiss after coming so far,” he pleaded.
+
+“If I can reach, then.”
+
+He looked rather disappointed at not being invited round to the door.
+She twisted from her seated position and bent herself downwards, but
+not even by standing on the plinth was it possible for Dick to get his
+lips into contact with hers as she held them. By great exertion she
+might have reached a little lower; but then she would have exposed her
+head to the rain.
+
+“Never mind, Dick; kiss my hand,” she said, flinging it down to him.
+“Now, good-bye.”
+
+“Good-bye.”
+
+He walked slowly away, turning and turning again to look at her till he
+was out of sight. During the retreat she said to herself, almost
+involuntarily, and still conscious of that morning’s triumph—“I like
+Dick, and I love him; but how plain and sorry a man looks in the rain,
+with no umbrella, and wet through!”
+
+As he vanished, she made as if to descend from her seat; but glancing
+in the other direction she saw another form coming along the same
+track. It was also that of a man. He, too, was in black from top to
+toe; but he carried an umbrella.
+
+He drew nearer, and the direction of the rain caused him so to slant
+his umbrella that from her height above the ground his head was
+invisible, as she was also to him. He passed in due time directly
+beneath her, and in looking down upon the exterior of his umbrella her
+feminine eyes perceived it to be of superior silk—less common at that
+date than since—and of elegant make. He reached the entrance to the
+building, and Fancy suddenly lost sight of him. Instead of pursuing the
+roadway as Dick had done he had turned sharply round into her own
+porch.
+
+She jumped to the floor, hastily flung off her shawl and bonnet,
+smoothed and patted her hair till the curls hung in passable condition,
+and listened. No knock. Nearly a minute passed, and still there was no
+knock. Then there arose a soft series of raps, no louder than the
+tapping of a distant woodpecker, and barely distinct enough to reach
+her ears. She composed herself and flung open the door.
+
+In the porch stood Mr. Maybold.
+
+There was a warm flush upon his face, and a bright flash in his eyes,
+which made him look handsomer than she had ever seen him before.
+
+“Good-evening, Miss Day.”
+
+“Good-evening, Mr. Maybold,” she said, in a strange state of mind. She
+had noticed, beyond the ardent hue of his face, that his voice had a
+singular tremor in it, and that his hand shook like an aspen leaf when
+he laid his umbrella in the corner of the porch. Without another word
+being spoken by either, he came into the schoolroom, shut the door, and
+moved close to her. Once inside, the expression of his face was no more
+discernible, by reason of the increasing dusk of evening.
+
+“I want to speak to you,” he then said; “seriously—on a perhaps
+unexpected subject, but one which is all the world to me—I don’t know
+what it may be to you, Miss Day.”
+
+No reply.
+
+“Fancy, I have come to ask you if you will be my wife?”
+
+As a person who has been idly amusing himself with rolling a snowball
+might start at finding he had set in motion an avalanche, so did Fancy
+start at these words from the vicar. And in the dead silence which
+followed them, the breathings of the man and of the woman could be
+distinctly and separately heard; and there was this difference between
+them—his respirations gradually grew quieter and less rapid after the
+enunciation, hers, from having been low and regular, increased in
+quickness and force, till she almost panted.
+
+“I cannot, I cannot, Mr. Maybold—I cannot! Don’t ask me!” she said.
+
+“Don’t answer in a hurry!” he entreated. “And do listen to me. This is
+no sudden feeling on my part. I have loved you for more than six
+months! Perhaps my late interest in teaching the children here has not
+been so single-minded as it seemed. You will understand my motive—like
+me better, perhaps, for honestly telling you that I have struggled
+against my emotion continually, because I have thought that it was not
+well for me to love you! But I resolved to struggle no longer; I have
+examined the feeling; and the love I bear you is as genuine as that I
+could bear any woman! I see your great charm; I respect your natural
+talents, and the refinement they have brought into your nature—they are
+quite enough, and more than enough for me! They are equal to anything
+ever required of the mistress of a quiet parsonage-house—the place in
+which I shall pass my days, wherever it may be situated. O Fancy, I
+have watched you, criticized you even severely, brought my feelings to
+the light of judgment, and still have found them rational, and such as
+any man might have expected to be inspired with by a woman like you! So
+there is nothing hurried, secret, or untoward in my desire to do this.
+Fancy, will you marry me?”
+
+No answer was returned.
+
+“Don’t refuse; don’t,” he implored. “It would be foolish of you—I mean
+cruel! Of course we would not live here, Fancy. I have had for a long
+time the offer of an exchange of livings with a friend in Yorkshire,
+but I have hitherto refused on account of my mother. There we would go.
+Your musical powers shall be still further developed; you shall have
+whatever pianoforte you like; you shall have anything, Fancy, anything
+to make you happy—pony-carriage, flowers, birds, pleasant society; yes,
+you have enough in you for any society, after a few months of travel
+with me! Will you, Fancy, marry me?”
+
+Another pause ensued, varied only by the surging of the rain against
+the window-panes, and then Fancy spoke, in a faint and broken voice.
+
+“Yes, I will,” she said.
+
+“God bless you, my own!” He advanced quickly, and put his arm out to
+embrace her. She drew back hastily. “No no, not now!” she said in an
+agitated whisper. “There are things;—but the temptation is, O, too
+strong, and I can’t resist it; I can’t tell you now, but I must tell
+you! Don’t, please, don’t come near me now! I want to think, I can
+scarcely get myself used to the idea of what I have promised yet.” The
+next minute she turned to a desk, buried her face in her hands, and
+burst into a hysterical fit of weeping. “O, leave me to myself!” she
+sobbed; “leave me! O, leave me!”
+
+“Don’t be distressed; don’t, dearest!” It was with visible difficulty
+that he restrained himself from approaching her. “You shall tell me at
+your leisure what it is that grieves you so; I am happy—beyond all
+measure happy!—at having your simple promise.”
+
+“And do go and leave me now!”
+
+“But I must not, in justice to you, leave for a minute, until you are
+yourself again.”
+
+“There then,” she said, controlling her emotion, and standing up; “I am
+not disturbed now.”
+
+He reluctantly moved towards the door. “Good-bye!” he murmured
+tenderly. “I’ll come to-morrow about this time.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+SECOND THOUGHTS
+
+
+The next morning the vicar rose early. The first thing he did was to
+write a long and careful letter to his friend in Yorkshire. Then,
+eating a little breakfast, he crossed the meadows in the direction of
+Casterbridge, bearing his letter in his pocket, that he might post it
+at the town office, and obviate the loss of one day in its transmission
+that would have resulted had he left it for the foot-post through the
+village.
+
+It was a foggy morning, and the trees shed in noisy water-drops the
+moisture they had collected from the thick air, an acorn occasionally
+falling from its cup to the ground, in company with the drippings. In
+the meads, sheets of spiders’-web, almost opaque with wet, hung in
+folds over the fences, and the falling leaves appeared in every variety
+of brown, green, and yellow hue.
+
+A low and merry whistling was heard on the highway he was approaching,
+then the light footsteps of a man going in the same direction as
+himself. On reaching the junction of his path with the road, the vicar
+beheld Dick Dewy’s open and cheerful face. Dick lifted his hat, and the
+vicar came out into the highway that Dick was pursuing.
+
+“Good-morning, Dewy. How well you are looking!” said Mr. Maybold.
+
+“Yes, sir, I am well—quite well! I am going to Casterbridge now, to get
+Smart’s collar; we left it there Saturday to be repaired.”
+
+“I am going to Casterbridge, so we’ll walk together,” the vicar said.
+Dick gave a hop with one foot to put himself in step with Mr. Maybold,
+who proceeded: “I fancy I didn’t see you at church yesterday, Dewy. Or
+were you behind the pier?”
+
+“No; I went to Charmley. Poor John Dunford chose me to be one of his
+bearers a long time before he died, and yesterday was the funeral. Of
+course I couldn’t refuse, though I should have liked particularly to
+have been at home as ’twas the day of the new music.”
+
+“Yes, you should have been. The musical portion of the service was
+successful—very successful indeed; and what is more to the purpose, no
+ill-feeling whatever was evinced by any of the members of the old
+choir. They joined in the singing with the greatest good-will.”
+
+“’Twas natural enough that I should want to be there, I suppose,” said
+Dick, smiling a private smile; “considering who the organ-player was.”
+
+At this the vicar reddened a little, and said, “Yes, yes,” though not
+at all comprehending Dick’s true meaning, who, as he received no
+further reply, continued hesitatingly, and with another smile denoting
+his pride as a lover—
+
+“I suppose you know what I mean, sir? You’ve heard about me and—Miss
+Day?”
+
+The red in Maybold’s countenance went away: he turned and looked Dick
+in the face.
+
+“No,” he said constrainedly, “I’ve heard nothing whatever about you and
+Miss Day.”
+
+“Why, she’s my sweetheart, and we are going to be married next
+Midsummer. We are keeping it rather close just at present, because ’tis
+a good many months to wait; but it is her father’s wish that we don’t
+marry before, and of course we must submit. But the time ’ill soon slip
+along.”
+
+“Yes, the time will soon slip along—Time glides away every day—yes.”
+
+Maybold said these words, but he had no idea of what they were. He was
+conscious of a cold and sickly thrill throughout him; and all he
+reasoned was this that the young creature whose graces had intoxicated
+him into making the most imprudent resolution of his life, was less an
+angel than a woman.
+
+“You see, sir,” continued the ingenuous Dick, “’twill be better in one
+sense. I shall by that time be the regular manager of a branch o’
+father’s business, which has very much increased lately, and business,
+which we think of starting elsewhere. It has very much increased
+lately, and we expect next year to keep a’ extra couple of horses.
+We’ve already our eye on one—brown as a berry, neck like a rainbow,
+fifteen hands, and not a gray hair in her—offered us at twenty-five
+want a crown. And to kip pace with the times I have had some cards
+prented and I beg leave to hand you one, sir.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the vicar, mechanically taking the card that Dick
+offered him.
+
+“I turn in here by Grey’s Bridge,” said Dick. “I suppose you go
+straight on and up town?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Good-morning, sir.”
+
+“Good-morning, Dewy.”
+
+Maybold stood still upon the bridge, holding the card as it had been
+put into his hand, and Dick’s footsteps died away towards Durnover
+Mill. The vicar’s first voluntary action was to read the card:—
+
+DEWY AND SON,
+TRANTERS AND HAULIERS,
+MELLSTOCK.
+_NB.—Furniture, Coals, Potatoes, Live and Dead Stock, removed to any
+distance on the shortest notice._
+
+
+Mr. Maybold leant over the parapet of the bridge and looked into the
+river. He saw—without heeding—how the water came rapidly from beneath
+the arches, glided down a little steep, then spread itself over a pool
+in which dace, trout, and minnows sported at ease among the long green
+locks of weed that lay heaving and sinking with their roots towards the
+current. At the end of ten minutes spent leaning thus, he drew from his
+pocket the letter to his friend, tore it deliberately into such minute
+fragments that scarcely two syllables remained in juxtaposition, and
+sent the whole handful of shreds fluttering into the water. Here he
+watched them eddy, dart, and turn, as they were carried downwards
+towards the ocean and gradually disappeared from his view. Finally he
+moved off, and pursued his way at a rapid pace back again to Mellstock
+Vicarage.
+
+Nerving himself by a long and intense effort, he sat down in his study
+and wrote as follows:
+
+
+“Dear Miss Day,—The meaning of your words, ‘the temptation is too
+strong,’ of your sadness and your tears, has been brought home to me by
+an accident. I know to-day what I did not know yesterday—that you are
+not a free woman.
+
+“Why did you not tell me—why didn’t you? Did you suppose I knew? No.
+Had I known, my conduct in coming to you as I did would have been
+reprehensible.
+
+“But I don’t chide you! Perhaps no blame attaches to you—I can’t tell.
+Fancy, though my opinion of you is assailed and disturbed in a way
+which cannot be expressed, I love you still, and my word to you holds
+good yet. But will you, in justice to an honest man who relies upon
+your word to him, consider whether, under the circumstances, you can
+honourably forsake him?
+
+
+“Yours ever sincerely,
+ARTHUR MAYBOLD.”
+
+
+He rang the bell. “Tell Charles to take these copybooks and this note
+to the school at once.”
+
+The maid took the parcel and the letter, and in a few minutes a boy was
+seen to leave the vicarage gate, with the one under his arm, and the
+other in his hand. The vicar sat with his hand to his brow, watching
+the lad as he descended Church Lane and entered the waterside path
+which intervened between that spot and the school.
+
+Here he was met by another boy, and after a free salutation and
+pugilistic frisk had passed between the two, the second boy came on his
+way to the vicarage, and the other vanished out of sight.
+
+The boy came to the door, and a note for Mr. Maybold was brought in.
+
+He knew the writing. Opening the envelope with an unsteady hand, he
+read the subjoined words:
+
+
+“Dear Mr. Maybold,—I have been thinking seriously and sadly through the
+whole of the night of the question you put to me last evening and of my
+answer. That answer, as an honest woman, I had no right to give.
+
+“It is my nature—perhaps all women’s—to love refinement of mind and
+manners; but even more than this, to be ever fascinated with the idea
+of surroundings more elegant and pleasing than those which have been
+customary. And you praised me, and praise is life to me. It was alone
+my sensations at these things which prompted my reply. Ambition and
+vanity they would be called; perhaps they are so.
+
+“After this explanation I hope you will generously allow me to withdraw
+the answer I too hastily gave.
+
+“And one more request. To keep the meeting of last night, and all that
+passed between us there, for ever a secret. Were it to become known, it
+would utterly blight the happiness of a trusting and generous man, whom
+I love still, and shall love always.
+
+
+“Yours sincerely,
+FANCY DAY.
+
+
+The last written communication that ever passed from the vicar to
+Fancy, was a note containing these words only:
+
+“Tell him everything; it is best. He will forgive you.”
+
+
+
+
+PART THE FIFTH: CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+‘THE KNOT THERE’S NO UNTYING’
+
+
+The last day of the story is dated just subsequent to that point in the
+development of the seasons when country people go to bed among nearly
+naked trees, are lulled to sleep by a fall of rain, and awake next
+morning among green ones; when the landscape appears embarrassed with
+the sudden weight and brilliancy of its leaves; when the night-jar
+comes and strikes up for the summer his tune of one note; when the
+apple-trees have bloomed, and the roads and orchard-grass become
+spotted with fallen petals; when the faces of the delicate flowers are
+darkened, and their heads weighed down, by the throng of honey-bees,
+which increase their humming till humming is too mild a term for the
+all-pervading sound; and when cuckoos, blackbirds, and sparrows, that
+have hitherto been merry and respectful neighbours, become noisy and
+persistent intimates.
+
+The exterior of Geoffrey Day’s house in Yalbury Wood appeared exactly
+as was usual at that season, but a frantic barking of the dogs at the
+back told of unwonted movements somewhere within. Inside the door the
+eyes beheld a gathering, which was a rarity indeed for the dwelling of
+the solitary wood-steward and keeper.
+
+About the room were sitting and standing, in various gnarled attitudes,
+our old acquaintance, grandfathers James and William, the tranter, Mr.
+Penny, two or three children, including Jimmy and Charley, besides
+three or four country ladies and gentlemen from a greater distance who
+do not require any distinction by name. Geoffrey was seen and heard
+stamping about the outhouse and among the bushes of the garden,
+attending to details of daily routine before the proper time arrived
+for their performance, in order that they might be off his hands for
+the day. He appeared with his shirt-sleeves rolled up; his best new
+nether garments, in which he had arrayed himself that morning, being
+temporarily disguised under a weekday apron whilst these proceedings
+were in operation. He occasionally glanced at the hives in passing, to
+see if his wife’s bees were swarming, ultimately rolling down his
+shirt-sleeves and going indoors, talking to tranter Dewy whilst
+buttoning the wristbands, to save time; next going upstairs for his
+best waistcoat, and coming down again to make another remark whilst
+buttoning that, during the time looking fixedly in the tranter’s face
+as if he were a looking-glass.
+
+The furniture had undergone attenuation to an alarming extent, every
+duplicate piece having been removed, including the clock by Thomas
+Wood; Ezekiel Saunders being at last left sole referee in matters of
+time.
+
+Fancy was stationary upstairs, receiving her layers of clothes and
+adornments, and answering by short fragments of laughter which had more
+fidgetiness than mirth in them, remarks that were made from time to
+time by Mrs. Dewy and Mrs. Penny, who were assisting her at the toilet,
+Mrs. Day having pleaded a queerness in her head as a reason for
+shutting herself up in an inner bedroom for the whole morning. Mrs.
+Penny appeared with nine corkscrew curls on each side of her temples,
+and a back comb stuck upon her crown like a castle on a steep.
+
+The conversation just now going on was concerning the banns, the last
+publication of which had been on the Sunday previous.
+
+“And how did they sound?” Fancy subtly inquired.
+
+“Very beautiful indeed,” said Mrs. Penny. “I never heard any sound
+better.”
+
+“But _how_?”
+
+_“_O, _so_ natural and elegant, didn’t they, Reuben!” she cried,
+through the chinks of the unceiled floor, to the tranter downstairs.
+
+“What’s that?” said the tranter, looking up inquiringly at the floor
+above him for an answer.
+
+“Didn’t Dick and Fancy sound well when they were called home in church
+last Sunday?” came downwards again in Mrs. Penny’s voice.
+
+“Ay, that they did, my sonnies!—especially the first time. There was a
+terrible whispering piece of work in the congregation, wasn’t there,
+neighbour Penny?” said the tranter, taking up the thread of
+conversation on his own account and, in order to be heard in the room
+above, speaking very loud to Mr. Penny, who sat at the distance of
+three feet from him, or rather less.
+
+“I never can mind seeing such a whispering as there was,” said Mr.
+Penny, also loudly, to the room above. “And such sorrowful envy on the
+maidens’ faces; really, I never did see such envy as there was!”
+
+Fancy’s lineaments varied in innumerable little flushes, and her heart
+palpitated innumerable little tremors of pleasure. “But perhaps,” she
+said, with assumed indifference, “it was only because no religion was
+going on just then?”
+
+“O, no; nothing to do with that. ’Twas because of your high standing in
+the parish. It was just as if they had one and all caught Dick kissing
+and coling ye to death, wasn’t it, Mrs. Dewy?”
+
+“Ay; that ’twas.”
+
+“How people will talk about one’s doings!” Fancy exclaimed.
+
+“Well, if you make songs about yourself, my dear, you can’t blame other
+people for singing ’em.”
+
+“Mercy me! how shall I go through it?” said the young lady again, but
+merely to those in the bedroom, with a breathing of a kind between a
+sigh and a pant, round shining eyes, and warm face.
+
+“O, you’ll get through it well enough, child,” said Mrs. Dewy placidly.
+“The edge of the performance is took off at the calling home; and when
+once you get up to the chancel end o’ the church, you feel as saucy as
+you please. I’m sure I felt as brave as a sodger all through the
+deed—though of course I dropped my face and looked modest, as was
+becoming to a maid. Mind you do that, Fancy.”
+
+“And I walked into the church as quiet as a lamb, I’m sure,” subjoined
+Mrs. Penny. “There, you see Penny is such a little small man. But
+certainly, I was flurried in the inside o’ me. Well, thinks I, ’tis to
+be, and here goes! And do you do the same: say, ‘’Tis to be, and here
+goes!’”
+
+“Is there such wonderful virtue in ‘’Tis to be, and here goes!’”
+inquired Fancy.
+
+“Wonderful! ’Twill carry a body through it all from wedding to
+churching, if you only let it out with spirit enough.”
+
+“Very well, then,” said Fancy, blushing. “’Tis to be, and here goes!”
+
+“That’s a girl for a husband!” said Mrs. Dewy.
+
+“I do hope he’ll come in time!” continued the bride-elect, inventing a
+new cause of affright, now that the other was demolished.
+
+“’Twould be a thousand pities if he didn’t come, now you be so brave,”
+said Mrs. Penny.
+
+Grandfather James, having overheard some of these remarks, said
+downstairs with mischievous loudness—
+
+“I’ve known some would-be weddings when the men didn’t come.”
+
+“They’ve happened not to come, before now, certainly,” said Mr. Penny,
+cleaning one of the glasses of his spectacles.
+
+“O, do hear what they are saying downstairs,” whispered Fancy. “Hush,
+hush!”
+
+She listened.
+
+“They have, haven’t they, Geoffrey?” continued grandfather James, as
+Geoffrey entered.
+
+“Have what?” said Geoffrey.
+
+“The men have been known not to come.”
+
+“That they have,” said the keeper.
+
+“Ay; I’ve knowed times when the wedding had to be put off through his
+not appearing, being tired of the woman. And another case I knowed was
+when the man was catched in a man-trap crossing Oaker’s Wood, and the
+three months had run out before he got well, and the banns had to be
+published over again.”
+
+“How horrible!” said Fancy.
+
+“They only say it on purpose to tease ’ee, my dear,” said Mrs. Dewy.
+
+“’Tis quite sad to think what wretched shifts poor maids have been put
+to,” came again from downstairs. “Ye should hear Clerk Wilkins, my
+brother-law, tell his experiences in marrying couples these last thirty
+year: sometimes one thing, sometimes another—’tis quite
+heart-rending—enough to make your hair stand on end.”
+
+“Those things don’t happen very often, I know,” said Fancy, with
+smouldering uneasiness.
+
+“Well, really ’tis time Dick was here,” said the tranter.
+
+“Don’t keep on at me so, grandfather James and Mr. Dewy, and all you
+down there!” Fancy broke out, unable to endure any longer. “I am sure I
+shall die, or do something, if you do!”
+
+“Never you hearken to these old chaps, Miss Day!” cried Nat Callcome,
+the best man, who had just entered, and threw his voice upward through
+the chinks of the floor as the others had done. “’Tis all right; Dick’s
+coming on like a wild feller; he’ll be here in a minute. The hive o’
+bees his mother gie’d en for his new garden swarmed jist as he was
+starting, and he said, ‘I can’t afford to lose a stock o’ bees; no,
+that I can’t, though I fain would; and Fancy wouldn’t wish it on any
+account.’ So he jist stopped to ting to ’em and shake ’em.”
+
+“A genuine wise man,” said Geoffrey.
+
+“To be sure, what a day’s work we had yesterday!” Mr. Callcome
+continued, lowering his voice as if it were not necessary any longer to
+include those in the room above among his audience, and selecting a
+remote corner of his best clean handkerchief for wiping his face. “To
+be sure!”
+
+“Things so heavy, I suppose,” said Geoffrey, as if reading through the
+chimney-window from the far end of the vista.
+
+“Ay,” said Nat, looking round the room at points from which furniture
+had been removed. “And so awkward to carry, too. ’Twas ath’art and
+across Dick’s garden; in and out Dick’s door; up and down Dick’s
+stairs; round and round Dick’s chammers till legs were worn to stumps:
+and Dick is so particular, too. And the stores of victuals and drink
+that lad has laid in: why, ’tis enough for Noah’s ark! I’m sure I never
+wish to see a choicer half-dozen of hams than he’s got there in his
+chimley; and the cider I tasted was a very pretty drop, indeed;—none
+could desire a prettier cider.”
+
+“They be for the love and the stalled ox both. Ah, the greedy martels!”
+said grandfather James.
+
+“Well, may-be they be. Surely,” says I, “that couple between ’em have
+heaped up so much furniture and victuals, that anybody would think they
+were going to take hold the big end of married life first, and begin
+wi’ a grown-up family. Ah, what a bath of heat we two chaps were in, to
+be sure, a-getting that furniture in order!”
+
+“I do so wish the room below was ceiled,” said Fancy, as the dressing
+went on; “we can hear all they say and do down there.”
+
+“Hark! Who’s that?” exclaimed a small pupil-teacher, who also assisted
+this morning, to her great delight. She ran half-way down the stairs,
+and peeped round the banister. “O, you should, you should, you should!”
+she exclaimed, scrambling up to the room again.
+
+“What?” said Fancy.
+
+“See the bridesmaids! They’ve just a come! ’Tis wonderful, really! ’tis
+wonderful how muslin can be brought to it. There, they don’t look a bit
+like themselves, but like some very rich sisters o’ theirs that nobody
+knew they had!”
+
+“Make ’em come up to me, make ’em come up!” cried Fancy ecstatically;
+and the four damsels appointed, namely, Miss Susan Dewy, Miss Bessie
+Dewy, Miss Vashti Sniff, and Miss Mercy Onmey, surged upstairs, and
+floated along the passage.
+
+“I wish Dick would come!” was again the burden of Fancy.
+
+The same instant a small twig and flower from the creeper outside the
+door flew in at the open window, and a masculine voice said, “Ready,
+Fancy dearest?”
+
+“There he is, he is!” cried Fancy, tittering spasmodically, and
+breathing as it were for the first time that morning.
+
+The bridesmaids crowded to the window and turned their heads in the
+direction pointed out, at which motion eight earrings all swung as
+one:—not looking at Dick because they particularly wanted to see him,
+but with an important sense of their duty as obedient ministers of the
+will of that apotheosised being—the Bride.
+
+“He looks very taking!” said Miss Vashti Sniff, a young lady who
+blushed cream-colour and wore yellow bonnet ribbons.
+
+Dick was advancing to the door in a painfully new coat of shining
+cloth, primrose-coloured waistcoat, hat of the same painful style of
+newness, and with an extra quantity of whiskers shaved off his face,
+and hair cut to an unwonted shortness in honour of the occasion.
+
+“Now, I’ll run down,” said Fancy, looking at herself over her shoulder
+in the glass, and flitting off.
+
+“O Dick!” she exclaimed, “I am so glad you are come! I knew you would,
+of course, but I thought, Oh if you shouldn’t!”
+
+“Not come, Fancy! Het or wet, blow or snow, here come I to-day! Why,
+what’s possessing your little soul? You never used to mind such things
+a bit.”
+
+“Ah, Mr. Dick, I hadn’t hoisted my colours and committed myself then!”
+said Fancy.
+
+“’Tis a pity I can’t marry the whole five of ye!” said Dick, surveying
+them all round.
+
+“Heh-heh-heh!” laughed the four bridesmaids, and Fancy privately
+touched Dick and smoothed him down behind his shoulder, as if to assure
+herself that he was there in flesh and blood as her own property.
+
+“Well, whoever would have thought such a thing?” said Dick, taking off
+his hat, sinking into a chair, and turning to the elder members of the
+company.
+
+The latter arranged their eyes and lips to signify that in their
+opinion nobody could have thought such a thing, whatever it was.
+
+“That my bees should ha’ swarmed just then, of all times and seasons!”
+continued Dick, throwing a comprehensive glance like a net over the
+whole auditory. “And ’tis a fine swarm, too: I haven’t seen such a fine
+swarm for these ten years.”
+
+“A’ excellent sign,” said Mrs. Penny, from the depths of experience.
+“A’ excellent sign.”
+
+“I am glad everything seems so right,” said Fancy with a breath of
+relief.
+
+“And so am I,” said the four bridesmaids with much sympathy.
+
+“Well, bees can’t be put off,” observed the inharmonious grandfather
+James. “Marrying a woman is a thing you can do at any moment; but a
+swarm o’ bees won’t come for the asking.”
+
+Dick fanned himself with his hat. “I can’t think,” he said
+thoughtfully, “whatever ’twas I did to offend Mr. Maybold, a man I like
+so much too. He rather took to me when he came first, and used to say
+he should like to see me married, and that he’d marry me, whether the
+young woman I chose lived in his parish or no. I just hinted to him of
+it when I put in the banns, but he didn’t seem to take kindly to the
+notion now, and so I said no more. I wonder how it was.”
+
+“I wonder!” said Fancy, looking into vacancy with those beautiful eyes
+of hers—too refined and beautiful for a tranter’s wife; but, perhaps,
+not too good.
+
+“Altered his mind, as folks will, I suppose,” said the tranter. “Well,
+my sonnies, there’ll be a good strong party looking at us to-day as we
+go along.”
+
+“And the body of the church,” said Geoffrey, “will be lined with
+females, and a row of young fellers’ heads, as far down as the eyes,
+will be noticed just above the sills of the chancel-winders.”
+
+“Ay, you’ve been through it twice,” said Reuben, “and well mid know.”
+
+“I can put up with it for once,” said Dick, “or twice either, or a
+dozen times.”
+
+“O Dick!” said Fancy reproachfully.
+
+“Why, dear, that’s nothing,—only just a bit of a flourish. You be as
+nervous as a cat to-day.”
+
+“And then, of course, when ’tis all over,” continued the tranter, “we
+shall march two and two round the parish.”
+
+“Yes, sure,” said Mr. Penny: “two and two: every man hitched up to his
+woman, ’a b’lieve.”
+
+“I never can make a show of myself in that way!” said Fancy, looking at
+Dick to ascertain if he could.
+
+“I’m agreed to anything you and the company like, my dear!” said Mr.
+Richard Dewy heartily.
+
+“Why, we did when we were married, didn’t we, Ann?” said the tranter;
+“and so do everybody, my sonnies.”
+
+“And so did we,” said Fancy’s father.
+
+“And so did Penny and I,” said Mrs. Penny: “I wore my best Bath clogs,
+I remember, and Penny was cross because it made me look so tall.”
+
+“And so did father and mother,” said Miss Mercy Onmey.
+
+“And I mean to, come next Christmas!” said Nat the groomsman
+vigorously, and looking towards the person of Miss Vashti Sniff.
+
+“Respectable people don’t nowadays,” said Fancy. “Still, since poor
+mother did, I will.”
+
+“Ay,” resumed the tranter, “’twas on a White Tuesday when I committed
+it. Mellstock Club walked the same day, and we new-married folk went
+a-gaying round the parish behind ’em. Everybody used to wear something
+white at Whitsuntide in them days. My sonnies, I’ve got the very white
+trousers that I wore, at home in box now. Ha’n’t I, Ann?”
+
+“You had till I cut ’em up for Jimmy,” said Mrs. Dewy.
+
+“And we ought, by rights, after doing this parish, to go round Higher
+and Lower Mellstock, and call at Viney’s, and so work our way hither
+again across He’th,” said Mr. Penny, recovering scent of the matter in
+hand. “Dairyman Viney is a very respectable man, and so is Farmer Kex,
+and we ought to show ourselves to them.”
+
+“True,” said the tranter, “we ought to go round Mellstock to do the
+thing well. We shall form a very striking object walking along in
+rotation, good-now, neighbours?”
+
+“That we shall: a proper pretty sight for the nation,” said Mrs. Penny.
+
+“Hullo!” said the tranter, suddenly catching sight of a singular human
+figure standing in the doorway, and wearing a long smock-frock of
+pillow-case cut and of snowy whiteness. “Why, Leaf! whatever dost thou
+do here?”
+
+“I’ve come to know if so be I can come to the wedding—hee-hee!” said
+Leaf in a voice of timidity.
+
+“Now, Leaf,” said the tranter reproachfully, “you know we don’t want
+’ee here to-day: we’ve got no room for ye, Leaf.”
+
+“Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf, fie upon ye for prying!” said old William.
+
+“I know I’ve got no head, but I thought, if I washed and put on a clane
+shirt and smock-frock, I might just call,” said Leaf, turning away
+disappointed and trembling.
+
+“Poor feller!” said the tranter, turning to Geoffrey. “Suppose we must
+let en come? His looks are rather against en, and he is terrible silly;
+but ’a have never been in jail, and ’a won’t do no harm.”
+
+Leaf looked with gratitude at the tranter for these praises, and then
+anxiously at Geoffrey, to see what effect they would have in helping
+his cause.
+
+“Ay, let en come,” said Geoffrey decisively. “Leaf, th’rt welcome, ’st
+know;” and Leaf accordingly remained.
+
+They were now all ready for leaving the house, and began to form a
+procession in the following order: Fancy and her father, Dick and Susan
+Dewy, Nat Callcome and Vashti Sniff, Ted Waywood and Mercy Onmey, and
+Jimmy and Bessie Dewy. These formed the executive, and all appeared in
+strict wedding attire. Then came the tranter and Mrs. Dewy, and last of
+all Mr. and Mrs. Penny;—the tranter conspicuous by his enormous gloves,
+size eleven and three-quarters, which appeared at a distance like
+boxing gloves bleached, and sat rather awkwardly upon his brown hands;
+this hall-mark of respectability having been set upon himself to-day
+(by Fancy’s special request) for the first time in his life.
+
+“The proper way is for the bridesmaids to walk together,” suggested
+Fancy.
+
+“What? ’Twas always young man and young woman, arm in crook, in my
+time!” said Geoffrey, astounded.
+
+“And in mine!” said the tranter.
+
+“And in ours!” said Mr. and Mrs. Penny.
+
+“Never heard o’ such a thing as woman and woman!” said old William;
+who, with grandfather James and Mrs. Day, was to stay at home.
+
+“Whichever way you and the company like, my dear!” said Dick, who,
+being on the point of securing his right to Fancy, seemed willing to
+renounce all other rights in the world with the greatest pleasure. The
+decision was left to Fancy.
+
+“Well, I think I’d rather have it the way mother had it,” she said, and
+the couples moved along under the trees, every man to his maid.
+
+“Ah!” said grandfather James to grandfather William as they retired, “I
+wonder which she thinks most about, Dick or her wedding raiment!”
+
+“Well, ’tis their nature,” said grandfather William. “Remember the
+words of the prophet Jeremiah: ‘Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a
+bride her attire?’”
+
+Now among dark perpendicular firs, like the shafted columns of a
+cathedral; now through a hazel copse, matted with primroses and wild
+hyacinths; now under broad beeches in bright young leaves they threaded
+their way into the high road over Yalbury Hill, which dipped at that
+point directly into the village of Geoffrey Day’s parish; and in the
+space of a quarter of an hour Fancy found herself to be Mrs. Richard
+Dewy, though, much to her surprise, feeling no other than Fancy Day
+still.
+
+On the circuitous return walk through the lanes and fields, amid much
+chattering and laughter, especially when they came to stiles, Dick
+discerned a brown spot far up a turnip field.
+
+“Why, ’tis Enoch!” he said to Fancy. “I thought I missed him at the
+house this morning. How is it he’s left you?”
+
+“He drank too much cider, and it got into his head, and they put him in
+Weatherbury stocks for it. Father was obliged to get somebody else for
+a day or two, and Enoch hasn’t had anything to do with the woods
+since.”
+
+“We might ask him to call down to-night. Stocks are nothing for once,
+considering ’tis our wedding day.” The bridal party was ordered to
+halt.
+
+“Eno-o-o-o-ch!” cried Dick at the top of his voice.
+
+“Y-a-a-a-a-a-as!” said Enoch from the distance.
+
+“D’ye know who I be-e-e-e-e-e?”
+
+“No-o-o-o-o-o-o!”
+
+“Dick Dew-w-w-w-wy!”
+
+“O-h-h-h-h-h!”
+
+“Just a-ma-a-a-a-a-arried!”
+
+“O-h-h-h-h-h!”
+
+“This is my wife, Fa-a-a-a-a-ancy!” (holding her up to Enoch’s view as
+if she had been a nosegay.)
+
+“O-h-h-h-h-h!”
+
+“Will ye come across to the party to-ni-i-i-i-i-i-ight!”
+
+“Ca-a-a-a-a-an’t!”
+
+“Why n-o-o-o-o-ot?”
+
+“Don’t work for the family no-o-o-o-ow!”
+
+“Not nice of Master Enoch,” said Dick, as they resumed their walk.
+
+“You mustn’t blame en,” said Geoffrey; “the man’s not hisself now; he’s
+in his morning frame of mind. When he’s had a gallon o’ cider or ale,
+or a pint or two of mead, the man’s well enough, and his manners be as
+good as anybody’s in the kingdom.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
+
+
+The point in Yalbury Wood which abutted on the end of Geoffrey Day’s
+premises was closed with an ancient tree, horizontally of enormous
+extent, though having no great pretensions to height. Many hundreds of
+birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree; tribes of
+rabbits and hares had nibbled at its bark from year to year; quaint
+tufts of fungi had sprung from the cavities of its forks; and countless
+families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots. Beneath and
+beyond its shade spread a carefully-tended grass-plot, its purpose
+being to supply a healthy exercise-ground for young chickens and
+pheasants; the hens, their mothers, being enclosed in coops placed upon
+the same green flooring.
+
+All these encumbrances were now removed, and as the afternoon advanced,
+the guests gathered on the spot, where music, dancing, and the singing
+of songs went forward with great spirit throughout the evening. The
+propriety of every one was intense by reason of the influence of Fancy,
+who, as an additional precaution in this direction, had strictly
+charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying ‘thee’ and
+‘thou’ in their conversation, on the plea that those ancient words
+sounded so very humiliating to persons of newer taste; also that they
+were never to be seen drawing the back of the hand across the mouth
+after drinking—a local English custom of extraordinary antiquity, but
+stated by Fancy to be decidedly dying out among the better classes of
+society.
+
+In addition to the local musicians present, a man who had a thorough
+knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the village of Tantrum
+Clangley,—a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants as
+performers on instruments of percussion. These important members of the
+assembly were relegated to a height of two or three feet from the
+ground, upon a temporary erection of planks supported by barrels.
+Whilst the dancing progressed the older persons sat in a group under
+the trunk of the tree,—the space being allotted to them somewhat
+grudgingly by the young ones, who were greedy of pirouetting room,—and
+fortified by a table against the heels of the dancers. Here the gaffers
+and gammers, whose dancing days were over, told stories of great
+impressiveness, and at intervals surveyed the advancing and retiring
+couples from the same retreat, as people on shore might be supposed to
+survey a naval engagement in the bay beyond; returning again to their
+tales when the pause was over. Those of the whirling throng, who,
+during the rests between each figure, turned their eyes in the
+direction of these seated ones, were only able to discover, on account
+of the music and bustle, that a very striking circumstance was in
+course of narration—denoted by an emphatic sweep of the hand, snapping
+of the fingers, close of the lips, and fixed look into the centre of
+the listener’s eye for the space of a quarter of a minute, which raised
+in that listener such a reciprocating working of face as to sometimes
+make the distant dancers half wish to know what such an interesting
+tale could refer to.
+
+Fancy caused her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was
+obtainable out of six hours’ experience as a wife, in order that the
+contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young
+women present might be duly impressed upon the company: occasionally
+stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but this quite
+privately; for her ostensible bearing concerning the matter was
+intended to show that, though she undoubtedly occupied the most
+wondrous position in the eyes of the world that had ever been attained,
+she was almost unconscious of the circumstance, and that the somewhat
+prominent position in which that wonderfully-emblazoned left hand was
+continually found to be placed, when handing cups and saucers, knives,
+forks, and glasses, was quite the result of accident. As to wishing to
+excite envy in the bosoms of her maiden companions, by the exhibition
+of the shining ring, every one was to know it was quite foreign to the
+dignity of such an experienced married woman. Dick’s imagination in the
+meantime was far less capable of drawing so much wontedness from his
+new condition. He had been for two or three hours trying to feel
+himself merely a newly-married man, but had been able to get no further
+in the attempt than to realize that he was Dick Dewy, the tranter’s
+son, at a party given by Lord Wessex’s head man-in-charge, on the
+outlying Yalbury estate, dancing and chatting with Fancy Day.
+
+Five country dances, including ‘Haste to the Wedding,’ two reels, and
+three fragments of horn-pipes, brought them to the time for supper,
+which, on account of the dampness of the grass from the immaturity of
+the summer season, was spread indoors. At the conclusion of the meal
+Dick went out to put the horse in; and Fancy, with the elder half of
+the four bridesmaids, retired upstairs to dress for the journey to
+Dick’s new cottage near Mellstock.
+
+“How long will you be putting on your bonnet, Fancy?” Dick inquired at
+the foot of the staircase. Being now a man of business and married, he
+was strong on the importance of time, and doubled the emphasis of his
+words in conversing, and added vigour to his nods.
+
+“Only a minute.”
+
+“How long is that?”
+
+“Well, dear, five.”
+
+“Ah, sonnies!” said the tranter, as Dick retired, “’tis a talent of the
+female race that low numbers should stand for high, more especially in
+matters of waiting, matters of age, and matters of money.”
+
+“True, true, upon my body,” said Geoffrey.
+
+“Ye spak with feeling, Geoffrey, seemingly.”
+
+“Anybody that d’know my experience might guess that.”
+
+“What’s she doing now, Geoffrey?”
+
+“Claning out all the upstairs drawers and cupboards, and dusting the
+second-best chainey—a thing that’s only done once a year. ‘If there’s
+work to be done I must do it,’ says she, ‘wedding or no.’”
+
+“’Tis my belief she’s a very good woman at bottom.”
+
+“She’s terrible deep, then.”
+
+Mrs. Penny turned round. “Well, ’tis humps and hollers with the best of
+us; but still and for all that, Dick and Fancy stand as fair a chance
+of having a bit of sunsheen as any married pair in the land.”
+
+“Ay, there’s no gainsaying it.”
+
+Mrs. Dewy came up, talking to one person and looking at another.
+“Happy, yes,” she said. “’Tis always so when a couple is so exactly in
+tune with one another as Dick and she.”
+
+“When they be’n’t too poor to have time to sing,” said grandfather
+James.
+
+“I tell ye, neighbours, when the pinch comes,” said the tranter: “when
+the oldest daughter’s boots be only a size less than her mother’s, and
+the rest o’ the flock close behind her. A sharp time for a man that, my
+sonnies; a very sharp time! Chanticleer’s comb is a-cut then, ’a
+believe.”
+
+“That’s about the form o’t,” said Mr. Penny. “That’ll put the stuns
+upon a man, when you must measure mother and daughter’s lasts to tell
+’em apart.”
+
+“You’ve no cause to complain, Reuben, of such a close-coming flock,”
+said Mrs. Dewy; “for ours was a straggling lot enough, God knows!”
+
+“I d’know it, I d’know it,” said the tranter. “You be a well-enough
+woman, Ann.”
+
+Mrs. Dewy put her mouth in the form of a smile, and put it back again
+without smiling.
+
+“And if they come together, they go together,” said Mrs. Penny, whose
+family had been the reverse of the tranter’s; “and a little money will
+make either fate tolerable. And money can be made by our young couple,
+I know.”
+
+“Yes, that it can!” said the impulsive voice of Leaf, who had hitherto
+humbly admired the proceedings from a corner. “It can be done—all
+that’s wanted is a few pounds to begin with. That’s all! I know a story
+about it!”
+
+“Let’s hear thy story, Leaf,” said the tranter. “I never knew you were
+clever enough to tell a story. Silence, all of ye! Mr. Leaf will tell a
+story.”
+
+“Tell your story, Thomas Leaf,” said grandfather William in the tone of
+a schoolmaster.
+
+“Once,” said the delighted Leaf, in an uncertain voice, “there was a
+man who lived in a house! Well, this man went thinking and thinking
+night and day. At last, he said to himself, as I might, ‘If I had only
+ten pound, I’d make a fortune.’ At last by hook or by crook, behold he
+got the ten pounds!”
+
+“Only think of that!” said Nat Callcome satirically.
+
+“Silence!” said the tranter.
+
+“Well, now comes the interesting part of the story! In a little time he
+made that ten pounds twenty. Then a little time after that he doubled
+it, and made it forty. Well, he went on, and a good while after that he
+made it eighty, and on to a hundred. Well, by-and-by he made it two
+hundred! Well, you’d never believe it, but—he went on and made it four
+hundred! He went on, and what did he do? Why, he made it eight hundred!
+Yes, he did,” continued Leaf, in the highest pitch of excitement,
+bringing down his fist upon his knee with such force that he quivered
+with the pain; “yes, and he went on and made it A THOUSAND!”
+
+“Hear, hear!” said the tranter. “Better than the history of England, my
+sonnies!”
+
+“Thank you for your story, Thomas Leaf,” said grandfather William; and
+then Leaf gradually sank into nothingness again.
+
+Amid a medley of laughter, old shoes, and elder-wine, Dick and his
+bride took their departure, side by side in the excellent new
+spring-cart which the young tranter now possessed. The moon was just
+over the full, rendering any light from lamps or their own beauties
+quite unnecessary to the pair. They drove slowly along Yalbury Bottom,
+where the road passed between two copses. Dick was talking to his
+companion.
+
+“Fancy,” he said, “why we are so happy is because there is such full
+confidence between us. Ever since that time you confessed to that
+little flirtation with Shiner by the river (which was really no
+flirtation at all), I have thought how artless and good you must be to
+tell me o’ such a trifling thing, and to be so frightened about it as
+you were. It has won me to tell you my every deed and word since then.
+We’ll have no secrets from each other, darling, will we ever?—no secret
+at all.”
+
+“None from to-day,” said Fancy. “Hark! what’s that?”
+
+From a neighbouring thicket was suddenly heard to issue in a loud,
+musical, and liquid voice—
+
+“Tippiwit! swe-e-et! ki-ki-ki! Come hither, come hither, come hither!”
+
+“O, ’tis the nightingale,” murmured she, and thought of a secret she
+would never tell.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{1} This, a local expression, must be a corruption of something less
+questionable.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE ***
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