“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.