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 minutiae 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 versa, 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."