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."